The majority of Chinese want to see a united China
Re: “Let the Taiwanese people vote on becoming part of China”, Have Your Say, January 4.
The writer asked a kindergarten question why Taiwan should not be a sovereign country like Japan, the Philippines or Indonesia. His argument that Taiwan, as an isolated island, is not geographically connected to the continent or mainland and hence is not a part of China is nonsense. Look at Phuket and Samui, they are both islands in Thai territory.
Taiwan has been a part of China and under its administration since the third century, as recorded in written history.
From the 1950s to ’60s, Chiang Kai-shek, then president of the Republic of China who had fled from the mainland to Taiwan, announced each New Year’s day that his government would launch a counter-attack during that year to recapture the mainland from the Communists. Those were the old lines. In a New Year speech given by China’s President Xi Jinping a few days ago he emphasised that Taiwan has to be united eventually with mainland China. This is no longer an old line. As China becomes stronger, both economically and militarily, any outside force, especially that of the US, that wants to separate Taiwan from the mainland will fail.
The question is not whether the Taiwanese people can choose between unification or independence, it is whether the 14 billion Chinese in China will allow their fellow Chinese in Taiwan to be separated from the mainland!
The majority of Chinese would want to see the unification of China during their lifetime. For those Chinese instilled with a deep sense of Chinese culture – whether they believe in communism, socialism or capitalism is irrelevant – their determination to see a united China in the 21st century will not be easily deterred.
Yingwai Suchaovanich
