Reunification deadlocked: The United States, China and Taiwan

Abstract

Since the New China News Agency's release on March 15, 1949, of an editorial entitled “The Chinese People Are Determined to Liberate Taiwan,” that theme has been a cardinal principle of Peking's national policy. To appreciate fully the Chinese position, one must recognize not only Peking's claim that Taiwan is legally, ethnically, and historically an integral part of China, but also modern China's yeaming for national reunification and territorial integrity. On the ethnic question, China points to the fact that except for an extremely small number of aborigines, the inhabitants on the island today, including the so-called “native Taiwanese,” are of Chinese ancestry. They speak southeastern Chinese dialects and share with their compatriots on the mainland all the other basic Chinese cultural traits. Historically, as a Chinese spokesman once put it, “long before Christopher Columbus discovered America, the Chinese people were already in Taiwan. Long before the United States achieved its own independence, Taiwan had already become an inseparable part of the territory of China.” Although imperialist Japan occupied the island from 1895 to 1945, the island was returned to China in 1945 after Japan's surrender at the end of the Pacific War.