Letter From Taiwan

Let us consider the status—nay, the meaning of Taiwan. The Portuguese used to call it Formosa, the beautiful isle; as a province of China its name is Taiwan. It is the seat of Chiang Kai-shek’s government, probably the one government in the world whose image is worst distorted by the prejudices even of friendly nations. It is the government of the Republic of China, but ever since the mainland was occupied by a Communist regime we seem to have developed a habit of looking on Chiang’s government as a merely local junta ruling a Pacific island. This habit stems from comparing numbers: the 600-700 million on the mainland v. the fourteen million on the island. What is more, our prejudices tend to depict Chiang’s government as politically somewhat distasteful. “He has not held elections on Taiwan, has he; and there are rumors of discontent of the local population under the rule of the group that came from the mainland. . .” Such ideas often give us a sense of embarrassment about someone who all the same is on our side.

How far such prejudices are from reality! How utterly they miss the nature and political significance of this government-in-extremis. For a government-in-extremis it is, not in extremis in the sense of the last moments of a human life, but in extremis of Chinese territory. Chiang’s government is the non-Communist legitimate government of the whole of China, of which Taiwan is a province, and so it is not the government of that island which is under a provincial administration. It represents a great and ancient country, in which it has been pushed back but not crushed by a civil war enemy and now remains ensconced in the corner of the country, just like Menendez Pelayo, the last Christian king in Spain, was pushed back by the Moslem invaders, into the mountain fastness of Asturias, where he made his stand and from where the reconquest of Spain began. A similar occurrence took place in Chinese history: one of its dynasties lost all its cities to a rebellious force, all but one, named Chu, where the ruler’s general held out and from where he gradually recovered all that was lost. “Remember what happened at Chu” is the proud slogan of the defenders of Quemoy, the offshore island.

GN

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Gerhart Niemeyer

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Let us consider the status—nay, the meaning of Taiwan. The Portuguese used to call it Formosa, the beautiful isle; as a province of China its name is Taiwan. It is the seat of Chiang Kai-shek’s government, probably the one government in the world whose image is worst distorted by the prejudices even of friendly nations. It is the government of the Republic of China, but ever since the mainland was occupied by a Communist regime we seem to have developed a habit of looking on Chiang’s government as a merely local junta ruling a Pacific island. This habit stems from comparing numbers: the 600-700 million on the mainland v. the fourteen million on the island. What is more, our prejudices tend to depict Chiang’s government as politically somewhat distasteful. “He has not held elections on Taiwan, has he; and there are rumors of discontent of the local population under the rule of the group that came from the mainland. . .” Such ideas often give us a sense of embarrassment about someone who all the same is on our side.

How far such prejudices are from reality! How utterly they miss the nature and political significance of this government-in-extremis. For a government-in-extremis it is, not in extremis in the sense of the last moments of a human life, but in extremis of Chinese territory. Chiang’s government is the non-Communist legitimate government of the whole of China, of which Taiwan is a province, and so it is not the government of that island which is under a provincial administration. It represents a great and ancient country, in which it has been pushed back but not crushed by a civil war enemy and now remains ensconced in the corner of the country, just like Menendez Pelayo, the last Christian king in Spain, was pushed back by the Moslem invaders, into the mountain fastness of Asturias, where he made his stand and from where the reconquest of Spain began. A similar occurrence took place in Chinese history: one of its dynasties lost all its cities to a rebellious force, all but one, named Chu, where the ruler’s general held out and from where he gradually recovered all that was lost. “Remember what happened at Chu” is the proud slogan of the defenders of Quemoy, the offshore island.