This is island Taiwan, its political situation is bit... complicated. A slightly oversimplified
way of looking at it, would be that Taiwan is either its own independent country...
or part of China.
But the reason that’s oversimplified is because Taiwan isn’t a separatist movement.
Taiwan doesn’t want to secede from China… because from Taiwan’s perspective...
they ARE China. Well, at least constitutionally anyway.
Taiwan’s official name is: the Republic of China. Whereas the country that’s generally
referred to as China is: the PEOPLE’S Republic of China.
To fully understand the situation we need to go back to the end of the 19th century
when the last imperial dynasty governed China - the Qing Dynasty.
The Qing Dynasty encompassed all of what is modern-day China, Taiwan, and Mongolia, as
well as parts of several other bordering nations.
In 1894 began the First Sino-Japanese War between the Qing Dynasty and the Japanese
Empire, which primarily took place in Korea and Taiwan.
At the time, Korea was governed by the Joseon Dynasty, which was a client state of the Qing Dynasty.
The war ended just one year later with a decisive Japanese victory which resulted in the island
of Taiwan being annexed to the Japanese empire. The war also brought an end to the Joseon
Dynasty in Korea and guaranteed their complete independence from China. Japan officially
annexed the Korean peninsula in 1910.
In 1912, after millennia of imperial rule in China, the monarchy was overthrown and
the first Chinese republic was established: the Republic of China. Sun Yat-sen was made
provisional president in Nanjing, but Yuan Shikai had already assumed power in Beijing
because he was in command of the Beiyang Army, the largest military in the nation. So to
avoid conflict, Sun agreed to accept Yuan as president. As president however, he abused
his power which led to a failed revolution in which Sun fled to Japan.
As president, Yuan dissolved the Chinese Nationalist Party, and in 1915,
declared himself as Emperor of China, as he attempted to restore the monarchy.
His death one year later began what became known as the Warlord Era in Chinese history
as the country became fragmented into different factions.
In 1917, Sun Yat-sen, generally considered the founder of the Republic of China, returned
from exile to re-establish the republic. He revived his nationalist party, under the name
of Kuomintang. The government was established in the south of the country, as the north
was dominated by warlords and the imperial Beiyang Army.
Sun Yat-sen wanted to unite the country under one government. However, he lacked the military
power to take on the warlords. After help from the West was refused, assistance came
from the Soviet Union. In exchange for their military assistance, they asked that the Kuomintang
cooperate and ally with the much smaller Chinese Communist Party.
The Warlord Era came to an end with a two-year military campaign called the Northern Expedition.
However, before this military campaign was complete, the alliance between the nationalists
and the communists began to fall apart after the death of Sun Yat-sen in 1925.
The Kuomintang party split into two separate right- and left-leaning factions. With the
left-leaning faction moved its capital to Wuhan. The original, right-leaning Kuomintang
party, now led by Chiang Kai-shek, took control of Nanjing, and declared it their capital.
The Chiang nationalists, sought to purge the communists among their ranks, and in April
of 1927, in what became known as the Shanghai Massacre, thousands of communists were executed
by nationalist forces.
The left-leaning Kuomintang faction which broke away, also began executing communists,
and the party ultimately collapsed, leaving the original party as the sole legitimate
government of China.
The execution of communists ended their alliance with the Soviet Union and led to the start
of the Chinese Civil War between the Nationalists and the Communists.
The war began in August of 1927, with the Nanchang Uprising, and founding of the
"Red Army”, the army of the Communist Party, with Mao Zedong as commander-in-chief.
4 years later, in 1931, with the civil war still ongoing, the Empire of Japan sought
to use the war as an opportunity to expand their sphere of influence by invading China.
The Japanese Imperial Army invaded the east coast of China and occupied Manchuria, as
well as other nearby lands. Japan installed their own puppet government and fighting continued,
although didn’t escalate into all-out war between the two nations...
until 1937, when it did.
Now, since the initial invasion back in 1931, the civil war in China had continued. Many nationalists
had called for a temporary truce with the communists to defend China against the Japanese.
However, Chiang Kai-shek, the Kuomintang leader, refused,
and he wanted to continue the war against the communists.
This changed in 1936 when he was kidnapped by one of his own commanders, who forced him
to agree to a military alliance with the communists as they fought Japan, their common enemy.
The Second Sino-Japanese War escalated as Japan pushed into the Chinese capital of Nanjing,
and massacred tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers.
In 1941, with World War II ongoing, Japan carried out a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
At this point, the United States were not at war with anyone, but the Japanese launched
the strike to try and prevent the US from interfering with their wars in the Pacific.
The attack caused immediate declaration of war by the United States. American involvement
in the war would ultimately lead to what ended World War II in the Pacific Theatre.
In July of 1945, in the Potsdam Declaration, the Allied forces called for Japan’s “unconditional surrender”.
In August of 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Just days later, the Japanese accepted the terms of the surrender.
Part of the surrender agreement included that Japan return sovereignty of all lands that
they had gained through warfare. However, this didn’t just include territory they
had gained during World War II, this included their annexations of Korea and Taiwan several
decades earlier.
So the island of Taiwan, taken from the Qing Dynasty by Japan in 1895, was to be returned
to China.
After the war with Japan was over, the Chinese Civil War started up again in 1946. The nationalists
and communists only ever had a very loose alliance against the Japanese, and the fighting
never completely stopped. The Soviet Union backed the communists while
the United States backed the nationalists, in what were the early years of the Cold War.
Despite having a superior number of soldiers and equipment, the Chinese Civil War was decisively
won by the communists as they captured more and more land, pushing the nationalists further
and further back until 1949 when the Kuomintang government retreated to the island of Taiwan.
This effectively ended the civil war, although no official peace treaty was ever signed.
Later that year, the Communist Party proclaimed the People’s Republic of China. Meanwhile,
the Kuomintang government, the Republic of China, and the still internationally recognised
government of China, was exiled to the island of Taiwan.
Over the course of the next few decades, international recognition began to shift from the Republic of China
to the People’s Republic of China, and in 1971,
with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758
the People’s Republic of China were recognised as the legitimate government of China.
Although the United States had voted against the resolution, the US broke off diplomatic
ties with the ROC in 1979. The same year, the PRC attempted to open up comminution with
the ROC, with a proposal known as the “Three Links”. This however, was completely rejected
by the ROC, who responded by adopting the “Three Noes” policy: no contact, no compromise
and no negotiation.
This policy however, had to be revised in 1986, when a China Airlines 747 aircraft was
hijacked by an ROC pilot, when he changed its course to Guangdong, and defected to the
PRC. This forced the ROC and the PRC to communicate with each other.
In 1992, the two governments met, coming to an agreement that was known as the “1992
Consensus”. The consensus being that both sides adhere to the One China Policy. The
One China Policy is the belief that there is only one China, and that Taiwan is part
of China. However, both sides see themselves as the legitimate government of China. Both
sides of the Taiwan strait agreed that Chinese Unification was the eventual goal and that
the current situation was only temporary.
Before the 1990s, Taiwan had been a one-party state, with the Kuomintang party as the government.
In 1996, Taiwan had its first presidential election,
although the Kuomintang stayed in power.
However, in the year 2000, the Democratic Progressive Party were elected into government,
and today are the more dominant party, having won the 2016 election. The DPP do NOT agree
with the One China Policy and reject the 1992 Consensus. They also not do support Chinese
Unification and strongly support the idea of a Taiwanese identity. The DPP believe that
Taiwan already is its own independent country.
The Republic of China has a very ambiguous political status. It’s not a member of the
United Nations, and very few countries officially recognise them as a country. That being said,
many countries do have unofficial, de facto embassies in Taipei, and vice versa.
So officially at least, Taiwan is not a country, but in every practical sense of the word,
it is. They have their own government, with their own president, which has jurisdiction
over the whole island of Taiwan. They have their own military, issue their own passports,
and they even also take part in sporting events such the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup…
however, they participate under the deliberately ambiguous pseudonym of “Chinese Taipei”.
Now you might be thinking, well Taiwan quite clearly is a country, so why not just make
it official? Why not just declare independence and change their name to the Republic of Taiwan
or something like that? Well, there is support for Taiwanese independence, but it’s not
something that has a huge amount of support, and this is because of China. While many people
may support the idea in principle, in practice it’s something that can be quite dangerous
because China is hostile towards the idea of Taiwan becoming an independent nation because
according to the PRC, Taiwan is “an inseparable part of China’s territory since antiquity”
and have threatened to unify China and Taiwan by force if necessary, should Taiwan try to
pursue independence.
So unfortunately, resolving Taiwan’s political status is something that could be incredibly
difficult, or even impossible for the foreseeable future. The two ways to resolve the dispute
both seem unlikely to happen any time soon.
The first, unification. Taiwan unifies with China. This is unlikely because neither side
would be willing to give up their claim as the legitimate government of China, and after
being separating for several decades, their populations are very different people.
Second, independence. This may seem like the most practical approach to solve the dispute,
but with China being hostile to Taiwanese independence, it’s just too dangerous as
something that could be realistically considered at the moment.
So the third and most likely scenario: the status quo. In today’s geopolitical climate,
this seems like the only realistic option.
So hopefully now it’s clear why I said at the start of the video that saying Taiwan
is either its own country, or part of China, is oversimplified. It’s a much more complicated
issue than that. So obviously there’s not yes or no answer to the question
“is Taiwan a country?” because it depends on who you ask, and how you define a country etc. etc.
Taiwan has a long and complicated history that has brought about this ambiguous political
status that it has today. A political status that challenges the very meaning of the word
“country”. However, everyday life in Taiwan is generally unaffected and it operates like
any other country in the world. The people of Taiwan live their lives just like any other
people, the majority of whom consider themselves Taiwanense, and the ambiguous political status
has very little impact of their day-to-day lives.
Nevertheless, it is unfortunate that almost every other country in the world must play
along with this façade that Taiwan doesn’t exist and that the issue is generally swept
under the rug rather than being discussed or debated, simply because it’s a controversial
topic and can be uncomfortable to talk about.
Thanks for watching.