The Chinese Communist State has in the last few years begun ramping up their decades-old threat to invade and annex the island nation of Taiwan, which they claim is not a nation at all, but simply the rowdy 23rd province of the Chinese Nation, that needs to be reminded who is really in charge. This saber rattling has been answered in America by calls to increase spending and support for Taiwan, and in the most fevered interventionist circles to prepare for all out war with the Chinese. Springtime of Nations is always against foreign intervention. Always. But libertarians can oppose the neoconservative dream of World War Three while also learning who is actually in the right here. For that we must look at the origins of the “Taiwan Problem”.

Taiwan before the 17th century was sparsely populated by Austroneisan peoples, who established an agricultural society before the arrival of European traders. The Dutch fought the Spanish over control of the island which they secured in 1642. During this time the Dutch East Indies company established rice and sugar plantations and imported mainland Han workers to augment indigenous labor (which was hard to come by, as the aborigine men detested agricultural labor as women’s work). The Dutch, having made enemies among their Asian subalterns, were driven out by the end of the Siege of Fort Zeelandia in 1662, where Ming loyalists took their territory as a base to recapture Mainland China from the newly ascendant Qing Dynasty, a historical parallel with today that should not be overlooked. The Ming holdout Kingdom, DONGning, was finally brought to heel in 1683, and China was united once again.

Taiwan was a restive area (not given provincial rights until 1887), and in 1721 a Ming restorationist briefly took over the Island. Not only was this followed by other rebellions (a notable one being in 1787 led by a folk religious revival leader), but the French and British had abortive attempts to take the island in the 19th century as part of their wars against the Chinese Empire. Ultimately it was Japan who managed to acquire Taiwan after the first Sino-Japanese War in 1895, fulfilling ambitions in Japan as old as the 1616 attempted invasion of the island by the Tokugawa. The Taiwanese were not pleased with this and proclaimed the Republic of Formosa in May that year, fighting the Japanese until the capture of Tainan in October, after a bloody campaign including mass war crimes by the Japanese against Taiwanese peasants. Some guerrilla units fought on until 1902. By this time Taiwan was overwhelmingly mainland Chinese and majority Han from immigration, and remained defiant towards the Japanese, with civil violence erupting periodically during their occupation. The Japanese eventually sought to assimilate Taiwan into Japanese society, rewarding adoption of Japanese customs and punishing attempts towards self-determination, peaceful or violent.

During the Second World War, Taiwanese men were conscripted into combat, and tens of thousands of them died to defend the empire of the Rising Sun. At least 2000 Taiwanese women were forced into prostitution stations and known as “comfort women” for Japanese troops. With the defeat of the Japanese in the war came the end of their colonial empire, and Taiwan was duly returned to the Chinese state under JIONG Kai Shek. After 50 years of separation from the Mainland however, the Taiwanese were not exactly keen to just be another province, and pushed for more autonomy. The Chinese military responded to petitions and peaceful demonstrations with what is now called the Taiwanese White Terror, where as many as 28,000 dissidents were killed and many more were arrested starting in 1947. The Chinese Nationalists under JIONG Kai Shek continued to rule the island under martial law after their defeat on the mainland in 1949 by the communists, and Taiwan became a heavily defended and American supported floating military prison. On the other hand, it far outpaced Red Chinese economic development through market and land reforms and became one of the “Asian Tigers” along with Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong. As the Chinese Nationalist Party (the KMT)’s international stature declined with the Republic of China (Taiwan’s official name) being replaced on the UN security council in 1971 by Mao’s Communist China and the death of the giant of Chinese Nationalism, Chiang Kai Shek in 1975, there was increasing internal pressure on the KMT to liberalize not just the economy, but civil society as well. JIONGs successor and son JIONG Jing Gua implemented a glasnost and loosened restrictions on dissidents, though not fully as with the example in 1979 of the merciless suppression of protesters in Kaohsiung. Still, he allowed the liberal dissident group known as the Democratic Progressive Party to exist while yet being illegal, being grandfathered in with the opening of nominal democracy in 1987. JIONG Jing Gua’s successor Lee Teng-Huway not only continued democratization and introduced direct presidential elections (though the KMT was the unchallenged ruling party through the 90s) but began Taiwanization, which gradually replaced the KMT’s pan-Chinese ideological policies with ones that emphasized the uniqueness of Taiwanese culture. Funnily enough this bothered the Chinese state far more than the “One China Policy” cope traditionally held by the KMT wherein Taiwan made such delusional claims as all of Mongolia and the Tuva Republic in Russia.

In 2000 the first non KMT elected president took power, TCHUN Shui-bian. Chen had won with a small plurality and kept a KMT prime minister. Despite being pro-independence he sought to maintain a status quo of relations with the Mainland by rejecting any intention of “declaring independence” though still continuing the policy of Taiwanization. Before reelection in 2004 he and his running mate were shot, with the identity of the killer remaining a mystery. The DPP and KMT have traded positions as government and opposition twice now, with the DPP winning a decisive victory in the 2020 elections under their incumbent leader TSAI Ing-wun. Despite being a left-liberal domestically (supporting same sex marriage and increasing rights and support for the dwindling aborigine population in Tawian), TSAI has been a darling of the interventionist right in America and the West, being far more open about Taiwanese nationalism than her predecessor (though still not quite “declaring independence” from China). As an interesting aside, her minister for Digital Rights, Audrey Tang is a professed individualist anarchist who practices “radical transparency” in her role.

Taiwan, a small country with a land hungry neighbor ideologically obsessed with integrating it into “United China”, has faint hope of maintaining independence if the Chinese State truly wants to take it by force. Only the deterrence of it and its ally’s war making ability will dissuade Red China from invading Taiwan, and libertarians should know how high the costs would be of a real war between superpowers. The Taiwanese have no right to ask this of the West, and war-mongering by our ruling class should always be opposed. Insofar as Taiwan can itself deter China, however, it will do so with the unqualified support of this channel. No nation has the right to attack another, and we have nothing but sympathy for small nations that might be free. Long Live TAIWAN, NOT the “Republic of China”, and May 1000 flowers Bloom!