Why The World Thinks Taiwan Is A Part of China

When Taiwan actually does get some front-page status on CNN.com, you can bet they'll get the history of Taiwan wrong. And this is why everyone except Taiwanese people think that Taiwan is a part of China.

"China, Taiwan reopen regular links" - CNN.com

As if CNN were a part of China's propaganda machine:

Taiwan separated from China after the communist victory in the Chinese civil war in 1949, with the defeated Nationalists setting up a government there. Beijing has always considered the island a renegade province and has threatened to go to war should Taiwan declare formal independence.

Please note that Taiwan did not separate from China in 1949. What actually happened was Chiang Kai-Shek lost the civil war against the Communists and fled to the island of Taiwan. At the time, Taiwan was to be a temporary-camp where he hoped to eventually launch a counter campaign against Mao Zedong to retake China. But, that never came to pass and eventually the KMT and Chiang Kai-Shek stayed on Taiwan and occupied it for the next 30-40 years.

Edit: I came across this editorial in the TaipeiTimes.com, which I found to be very well written and digs deeper to the underlying cultural ramifications that underpin how China views the world, and the U.S.

Jeffrey Garten, an undersecretary of commerce in the administration of former president Bill Clinton, has said: “Barack Obama’s first overseas trip should be to China and it should occur within a month after his inauguration on Jan. 20. He should bring Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his ambassador to Beijing.”

“Such a trip would be a showstopper, breaking all precedents,” Gartner, a professor at Yale, wrote in Newsweek magazine last weekend. “The trip would not be designed to negotiate or resolve specific issues. Instead, Obama would be setting the style and the tone of a new US approach to China.”

The Chinese, however, would see that visit as the young, new, and relatively inexperienced president coming, like the envoys of old, to pay tribute to China. In Asia, where symbols command more attention than in the West, an early Obama journey would be seen as the “Western barbarian” submitting to the power of the Chinese court.

What you don't want to do with China is cuddle it, feed it, and make it feel like a superpower. Because they'll feed on it, and use it to their advantage. Don't think you can make a bully not bully you by continuing to give him your lunch money. For the most part, dong hong lang all know that China is the biggest threat to stability in the Pacific region, but do we all realize that China will be one of the two biggest threats to stability, in this world. Watch and see, China /Taiwan & Israel/"Everyone Else In That Region" will be the key tipping points over the next decade.