“From their perspective, it could be Hawaii or something similar. An integral part of China that is not arbitrarily part of China, primarily because the US Pacific Fleet has blocked any reunification efforts by force.” ” said Elon Musk, who attended the All In Summit in Los Angeles in September remotely. said It refers to Taiwan.

Mr. Musk in May spoke to CNBC about the same topic. “China’s official policy should be to unify Taiwan,” he told the bureau’s David Faber. “You don’t have to read between the lines, just read the lines.” And the richest man in the world said: “So I think there’s a certain inevitability to this situation.”

Mr. Musk is great at providing what the world needs, but he is clueless about Taiwan. His conclusion could not be more wrong. (Related: Gordon Chan: Is President Trump aiming for a big deal with China?)

In the first place, the People’s Republic of China cannot “unify” with Taiwan. A communist regime has never ruled this island republic.

Moreover, the same goes for China. In fact, China’s ruling group has never held undisputed sovereignty over the island.

“Chinese Communist Party leaders claim that Taiwan has been part of China ‘since ancient times,'” said Gerrit van der Wees, a former Dutch diplomat who teaches Taiwanese history at George Mason University. told the author. “When we looked into it more closely, we found that this was definitely not the case.”

The Chinese Communist Party likes to refer to the Ming Dynasty, but the Ming rulers considered Taiwan to be “outside our territory,” and the Dutch construction of Fort Zeelandia and the Dutch East India Company Van der Wees points out that he was not opposed to establishing administrative control over the country. .

The Chinese government also talks about the Qing Dynasty’s rule over Taiwan, but the Qing Dynasty never controlled the mountainous area of ​​the island, which makes up about half of the island, and the Chinese believe that the Qing Dynasty, a Manchu tribe that overthrew the Ming rulers, considered to be foreigners. Yes, the Qing rulers declared Taiwan a “province of China,” but the provincial status lasted only eight years. In 1895 they ceded Taiwan Transferred to Japan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki.

From 1928 to 1943, the Communist Party itself recognize taiwan As a country independent of China.

Although Chiang Kai-shek was indeed Chinese and undoubtedly controlled all of Taiwan, the Treaty of San Francisco of 1951, which resolved most of the legal problems of World War II in Asia, gave sovereignty to the Kuomintang regime. It wasn’t something.

Furthermore, the people on the island do not consider themselves to be “Chinese.” The country’s name includes “China” because Chiang Kai-shek, who was defeated in the civil war, fled from the “mainland” and settled on this island. His Kuomintang party consolidated its rule with a ruthless campaign of “white terror” from 1949 to 1992. Decades of brutality, repression, and discrimination have strengthened the sense of Taiwanese identity among the Taiwanese people.

Currently, self-identification surveys generally show that about two-thirds of Taiwanese people deny that they are “Chinese.” in Pew Research Center surveyIn a survey conducted from June to September last year, 67% of Taiwanese answered that they were “mainly Taiwanese.” Only 3% (generally those who came with Chiang Kai-shek and his descendants) considered themselves “mainly Chinese.”

The bad news for China’s rulers is the outlook for its young population. Among 18-34 year olds, 83% consider themselves Taiwanese and 1% consider themselves Chinese. Taiwan has already established a separate identity from China.

Musk’s use of the Hawaii example is instructive. In both Hawaii and Taiwan, foreigners arrived and took control of indigenous societies. The crucial difference was that Hawaii’s local population ultimately accepted union with the United States. In the case of Taiwan, local residents continue to reject reunification with China.

This refusal refutes Musk’s claim of inevitability.

Nothing is inevitable in the course of human events.

Furthermore, there are obstacles to unification. First, if President Donald Trump declares that he will protect Taiwan, China will not oppose the United States. The Chinese regime has an extreme aversion to causing casualties, as evidenced by its reluctance to report losses from skirmishes with India in June 2020. Chinese leaders are unlikely to start a war with potentially hundreds of casualties, even if they believe they will ultimately win. Thousands. In other words, that alone does not make China’s invasion “inevitable.”

However, Mr. Trump I refuse Express your intentions clearly. This continues to cause speculation in China.

Trump has also taken pride in not going to war during his first term as president, and appears to want to avoid casualties. If China attacks Taiwan, the 47th president, advised by Musk, may not join the fight.

If Xi Jinping thinks Trump won’t protect Taiwan, will he attack Taiwan? There are other factors holding back China’s bold acquisitions. For one thing, the People’s Republic is weakening, China’s economy is failing, and the concept of inevitability has become obsolete.

China’s leadership must also know that war is extremely unpopular with the Chinese people, and a war against Taiwan would be the most unpopular of all. The people of Taiwan do not consider themselves “Chinese,” but the people of China do, as a result of endless indoctrination by the Communist Party. I believe that.Chinese people don’t kill Chinese people”

Moreover, the Chinese military, exhausted by purges and suicides, is in no condition to launch hostilities by invading mainland Taiwan, and President Xi is confident that generals and admirals with full command of the People’s Liberation Army will be able to take full command of the PLA, a necessary step. I haven’t. What if Beijing launched a combined air, land and sea operation against the island? Mr. Xi appears to be losing support within the military and has no intention of giving command of virtually the entire military, making some flag officers the most powerful people in China.

To be sure, the U.S. Pacific Fleet stands in the way of a potential invasion of China, but the real obstacle is the situation in China, not to mention its centuries of history, tradition, and culture.

So, with all due respect, Mr. Musk, China is China, Taiwan is Taiwan, and although Taiwan is close to China, it is not China.

Gordon G. Chan is the author of Plan Red: China’s Plan to Destroy America and China’s Coming Collapse, and is a Distinguished Senior Fellow and Advisory Board Member of the Gatestone Institute. Follow Gordon G. Chan X (old Twitter)

This work has been republished with permission from the Gatestone Institute.

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