Last week, Nicaragua made headlines by ending diplomatic ties with Taiwan, also known as “The Republic of China (ROC).” Why does this tiny island still call itself, “The Republic of China,” and how important was Nicaragua’s action?
As the Hill notes. . .
“The government of the Republic of Nicaragua today breaks diplomatic relations with Taiwan and ceases to have any contact or official relationship,” Nicaragua’s foreign ministry said in a statement, according to Reuters.
“The People’s Republic of China is the only legitimate government that represents all of China and Taiwan is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory,” the ministry said. . .
The majority of countries that recognize Taiwan are located in this region, including Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Paraguay and Belize. With Nicaragua’s decision on Thursday, Taiwan is left with only 14 formal diplomatic allies remaining.
The United States can’t complain. We broke ties with Taiwan more than 40 years ago. In fact, the Taipei Times says that Richard Nixon would have severed ties with Taiwan almost a decade earlier if he had not been embroiled in the Watergate scandal.
Thus, America didn’t sever ties until 1979.
Few countries, and no large countries, continue to recognize Taiwan.
South Africa, the last major country to recognize Taiwan, switched over in 1998. Taiwan lost the Gambia, the smallest nation in continental Africa, in March 2016, dropping the number of states that recognize it to 22, the most important of which are the Vatican and [at that time,] Nicaragua. . .
Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA), which “seeks to build worldwide support for Taiwan independence,”
In fact, the International Monetary Fund officially refers to Taiwan as, “Taiwan Province of China.”
So Taiwan (also known as “Formosa”) is now hoping just to gain independence from the Mainland, not to pretend to be the rightful representative of all Chinese. But the Mainland still considers Taiwan to be a renegade province, which sounds ominously like Saddam Hussein’s claim that Kuwait was part of Iraq, or, more recently, when Russia claimed that Crimea was rightly part of Russia, not Ukraine.
Let’s go back into history. China has the oldest surviving culture in the world.
Well before the advent of recognizable civilization in the region, the land was occupied by hominids. Peking Man, a skull fossil discovered in 1927 CE near Beijing, lived in the area between 700,000 to 300,000 years ago, and Yuanmou Man, whose remains were found in Yuanmou in 1965 CE, inhabited the land 1.7 million years ago. . .
It has generally been accepted that the Chinese ‘Cradle of Civilization’ is the Yellow River Valley which gave rise to villages sometime around 5000 BCE. . . From these small villages and farming communities grew centralized government; the first of which was the prehistoric Xia Dynasty (c. 2070-1600 BCE).
China was once the great power of the East. But then, western colonial powers showed up. For a hundred years, China was humiliated, first by European powers, then by the occupation by Japan.
The birth of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was not only the beginning of a new regime, but it also marked the ending of the Century of Humiliation (1839-1949), in which foreign powers subjected, manipulated, colonized, and occupied China. This period, characterized by pandemics, famines, corruption, mass murder, and widespread drug addiction, did not gradually wind down. Rather, the last years of this period were also some of its darkest, with the Japanese occupation of China during World War II. During the Japanese invasion and occupation, China experienced war crimes, a high death toll, and man-made natural disasters that killed and displaced millions.
When World War II ended, the nations of the world wanted to find a way to avoid a third World War—especially since the second war was so much worse than the first. It had been tried before. After World War I, they founded the League of Nations, but it quickly collapsed. After World War II, the United Nations was founded on firmer ground.
All nations should have a voice, but only the victors in the war would have ultimate power. Thus, The Allied Powers in the war, The United States, Britain, France, and Russia held permanent seats. China was given a seat to round out the Security Council, recognizing China’s work in defeating Japan—as well as its oriental location. However, it’s an illustration of the fact that international diplomacy is sometimes not based in reality:
In 1949, the communists won the Chinese civil war, chasing Chiang Kai-Shek to escape to Taiwan. Yet, the world continued to pretend that the entirety of China was controlled by Chiang and the Kuomintang Party. It was a fantasy, of course.
Finally, 22 years later, the world acknowledged that the Mainland was the true “China,” and in 1971, the Security Council seat was taken away from Taiwan and was given to the Mainland.
A year later, Nixon officially acknowledged not only that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was the real China, but also that Taiwan was only a province of that nation. Today, Taiwan is not even a member state of the United Nations.
Should Taiwan stand separate from China? It depends on how far back you want to go.
For thousands of years, Taiwan had been home to nine plains tribes. . .Han Chinese began crossing the Taiwan Strait during the 15th century. Then, the Spanish invaded Taiwan in 1626 and, with the help of the Ketagalan (one of the plains tribes), discovered sulfur, a main ingredient in gunpowder, in Yangmingshan, a mountain range that overlooks Taipei. After the Spanish and Dutch were forced out of Taiwan, Mainland Chinese returned in 1697. . .
The Japanese, who had had their eye on Taiwan since the late 16th century, succeeded in gaining control of the island after China was defeated in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895). When China lost the war with Japan in 1895, Taiwan was ceded to Japan as a colony and the Japanese occupied Taiwan from 1895 to 1945.
From a historical perspective, Taiwan should belong to the aboriginal peoples—not China, not Japan, not Spain, nor Holland. But since it is currently occupied and controlled by ethnic Chinese, it’s hard to see how Taiwan can claim to be separate from China. However, U.S. President Joe Biden says the future of Taiwan is up to the occupying Taiwanese.
Biden further infuriated China by inviting Taiwan to his “Summit for Democracy,” which did not include China. Thus, Taiwan has become one more pawn in the US-China battle for international supremacy.
