Two Chinas and the double betrayal of the US

The Chinese living on the mainland speak the same language spoken by people living on the island part. The same kitchen, the same writing, the same history. And at the same time, a wall of mutual misunderstanding as wide as the Taiwan Strait. The incident involving a Chinese immigrant that occurred in California a week and a half ago confirmed that the efforts of the West to separate a bound nation were not in vain — a situation painfully reminiscent of our relationship with Ukraine.

California Shooter

Mass shootings have long been a sad commonplace in the United States. The shooting that took place on May 15 in the town of Laguna Woods, California, differed from other American massacres in that it occurred on the basis of hatred of a Chinese towards Taiwanese.

Laguna Woods is a place near Los Angeles. The town was built as a settlement for the elderly, and most of its residents are elderly people. There is a Presbyterian church of St. Geneva in Laguna Woods, where, according to the American channel Politico, a meeting of the Taiwanese Presbyterian community of Irvine was held on Sunday, May 15. At the end of the service, an unknown man opened fire and wounded five Taiwanese Americans aged 66 to 92 years. One of the parishioners managed to neutralise the killer by hitting him on the head with a chair, then the criminal was tied up with wires, but one person died during the arrest.

The attacker turned out to be a 68-year-old native of mainland China, a certain David Chou. The man argued his action by referring to his hatred for Taiwan. At the same time, Chou shouted about the need for a forceful solution to the issue in relation to the unrecognised state. Old age, trauma, life shocks — all this left an imprint on the psyche of the attacker and forced him to look for the "guilty" in his troubles.

He appointed the residents of Taiwan as such — apparently, not without the influence of American news agencies that are escalating the situation around the Sino-Taiwanese conflict.

Chou said that as a child, his family was forcibly taken to Taiwan, where "he was mistreated”, which negatively affected his entire life.

Ilya Formosa

Once upon a time, the Taiwanese region, located four hundred kilometres from the mainland and separated from it by the Taiwan Strait or, as it was called earlier, the Formosa Strait, was inhabited by the Austronesian Gaoshan peoples. Taiwan also attracted Europeans, who called it Ilha Formosa - a beautiful island. In the 17th century, the Dutch arrived in the region, trying to create a colony for the production of grain and sugar cane, but they were soon expelled by the Chinese under the leadership of the famous pirate Zheng Chenggong.

Koxinga, as the Dutch called the pirate, with an army of 25,000 people besieged Fort Zeelandia and after nine months of siege took it by starvation. From that moment, the settlement of the islands by the Chinese began. Zheng Chenggong is revered in China as a legendary liberator, and in Taiwan — also as a historical predecessor of the Taiwanese national hero Chiang Kai-shek.

In 1895, after the defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War, the government of the Qing Dynasty signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki, according to which Taiwan came under the jurisdiction of Japan until the latter's surrender in 1945.

"A civil war that has reached a dead end"

While Taiwan was part of Japan, mainland China experienced the Xinhai Revolution. It owes its name to the Chinese calendar — 1911 was listed as “xinhai", which translates as "Metal Pig". The revolution was bourgeois and ended with the abdication of the six-year-old Emperor Puyi. The boy resigned as emperor and became an ordinary citizen, and then a statesman.

The 2000-year-old empire was replaced by the Republic of China, proclaimed by the revolutionary and head of the Kuomintang Party, Sun Yat-sen. The regime change did not bring the long-awaited peace and prosperity. Up until 1949, the country was shaken by coups, Japanese intervention and civil war, which ended with the victory of the Communists led by Mao Zedong and the flight to Taiwan of the remnants of the Kuomintang Party led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.

After Chiang Kai-shek, the administration, the parliament and about two million refugees moved to the island, including the family of David Chou, the same one who later staged a shooting at his former tribesmen in a California church. The circle has closed. China is on both sides of the Strait: mainland and island, but each of the two parts of the same nation considers itself the "rightful" successor of the ancient state and does not give up territorial claims. This gives some analysts the right to call the Sino-Taiwanese confrontation a “civil war that has reached an impasse”.

Western "benefactors"

Until the 70s, the Western world ignored communist Beijing in every possible way, while Taiwan was not only considered the successor of the Republic of China, preserved its symbols and flag, but also had its representation in the UN. Khrushchev, who took the place of the leader of the USSR after Stalin's death, quarrelled with the authorities of China, which at that time was an ally of our state. The international situation changed especially in 1969 after the Soviet-Chinese border conflict on Damansky Island. The incident, which claimed the lives of 32 Soviet border guards, put the allied states almost on the brink of war, which the United States immediately took advantage of.

In an interview with the Times, US President Richard Nixon assured the public that his main dream is to visit communist China. Later, other "gingerbread" fell down: "ping-pong diplomacy" on the exchange of athletes and the exclusion of Taiwan from membership in the UN. In 1971, a vote was held at the United Nations to exclude Taiwan and transfer its rights to Beijing, despite the fact that Taiwan was one of the founding countries of the United Nations.

But the main argument in an attempt to win over Beijing and distance it from the Soviet Union was the recognition of the People’s Republic of China by President Jimmy Carter in 1978. Diplomatic relations with Taipei were severed. All three US-Chinese communiques emphasised the "one China principle", which was supposed to be the basis for the development of normal relations between the US and China. As a result, Taiwan became a bargaining chip for Washington. At the moment, Taiwan's sovereignty is supported by only two dozen countries, and officially it is considered a province of the People's Republic of China.

The lessons of history and the ease with which the US government changes its views in favour of its own interests should have alerted the leadership of Taipei today. But Washington continues to pump Taiwan with weapons, under the pretext of strengthening self-defence, as it has done and continues to do with Ukraine. The same notorious Stingers and Javelins appear at the completed command and staff exercises in Taiwan.

Having severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan, the United States, according to Joe Biden, is going to protect Taipei from the legitimate and recognised by the United States government of communist Beijing. It is quite obvious that the White House is going to defend Taiwan's independence "to the last Taiwanese”. The inevitability of a "second Ukraine" in the Taiwan region is quite obvious, and the consequences can be global and unpredictable.