Gunners Shot

Published in The Financial Express @ https://www.financialexpress.com/business/defence-the-case-for-admitting-taiwan-into-the-un-3248439/

China recently released a new ‘Standard Map’ in which it shows Taiwan as part of the PRC. Besides the PRC’s illegal claim on Taiwan, the new map has violated the sovereignty of India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Philippines, Japan and Russia. In addition, China is expanding its ‘One China’ principle incrementally to all the areas which it has now claimed in the new map.  The ‘Nine Dash Line’ has been extended into a ‘Ten Dash Line’ with the addition of a new dash. If left unchecked, China will claim and want to occupy the entire land masses far beyond its territory and ‘One China’ will keep expanding till Tianxia is achieved. This needs to be stopped. 

In this entire narrative, Taiwan is central, critical, and important.  From a geopolitical perspective, if China is allowed to take over Taiwan either through political maneuvering or by force, it would have breached the first Island chain conclusively. Resultantly, Taiwan gives China a base from which the outsized PLAN, can foray unhindered into blue waters. Further, once Taiwan is captured the Chinese mainland becomes unassailable as China acquires greater strategic depth. This will enable communist ruled China to erode sovereignty and integrity of all nations in the Western Pacific and beyond. The geostrategic ramifications are huge.       

More importantly it is significant from the aspirational perspective of 23.6 million Taiwanese. They have been denied their basic human rights of being part of a nation and having an identity of their own. They have not been allowed to exercise a free will of their own and choose what they want to be. They do not have any representation in the comity of nations. In this context it is pertinent to examine Taiwan holistically to see if it merits a case to be accorded  an identity of its own without the shadow of PRC hanging over it. 

The independence of Taiwan is borne out by its history. In the 17th Century, Taiwan was a Dutch colony. It gained its independence briefly before being taken over by Imperial China. In 1895, after the First Sino-Japanese War, it became a Japanese colony. After Japan’s defeat in the WW2, Taiwan went under the Nationalist Government of China, which was officially titled the Republic of China (ROC). It became a founding member of the United Nations as ROC. It remained a member of UN till 1971. In 1972, Nixon cozied up to Mao and enabled the PRC to re-enter the international system from isolation. The PRC was then recognized as the official representative government of mainland China as per UN Resolution 2758 which stated… “Decides to restore all its rights to the People’s Republic of China and to recognize the representatives of its Government as the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations, and to expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all the organizations related to it”. However, the UN Resolution left many questions in limbo. It did not clarify the status of Taiwan. It also did not mention that Taiwan was part of China. Significantly it was silent on the ‘One China’ principle and really never accepted it. However, the PRC twisted its interpretation of the resolution to press for ‘One China’ to be universally followed. it is time to set this anomaly right by admitting Taiwan to the UN formally.  

Politically, the reason to treat Taiwan as an independent nation is straightforward. The CCP came to power in China in 1949. However, till 1952, Taiwan remained part of Imperial Japan. Japan ceded sovereignty over Taiwan as per the Treaty of San Francisco, which came into effect on 28 April 1952.  On the same day, the Treaty of Taipei, was signed, between Japan and the ROC. In this treaty, Japan ceded sovereignty over China (including Taiwan) to ROC and not to the PRC (CCP). The ROC government continued to rule Taiwan after the treaty. Its political descendants are governing Taiwan at present. Further, the CCP or the present government which heads the PRC, has never set foot in Taiwan to rule it in any manner even for a single day over the past seven decades. The Chinese claim that Taiwan is a historical part of PRC is false. The evidence that Taiwan is part of China is as illegal as its illegal occupation of Tibet or Xinjiang. This claim is also as perfidious as China’s other territorial and maritime claims which have been depicted in the new map. In the larger perspective, all Chinese claims are part of the CCP’s expansionist designs which are blatantly illegal. 

An examination of the political and social system in Taiwan indicates that it is a fully functional  democracy with a constitution and democratically elected leaders. In the past seven decades its political system has matured. It has a pluralistic system in which many legitimate political parties coexist. It has a free and fair electoral process that enables the people to choose between candidates from those parties. Through times,  successive Taiwanese governments have  operated openly and transparently, for the good of all their people with well laid out rules,  checks and balances. Taiwan gives its citizens free choice and control over their lives who are assured of civil liberties and personal freedoms. It has a free and independent media unhindered by government interference, influence, or intimidation. It is the total antithesis of the one man-one party dictatorship in Communist China. It is consistently ranked as one of the freest countries in the Freedom House Freedom Index, the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, and the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom. 

Taiwan’s economic growth as part of the international system has been remarkable. It is one of Asia‘s major economies and a global leader in semiconductor technology. Currently thirteen countries recognize Taiwan and around fifty-nine countries including India have established unofficial diplomatic relations with it. It has risen to be the world’s 18th largest economy and is fully integrated in world affairs. As an undisputed leader in semiconductor industry, it is key to developments associated with robotics, artificial intelligence, cyber technologies, communication, space exploration, and energy conservation. Taiwan is strategically important to the global future. Taiwan’s technological prowess is critical to the world in combating climate change whose effects are visible starkly in disasters plaguing the Chinese mainland, Pakistan, and Europe this summer. Hence, keeping Taiwan on the sidelines of global institutions is simply self-defeating. While some effort has been made to include Taiwan in global governance, the effort has been less than reasonable or fair. Taiwan, an independent nation, without a seat in the UN is a huge anomaly.

Modern day Taiwan is an economically successful and vibrant democracy whose people do not want to any part of the communist dominated PRC. Polls indicate that 87% people in Taiwan do not want to be under China. 73% people in Taiwan are willing to take up arms to defend against a Chinese invasion. The UN report on treatment of Uyghurs mentions crimes against humanity and serious human rights violations committed by China in the garb of counterterrorism. Reports indicate that millions in Xinjiang and Tibet have been detained in ‘re-education’ centers.  Conflate it with the indication given in 2022 by China’s ambassador to France of ‘re-educating’ Taiwanese when the island is reunified with mainland China. The fate of 23.6 million Taiwanese will end up like the 25 million people of Xinjiang. Will UN standby and allow it to happen?  Purely on humanitarian grounds, Taiwan needs to be admitted into UN as a member state and prevent it being usurped by China.

It is also becoming clear that if PRC cannot annex Taiwan militarily, it will destroy the nation with the might of its missiles to reduce it to rubble. That will be a human catastrophe. The danger of this scenario turning into a reality becomes higher as China continues to decline. The day when China realizes that it cannot annex Taiwan either militarily or politically, it could adopt a resort to a scorched earth policy towards Taiwan. That day must be forestalled and precluded.     

 Important nations like the USA, Japan, UK, France, Germany, EU, S Korea, Australia, India, and other regional countries must champion Taiwan’s cause to take it to the logical conclusion of granting it full membership in the UN. China objections must be taken head on and put in its place before it is too late. India understands Taiwan’s plight best since it is also a victim to Chinese machinations. It is time that India and Taiwan enhance co-operation on all fronts to stymie Chinese designs and ensure that the peaceful people of Taiwan get the status, dignity, and justice which they deserve as a progressive nation.  

Overall, it clearly emerges, Taiwan cannot be allowed to be annexed by PRC from geopolitical, geo-economic or human aspiration perspectives. 23.6 million human beings cannot be denied of their rights of being free in a modern-day world. The free world must rise to the occasion before it is too late. The UN cannot be a mute spectator to constant annexation of territory forcefully by the PRC using a “My way or the Highway” principle.