On Wednesday President Chen Shui-bian (
The salient point about the 1937-45 war between China and Japan is that it was fought in a foreign country -- China -- and the Taiwanese, as colonial subjects of the Japanese Empire, were in fact on the other side. Their involvement in the war in China was limited due to there being no conscription in Taiwan until very late in the war. Most Taiwanese who served in the Japanese military did so in the Pacific theater, rather than China. As far as the Taiwanese are concerned, they won no victory in 1945.
That they were on the side of brutally militaristic Japan, albeit not voluntarily, is not something to be proud of. As a result, many Taiwanese have been willing to accept the rewriting of history by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime which occupied the country after 1945. In this revision, China fought Japan, Taiwan was part of China, and so Taiwan must have fought Japan too. This, of course, is nonsense. But unfortunately it is another example of the false consciousness and muddled sense of identification imbued in Taiwanese by half a century as the colonial subjects of the "Republic of China."
One of the problems with Taiwan's political changes over the last 15 years is that while it might have democratized, it has never successfully decolonized. Part of the problem is that few Taiwanese seem to understand their situation as a colonial one. They have been taught that the colonial yoke was lifted in 1945, and only the highly politically sophisticated can readily see that what happened in 1945 was that one colonial tutelage was replaced by another. Consequently the Democratic Progressive Party's status as a liberation movement has never been clearly defined, and is little understood even in the DPP itself -- except at the most rarefied levels of political discourse.
The result has been a pitiful lack of zeal to effect that change in consciousness that liberation movements usually seek to effect as quickly as possible. Out go the statues, the festivals, the historical and cultural icons of the colonial power, to be replaced with an alternative set belonging to the liberated domestic polity. In Taiwan this reshaping of the national consciousness has been patchy at best. Some good work has been done by the Ministry of Education, while the military, for example, has barely been dragged into the post-martial law age. Until last year the armed forces were still singing songs about "liberating the mainland."
The armed forces used to be the private army of the KMT and their "nationalization" is, DPP government officials say, a sensitive issue which must be done very gradually. Actually this is rubbish. All that was needed was a purge of officers who would not renounce political party membership and swear a new oath of allegiance to Taiwan. This would have weeded out the pro-China unificationists and the KMT party-army loyalists, and left Taiwan with an officer corps with far less questionable loyalties than it currently has.
But the military is is simply a mirror of the wider society; Taiwanese consciousness needs strengthening everywhere. Instead what we see is Chen doing exactly the opposite: buying into and reinforcing a view of history that is fundamentally detrimental to Taiwan.
After all, if the armed forces really beat the Japanese then they are China's soldiers, not Taiwan's -- in which case their loyalty has to be questioned. If they are really the armed forces of Taiwan, then the events of 60 years ago are irrelevant. Why can't Chen understand that?
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of