China’s territorial musings are nothing more than a confirmation of the terrestrial limits of the Qing Empire. However, when it comes to Taiwan, the Qing Dynasty only ever managed to solidify its hold along the western coastal plains.
The Manchu court ruling over the Qing unequivocally gave away Taiwan in perpetuity to Japan, yet an irredentist China under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has gradually cranked up the decibels to its claim that Taiwan is an inseparable part of Chinese territory.
The area north of the Heilong River and east of the Ussuri River was ceded to the Russian Empire in 1858. Why has China not lodged any protest against Russia over this?
With his first 100 days in office now behind him, President William Lai (賴清德) has launched repeated salvos against China’s dubious claims over Taiwan. He has exposed the CCP’s cowardice, perhaps to everyone’s satisfaction. More importantly, his words highlight China’s and Russia’s fundamental war strategy contradiction.
The Russian Empire’s continued expansion eastward was only a natural conclusion of the Treaty of Aigun. Russia’s access to warm-water ports in Europe at the time were limited. It could not access the arctic as the sea was frozen solid; the Baltic was a Swedish and Danish lake; and the Black Sea was the watery domain of the Ottoman Empire. Strategically, Russia could only move eastward, seeking a port on the Pacific.
Following the Treaty of Aigun, St Petersburg and the tsar gained the right to construct and maintain the Chinese Eastern Railway in Manchuria, where it gained special rights to construct the railway and to lease the two warm-water ports of Lushun and Dalian at the southern end of the peninsula. However, Russia’s real intent was to take over all of Manchuria, but especially through its control of Lushun, which it at the time called “Port Arthur.”
Following the Eight-Nation Alliance that quelled the Boxer Rebellion, Russia took full control of Manchuria.
However, China decided to incorporate Manchuria into its “territory” after a cultural and historic fait accompli. The two sides found themselves in a contradictory bind.
If the CCP sincerely believes that its top priority is for its national territory, for Chinese and their country’s survival, it ought to repay Russia’s actions. How could the CCP not take advantage of Moscow’s weakness to “restore its lost territory” now that Russia is deeply mired in a bog of its own making after invading Ukraine?
In any case, the CCP finds an excuse every day to pester and harass Taiwan. If China’s territory falls into the hands of other foreigners, they roll out the red carpet and forget all about it. When the territory turns out to be under the control of a Chinese ousted party-state regime in shell-state form, the CCP threatens to kill or maim all the inhabitants. The argument could merely be boiled down to simply “Chinese only kill ‘Chinese.’”
The CCP proclaiming former Qing lands to be Chinese territory and that “not an inch of land shall be given up” are sick jokes. The CCP only cares about the regime’s survival. Clearly the natural perils of the Taiwan Strait make it difficult to attack Taiwan. It is because of a representation of the values of democracy and liberty that Chinese citizens have discovered that the benefits of democracy could rattle the very foundations of the CCP’s authoritarian rule. This is why the CCP is aching to destroy Taiwan.
Clearly, they could take advantage of the war in Ukraine to attack Russia. Not only could they take back the ancestral homeland that belonged to Manchu invaders that set up imperial shop, they could even go as far as to take over all of eastern Siberia, softening their strained relationship with the US and Europe.
Alas, China would rather look on in sympathy to its buddy, Russia.
Lai pointed out that the Sino-Russian strategy for regions on their peripheries is a huge contradiction. It helps Taiwanese to realize Russia is also a strategic threat to China. This realization also rips off the mask concealing Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) true face. The entire world understands he is a dictator concerned only with his own benefit — not much better than a pest that excels at hurting his own people. If we take a hard look at this sort of person, the best we could do is to be an outsider that realizes there are no more bountiful harvests to be reaped from a field with no irrigation.
To have any future, Taiwan must act quickly to complete the establishment of a fully realized nation and cast off the yoke of the shadow and shell of China.
Tommy Lin is chairman of the Formosan Republican Association and director of the Taiwan United Nations Alliance.
Translated by Tim Smith
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