Few seem to realize the only government Taiwan can secede from is itself, the Republic of China. The new US-Sino Taiwan Straight Crisis is rooted in misperceptions of history and anchored in anger, shame, and fear. The irony is the Republic of China, currently ruling only Taiwan and a few nearby islands, has existed since 1912 after the Chinese Revolution of 1911, long before the Chinese Communist Party declared the People’s Republic of China in 1949 during the civil war. The ROC had retreated to Taiwan and neighboring islands, was a semifascist military dictatorship under the Kuomintang, but only became a democracy in fairly recent years. The ROC’s transition from autocracy to democracy on Taiwan took place across the 1980s and 90s.

If Taiwan were to actually declare independence, ironically, it would be from itself, the ROC, not the PRC as the latter has never governed Taiwan. As the Republic of China has existed long before the People’s Republic of China, then it boggles the mind the PRC views the ROC as a “breakaway province” of the PRC. Each government still considers itself The One China. Perhaps it’s time to retire such an anachronistic mindset, altho the ultranationalistic on all sides froth with madness over such a progressive and liberating shift of perspective.

Like it or not, Taiwan is already its own country as the ROC. It is not and never was a province of the PRC. It is not an imperial outpost of the old Japanese or British empires. It was taken back from the Japanese by the ROC Kuomintang Party at the end of the Second World War. Taiwan was never governed or administered in any way by the CCP before and after the Communists declared their People’s Republic in 1949 as the civil war ended. Taiwan and it’s neighboring islands elect and run their own ROC government, collect taxes, maintain diplomatic relations, maintain complex business relationships abroad, operates its own military and intelligence forces, and acts upon the world stage as a small but robust middle power. Taiwan therefore has no need whatsoever to declare independence as it already exists as its own country. It flourishes under the national government of the Republic of China, a regime in existence for decades before the PRC. The country even transitioned from a brutalist military dictatorship into a constitutional democracy with a robust capitalist economy. It could, however, raise a bloody ruckus by changing its name and retiring the ROC label to better reflect geopolitical reality.

The PRC, however, nevertheless considers Taiwan a breakaway province, but Taiwan has not actually broken away from anything. It is the PRC that broke away from the ROC in their civil war. The CCP is relentless in its drive to unify much of the old Chinese Empire under its banner. This includes non-Han ethnic regions such as Tibet, the Uighurs, the Manchus, and Inner Mongolia. The PRC also has ongoing border disputes with its neighbors including India, Russia, Japan, and Bhutan, not to mention the roiling jousting over both the East and South China Seas. There are messy, intractable overlapping predicaments. Add the neverending Korean War to the list of troubles, too.

Any of them may trigger a major regional and global conflict sucking in the United States and its allies. May peace prevail. May the PRC, the ROC, and the USA step back from the brink of war. Sadly, unfortunately, peace is unlikely to prevail at all. The nations of the world are gripped in a cascading breakdown of international relations pulling them into a cataclysmic black hole of no return.

We humans are quick to quibble, quarrel, and murder each other over our differences despite our proven capacity as the leading apex predator on Earth to cooperate and collaborate regardless of such differences to achieve success.  We are the prey of our own predations.

Get ready for wars no one except stupid, ultranationalistic fools really want. History’s truth, however, remains unchanged: Taiwan as the ROC already exists as its own nation-state and has done so since 1912 after it overthrew the Qing Dynasty of the Manchu Empire in China. Taiwan was never part of the People’s Republic of China later declared by the Communists in 1949. Thus Taiwan is its own country. 

William Dudley Bass
Tuesday 2 August 2022
Revised Sunday 7 August 2022 
Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Earth
Sol

Copyright © 2022 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.