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Originally Posted by Fat Pang
Taiwan's status, if we believe in national self determination, is one of an independent nation state. China's claim to Taiwan is centered on the ethnicity of its people (Han chinese, the indigenous people being in the minority) and the fact that it was once part of Imperial China.
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Here is my dilemma. Since I wasn't there I don't know the truth of any of this, but revisionist history tells us ... Japan's rule of Taiwan came to an end with its defeat in World War II. Its signing of the Instrument of Surrender on August 15, 1945, signaled that Taiwan was to be returned to China, one of the Allied objectives from the wartime declarations. On October 25, 1945, ROC troops, representing the Allied Command, accepted the formal surrender of Japanese military forces in Taihoku (today: Taipei).
The ROC administration, led by Chiang Kai-shek, announced October 25, 1945, as "Taiwan Retrocession Day." Reportedly, they were greeted as liberators by the island residents. However, the ROC military administration on Taiwan under Chen Yi, was viewed by many as corrupt. This view, compounded with a period of hyperinflation, and unrest due to the Chinese Civil War, and distrust due to political, cultural and lingual differences that had developed between the Taiwanese and the Mainland Chinese, quickly led to the loss of popular support for the new administration. This culminated in a series of severe clashes between the ROC administration and Taiwanese, in turn leading to the reign of White Terror.
At the same time, the Chinese Civil War was in progress. In 1949, Chiang's Kuomintang (Nationalist Party or KMT), which at the time controlled the government of the ROC, retreated to Taiwan after continued military defeats at the hands of the Communist Party of China drove it from most parts of China. Some 1.3 million refugees from mainland China arrived in Taiwan around that time. Initially, the United States abandoned the KMT and expected that Taiwan would fall to the Communists.
However, due to the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communists, the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty between Japan and the Allies stipulated that the United States would be the main occupying power of Taiwan (a former Japanese territory) while not naming the recipient of Taiwan's sovereignty.
OK. So the point? Historically it appears as if China's claim to the island has greater force. Some argue that much of the civil conflcit across the globe results from the arbitrary divisions created from Potsdam and beyond.
If defending Taiwan should be based on the defense of individual liberty and freedom then we should be consistent and impose pax-americana across the board. We should have intervened at Tiananmen Square. We should be freeing Tibet. We should be occupying Syria and Iran. We should stop propping up the Saudi Kingdom.
Personally, I'm tired of playing world's policeman. The articifical boundaries that emerged post-WWII can be defended by the French since they seem to feel they are some sort of super-power that still deserves a permanent seat on the security council.