hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2194.txt

Episode: 2194
Title: HPR2194: The low-down on what's up in the Taiwan Strait.
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2194/hpr2194.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 15:32:43

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This is HPR episode 2194 entitled The Lone On What's Up in the Taiwan Trade.
It is hosted by Clacket and is about 32 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is, in which I respond to, I don't get this called Taiwan's US-China thing.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Honest Host.com.
At 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15.
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Hi, I'm Clacket.
Imagine for a moment a Europe with a Greek empire never fell.
It never split into, it never disintegrated completely.
Its borders just shifted a bit over the centuries.
Once in a while, it would get conquered in its entirety by one of its neighbors.
But it only ever led to them starting to call themselves Greeks as well.
And their homelands becoming part of an even greater Greek empire.
From the days of Aristotle to today, with only a few short interruptions, one continues
state.
In the north, people would talk Scandinavian at home.
In the southwest, people would speak romance, in the east, people would speak Slavic.
At home.
And we would all write in some bastardized, Scandin Germanic romance language.
And in the office, we would all speak it.
Okay, maybe that language thing actually happened here.
Just listen to me now speaking bastardized, Scandin Germanic romance.
But we're hardly one country.
And we don't call ourselves Europeans or Greeks first.
But in China, this really happened.
I was on the excellent August Planet IRC channel a few days ago, as always.
And a topic came up, and I dropped a few off-the-cuff comments about what I knew on the subject.
And I figured, hey, actually this is farther from an HPR episode.
And I'm simply going to read almost literally what I wrote about the whole Taiwan-U.S.
China thing.
But to give you an even deeper understanding of the complexity involved, and also the
weight of this whole unification thing, I'm going to have to give you some background.
I'm going to try to do it quick, but it's going to take some discipline, because there
is so much to talk about.
So let's start in 1644, then quickly move forward to 1900, and up until today.
And then I'll go into what I said on IRC.
It's going to be a lot of Japan, because Japan played a huge role in shaping Chinese
history throughout the 20th century, as did the Soviet Union.
So let's see, in 1644, the Qing Dynasty was founded.
And it took them almost four years to consolidate the grip on the whole of what was China
at that point.
They ruled for several hundred years.
And the Qing Empire was the richest empire in the world for most of this time.
China had fertile soil, and lots of people, good climate, and high levels of education.
And apart from the soil, they also had other natural resources.
But in the 18th and 19th centuries, Europe industrialized, and along with Europe, the United
States.
And in the 19th century, all these different countries in Europe and the United States
started carving out pieces of China.
There would be places in Guangzhou, in Shanghai, where you would not have any local Chinese
police.
You would have French police in the French quarters.
You would have American police in the American quarters.
And this change also came to Japan.
Japan had been quite complacent since 1600.
There have been no internal revolutions, which was usually what would drive technology
and economy forward in Japan.
It had been stable for almost as long as China.
And then the US showed up and said, open your ports for trade.
And whereas the Chinese empire was not so quick to act and wasn't really sure how to
handle this.
In Japan, in 1868, there was a revolution called the Meiji Restoration, where a few
clans, clans slash regions, went together, kicked out the shogun, put the emperor in
place as the ruler of the country, and started a program of intense industrialization.
This affected how the country was run, it affected the military in 1871, they had the Imperial
Japanese Army, which was created and organized with the help of Western military officers.
And after only 20 years, Japan felt powerful enough to attack its large neighbor in the
West.
And at the end of the first Sino-Japanese War 1895, Japan took possession of Taiwan.
Ten years later, in 1905, Japan engaged in the Russo-Japanese War and took over the Russian
possessions in China.
They had a railway, the land around the railway, and the Guantong Lies, which was a garrison
at the south end of a peninsula in the Northeast, in the Menturian region.
The homelands of the Qing Dynasty, the Qing Imperial family, were Manchu.
They gained the Guantong Lies, and they placed there the Guantong garrison, which would become
the Guantong Army, and which would be a key player in the event to come.
Strengthened by this victory, they soon declared Korea their protectorates, up until that
point Korea had been a vassal state of the Qing Empire.
And only five years later, in 1910, they annexed Korea outright.
Now at this point, people inside China had become quite upset with the Imperial families
inability to handle all these external threats.
So in 1911, it was the first of a series of rebellions that overthrew the Qing government
and aimed to create a Republican government instead.
The revolution was led by Dr. Sunyat, who had received training in the Soviet Union,
but he wanted to create a democratic, a social democracy in China.
However, the revolution created huge chaos.
There was no unification in the country.
The regions were ruled by regional warlords, and Dr. Sunyat's newly founded Republic
failed over and over again.
First, it fell into monarchy again.
There was a new emperor.
They created a new revolution to kick him out, create a new Republican government.
But in the end, they were not in full control.
The country was in chaos.
In 1925, Dr. Sun dies, and his friend General Chung takes over the party.
He is much more aggressive and much more successful in unifying the country.
But he also cleared the left wing of the party, which drove them all to the communist party.
So by 1928, there were some local warlords that had an alliance with General Chung.
There were others that had been conquered by the party, and there was a significant part
of the country that was instead controlled by the communist party.
Meanwhile, the Japanese renegade Guangdong Army in the Northeast continued making trouble.
Troops that were supposed to be guarding their railway were attacking and raiding nearby
villages.
The military in the area were playing their own games with local warlords assassinating
several of them.
And finally, they arranged an incidence, a false flag terrorist attack, to create an excuse
to take over the whole area.
And they created a new Manchu country, Manchu War.
And they put the old Qing emperor on the throne as a king of this country.
But it was a complete puppet state controlled by the Japanese.
Now this was against direct orders from the Japanese government.
But at this point, they couldn't very well take it back.
So they had to approve the whole thing in retrospect.
Yeah, I'm sure we meant to do that all along.
And at this point, the officers involved in these incidents had gained very large influence
in the Japanese society.
Now, as this was happening in the Northeast, General Chung was still chasing communists
in the rest of China.
This idea was that to fight the external threat, we have to first eliminate the internal
threat.
But one of these close associates, General Chung, who was the son of another general
drunk that had been killed in the Northeast, he was the commander of the Northeast Army.
He arrested General Chung to force him to make peace with the communists.
This was not successful and General Chung was put in prison.
But finally, General Chung made peace with the communists anyway to create the unified
front to fight the Japanese.
This was in 1936 and already in 1937, the Japanese launched a full-scale invasion.
They took Shanghai, they took Nanjing, and I guess you have all heard of the Nanjing
massacre, which is the main reason why today, 80 years later, many people in China still
hate the Japanese.
Now in 1945, when the Second World War finally ended, Japan surrendered Taiwan back
to China.
Now with the external threat removed, the civil war went back into full strength.
The thing is that during the war with the Japanese, it had been mostly the nationalist
troops that had been fighting the Japanese and the communists had been able to consolidate,
build up their strength.
So in one decisive battle in 1948, with 4 million soldiers on each side, the nationalists
took a big loss and they had to retreat.
And one year later, they had all moved to Taiwan and the communists controlled all of mainland
China and they proclaimed the People's Republic of China.
Now internationally, Chiang's government was still considered the legitimate government
of China, even though they controlled less than 1% of the country.
So 1% of China was controlled by the legitimate government and 99% were controlled by communist
rebels.
For a time, people thought that this was a temporary situation.
The communists would finally take over the last percent as well.
And the American government wasn't really considering supporting Chiang's troops as it seemed
like a lost cause really.
But then in 1950, the Korean War happened.
The Soviet Union and China went into support North Korea in an attack of South Korea.
And the United States President put a fleet in the Taiwan Strait to separate Taiwan from
the mainland and prevent any further conflict erupting there as well.
From that point on, supporting Taiwan was part of the US strategy for maintaining peace
in the region.
And of course for holding communism back, this was the beginning of the hot Cold War in
Southeast Asia.
Now in the 60s, there was a break in the relationship between the Soviet Union and China because of
dogmatic differences and also because of national interest.
And China became a sort of third party in the Cold War.
And China and the US started sharing interests in the geopolitical arena.
So for example, China supported the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to push out the Soviets from
there.
The US even sold weapons to China to strengthen them against the Soviets.
And in 1971, Nixon went to visit China as the first American president to visit the
People's Republic of China.
And China entered the UN and kicked out the Republic of China as the representative of
China in the UN.
Now, the Republic of China had received an offer to stay on as a separate country in
the UN, but both the People's Republic and the Republic had one China policy that meant
either you have diplomatic relations with them or you have diplomatic relations with
us.
There is no two China, there is only one China and we're the legitimate China.
So one of them had to go.
Now during this time, it wasn't the case that China was a communist dictatorship and the
Republic of China or Taipei or Taiwan was a flourishing democracy.
Now, Taiwan was a military dictatorship.
In 1949, when the Communists took over, the Republic of China enacted the temporary
provisions effective during the period of communist rebellion.
So this communist rebellion didn't seem to stop.
So this law stayed in place up until 1991 and Taiwan was under martial law from 1949
all the way up until 1987.
Now there were elections held, but only for the seats of Taiwan and because the Republic
of China was their legislative UN was the legislative UN of all of China and they had representatives
from all the different provinces in China.
But because they didn't control those provinces, there hadn't been any elections since 1947.
And in any case, because the country was under martial law, there were no other parties
allowed in the Guangdong.
But in 1986, for the first time, there were people from the Democratic Progressive Party
voted into the legislative UN.
The party was illegal, but nobody did anything about it.
Part of the reason was probably that General Chen had died already 10 years earlier and
his son was now running the country and he had been gradually loosening up the harsh
provisions that had been in place for so many years, for so many decades.
At the same time Mao had also died in the 70s on the Chinese side and in 1978, Deng Xiaoping
started putting in place economic reforms.
He created a special economic zones like, for example, Chen Zhen and later also parts
of Shanghai and so on.
So gradually, the two governments started reaching out to each other so much so that in 1991,
they each on their side founded semi-governmental, in-official diplomatic organization.
On the one side, you had the Straits Exchange Foundation and on the other side, you had
the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits.
And these were proxy organizations so that they could have official, in-official contact
with each other and discuss how they should proceed further.
In 1992, the chairman of these organizations met in Hong Kong, which was neutral ground
at that time because it was still a British colony, and agreed to agree that there was only
one China and they agreed to disagree who was the legitimate government of that China.
In the meantime, the democratic reforms in Taiwan and the changing political climate meant
that in 1996, when Taiwan were going to have their first direct election of a president,
mainland China was very worried that they would elect a democratic progressive party president,
which would risk upsetting this delicate balance between the two sides.
China wanted to talk to the woman that they didn't want to talk to the DPP, so they threatened
the population by doing military exercises just in connection to the election and the United States
responded, Bill Clinton responded by sending an aircraft carrier there and the Chinese
government stopped their exercise early. That time, the Taiwanese people chose another
Guamin Deng president, but in 2000, they elected their first democratic progressive party president.
Now, the official policy of the Guamin Deng is that at some point, we want to reunify China.
Of course, they're hoping that it will be on their terms, and at the same time, the people's
Republic of China also want to reunify China. Of course, that means they would take over Taiwan
as the province they consider it to be. But the democratic progressive party, they are looking at
Taiwanese independence, scrapping the Republic of China and creating a new Republic of Taiwan
that has no ambition to take over the rest of China or to merge with it.
So the reason that this status quo is so attractive to mainland China and to Taiwan or those
on Taiwan that do support it is that as long as the situation is a bit unclear,
then we can still, at some point in the future, unify the country again. But if Taiwan declares
independence, there's a risk that that moment may be gone and it may never be possible to reunite
China again. So for eight years, while there was a DPP president in Taiwan, relations between Taiwan
and mainland China were very cool in the negative sense. But in 2008, they had another Guamin Deng
president voted in and immediately the Chinese Communist Party and the Guamin Deng agreed to open
up what they call the three links. They, for the first time, had functioning posts between the two
areas and direct flights and an opportunity for Taiwanese and mainland companies to invest in
the other area. Of course, if you know that the iPhone came 2007 and the iPhone is paid by Foxconne
which is a Taiwanese company and it has factories in China, this sounds confusing but that's in
Shenzhen, that's a special economic zone. What happened in 2008 is all of China became accessible
to Taiwanese investors. So things were looking nice and rosy again across the strait.
But in Taiwan, many people were really worried that what are all these new trade agreements
going to lead to? They felt that this is going to lead to increased dominance of
Beijing over Taipei and we will become dependent on them and they will force us to unify the country
on their terms. And this sparked the 2014 Sunflower Student Movement which was a protest movement
against these softened relations with mainland China. But the president pressed on and in 2015
President Ma of Taiwan and President Xi of China met for the first time in Singapore. It was the
first time that one president from the one government had met a president from the other government
since the split in 1949. But the people of Taiwan didn't appreciate it and in 2016, this year in May
they voted a DPP president again. Now what you have to realize is that
88% of the population in Taiwan were already there when the women down came to the island.
They had been living under Japanese rule for 50 years and despite what the Japanese did during the war
when they were managing Taiwan as a colony where they were trying to create a model colony.
People on Japanese Taiwan had a very good life and when the
nationalist party came there established base there. They started enforcing some very unpopular
policies. For example, the official language of the Republic of China is standard Chinese. It's
Mandarin. Most people on Taiwan don't speak Mandarin at home. 70% of the population speaks
what you might call Taiwanese or Hokkien Taiwanese which is a southern,
non-Chinese language is a different language family within the Chinese big family of languages
than Mandarin. So it's not mutually intelligible with Mandarin. You need to learn Mandarin in school
and 12% speak Hakka which is from another branch of the Chinese language tree. So they don't necessarily
feel like they have so much in common with these guys coming from the mainland and basically
taking over their island where they have been left alone before. So this is part of the tension
within Taiwanese politics. It's not just complicated between mainland and Taiwan. It's complicated
within Taiwan. Most people don't want to declare independence mostly because they are worried
what is going to happen. We'll China attack us. What's going to be the consequences.
But very few, it's like 2% want unification right now and only 10% to 20% want unification at some
point in the future. Most people just want the status quo because it's working and please don't
upset the Apple card. So wow, that was a long background much longer than I was trying to make it
but I'm not going to cut it down any more than I'll ever get this published. So let's go. Here's
what I wrote on IRC. China doesn't want Taiwan to be independent because that would be a loss of prestige
to China. There are no technical details about it. It's all about symbolism and what I meant by that
is someone was asking, so is this because they need access to the trade routes through the
straits. It's not really anything like that. This is about unification of China. It's been
split up so many times between different parties so it's become a very important part of the
Chinese self-image that we need to be a single unifying country. That's what's going on here.
Okay, let's move on. The China thing is a really interesting thing to unpack. First of all,
if you ask the traditional ruling party on Taiwan, the Guomendang, there is no country called
Taiwan. The Guomendang and the Chinese Communist Party agree that there is only one China and Taiwan
is simply a province of that China, where they disagree is whether the true government of the
whole is impaging or in Taipei. Fun fact, the official capital of the Republic of China is
nudging, which is not under Republic of China control. Also, some de facto parts of India and
all of Mongolia is officially part of the Republic of China according to their constitution,
and this is especially interesting since they recognized Mongolia as an independent country
in 1949. But they still kept it in their constitution and really it's our land.
If you fly from Beijing, there are domestic flights and then there are international flights and
domestic flights to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. I'm not going to go into the whole one country
two systems thing right now, but just quickly Hong Kong and Macau are part of China according to
everyone, but they are really in practice in day-to-day life. They are treated like foreign countries.
You need a visa to visit China if you are a foreigner in Hong Kong, and if you are living in mainland
China, you need permit to go to Hong Kong. So, the US and the US stand since 1972 is there is one
China and its government is in Beijing. I was incorrect there actually. The US formally recognized
the People's Republic in 1979, but at the same time, the US is giving military support to Taipei,
which according to Beijing is an unruly province. As long as the status quo holds,
the Taipei claims to rule all of China and Beijing claims to rule all of China and no outsider
that matters challenges that. China, both of them, is happy. It works. There are extended business
relations between the two jurisdictions and most of the electronics made in China are made in
factories owned by Taiwanese companies. Both the Chinese Communist Party and the Guomintang
hope that in the long term, this can gradually creep toward the unification of China. If Taiwan
would declare independence, that would mean war. Now, the current ruling party, then a democratic
progressive party, officially support driving toward the Taiwanese rather than a Chinese national
identity and at some point independence. They are being very careful about it, though,
because they are also aware of how Beijing would react if they went out and did it.
Also, while they do control the majority of the legislative UN, there is a significant
minority in Taiwan that adhere to a Chinese identity. They don't want to upset China and they
don't want formal independence. The current quirky situation works and barriers have been coming
down over the years. Relations are abnormal, yet normal. On the rhetorical level, it's all messed up.
In practice, you can fly between the island and the mainland, you can conduct business and send
posts, etc. When Republic of China and People's Republic of China
representatives meet, there are no embassies or consulates involved because neither acknowledges
the other as a country. Neither president will call the other president because they would imply
they represent the country rather than a rebel faction inside what the other side considers China.
So, when Trump goes on Twitter and says, the president of Taiwan called me today to wish me
congratulations or winning the presidency. Thank you. That's a huge scandal in the ice of Beijing.
There is no president of Taiwan and to imply so is to imply that Taiwan is a country and should be
independent. That's assured us as I can make it but that's the lowdown on what's up in the Taiwan
Straits.
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