If the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claims that Taiwan is nothing more than a province of China, why has a resistant struggle for Taiwanese liberation persisted for so long? This is the question that Associate Professor of Political Science at the National University of Singapore Ja Ian Chong asked his audience at the very beginning of “Taiwan and the Meanings of China.” This talk was the first installment of the 2024-2025 academic year Povolny Lecture Series in International Studies, where Lawrence brings in recognized scholars once a term to talk about a certain global issue or phenomenon. It was held in Steitz Hall Room 102 on Thursday, Oct. 31 at 7:30 p.m. The lecture was preceded by a 7 p.m. reception with snacks and, as a nod to the holiday it shared the spotlight with, cookies decorated with classic Halloween monsters.
Edwin & Ruth West Professor of Economics and Social Science and Professor of Government Claudena Skran forwarded the lecture with a short eulogy to Government Professor emeritus Chong-do Hah, who passed away this past June at the age of 96. In his 42-year career at Lawrence, Hah helped get many of the Asian studies programs the university still offers today off the ground. To honor his legacy of helping Asia become such an integral part of Lawrence’s rich academic culture, Skran decided to choose a speaker with an interest in that corner of the world. She found that person in Chong, drawn to him by his interest in security across Asia and the region’s complex international relationships.
Associate Professor of History Brigid Vance gave Chong’s introduction, starting with an anecdote of meeting in their Princeton University days and bonding over a shared passion for Asia — and, she added without further elaboration, the pranks they used to play, affirmed by Chong’s guilty-as-charged chuckling from where he waited in the audience. Even after graduation, the two remained close; Chong even hosted Vance when she was in Singapore. This Halloween, she returned the favor by welcoming him to the lectern.
Tracking the country’s evolution from an empire to a nation-state and finally to a world superpower as we know it today, Chong claimed China’s complex relationship to Taiwan to be a vital lens under which we can begin to understand its ever-changing political atmosphere. He first whisked the audience back to when China’s borders looked much different as an empire. Like any empire, the first of the two most geopolitically important types of places were the imperial cities, Beijing and Nanjing, where the emperor would work to maintain domestic order. The other was what Chong called the ‘frontier,’ or the outermost borders of a country, which posed opportunities for territorial conquest. The Taiwanese territory was one of these places just beyond the frontier, but at the time it posed many problems for the Empire. For starters, Taiwan was at the time a haven for rebellious pirates, such as Zhang Chenggong who aided the fallen Mings in attempts to resist the incoming Qing Dynasty. The eastern part of the territory, too, proved to be geographically uninhabitable. Exasperated by the territory and under new international scrutiny from the Opium War, the Chinese Empire would eventually draw back from that troublesome frontier for a time, going as far as to restrict emigration there for many years.
However, Chong revealed that the two countries would remain politically intertwined no matter how they tried to separate from one another. The Qing Dynasty, while trying to avoid the undesirable image of associating with rebellious Taiwan, paradoxically also wanted to stake a claim over it. Taiwan, too, continued to be pulled into Chinese wars whether or not it wanted to be. During a particularly brutal war with Japan, China’s idea of a victory over the other country was having the Japanese pull out of every inch of land they deemed “Chinese.” This, said Chong, included Taiwan. From this war, a nationalistic sentiment of what China “should” look like began to rise and would continue to do so even into today.
As China began its transition from an empire to a nation-state, their goal would be to unite and centralize while also drawing clearer borders of what they believed “China” was. This meant pulling from the Taiwanese front in favor of bringing the mainland together but keeping a connection to the territory they saw as their own. Mixed signals over Taiwanese sovereignty were prevalent; while China sent diplomats to Taiwan as they would any other foreign, non-Chinese country, they also claimed Taiwan as their own in the 1943 Cairo Declaration. Adding a layer to the discourse, at this point, Taiwan had been annexed to Japan at the end of their war. Japan would, however, rescind all rights to Taiwan at the end of World War II. This act posed a problem: there was no specified country that Taiwan was formally rescinded to.
Mao Zedong had risen to power after the end of WWII and returned to the Taiwanese frontier in efforts to reclaim what he perceived to be ethnically Chinese territory. Chong theorized he may very well have retaken the country if the Korean War had not broken out, forcing Mao to move troops near the southeast border to the northern front.
Chong then moved into the modern day, where Taiwan is still one of many Chinese territory reclamation efforts, some notable others he mentioned being at the Indian and Bhutanese borders. The contemporary Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s main concern over Taiwanese sovereignty is the country’s prevalent international air and shipping ports, as well as it being a place where many underwater internet cables flow. If another world superpower were to utilize these resources, Chong said that would be a huge blow to China’s international power. Also pressing is Taiwan’s democratization, which a centralized China sees as an affront to its perceived authority.
Chong said Taiwan, on the other hand, overwhelmingly rejects Chinese rule, with much of the population themselves and their country as distinctly “Taiwanese.”
What does this history of change mean for China and Taiwan in our world today? Can a dispute as long-standing and complex as this be solved easily, if at all? Chong believes that we may not see a resolution in our lifetimes, though many Western superpowers are currently calling for a peaceful solution. He claimed that Taiwan being able to prevail hinges on the country’s ability to resist CCP coercion tactics on military, disinformation and economic fronts all at once, or not at all.
Chong’s lecture was well-received by the audience, who asked many questions about the countries’ past, present and future at the following Q&A session.