China’s tor­tu­ous case for tak­ing con­trol of Taiwan

Bi Haibo, min­is­ter coun­sel­lor of the Chinese embassy in Lon­don, makes a tor­tu­ous case (“‘Advoc­at­ing inde­pend­ence for Taiwan is irre­spons­ible’”, Let­ters, Janu­ary 19) that the People’s Repub­lic of China should impose its will over Taiwan based on the his­tory of the 3rd, 7th and 17th cen­tur­ies.

By that argu­ment Eng­land might reas­on­ably be the prop­erty of the Itali­ans, Danes or French. Cer­tainly Ire­land should be the prop­erty of the Eng­lish and Greece the prop­erty of Tur­key.

But time moves on.

The People’s Repub­lic rightly decries the injustice of for­eign (European) powers impos­ing their will by force over China in the 19th cen­tury.

Since then China and other peoples have fought to ensure that gov­ern­ment has the con­sent of the pop­u­la­tion. Unless China can win the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese then a force­able seizure of Taiwan by China would be as mor­ally despic­able as the colo­ni­al­ists’ “unequal” treat­ies.

Charles Palmer
Auck­land, New Zea­l­and