“We’ve been living with the threat of Chinese invasion for decades,” shrugs Sandy, a feisty, highly intelligent former student of mine now training to be a pilot. “We’re used to it.” And, he adds, “Taiwan is over 80 miles from the sea [from China], and rough seas, too. It’s a mountainous island with cliffs, with little accessible coastline to launch a large-scale invasion, and with today’s advanced radar…” he taps his forehead knowingly. “You could see the landing craft from miles away. It’s not like Hong Kong.”
Chinese bloody Taipei, what does it even mean?
It certainly isn’t. One of my students, Annie, moved, like a Hong Kong wave recently, from her hometown to the relative freedom of Taipei. He used to always attend the vigil, held every June 4 in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park, to remember those who lost their lives in the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. “I was one of over 100,000 people,” he tells me. recalling the last vigil she attended in 2016. “We sang songs and held lighters and candles. So moving.” She shrugs. “This year there was no one, not a soul. It is as if Tiananmen has been written out of China’s history. Taiwan is like a new hope for many Hong Kongers.” Annie mentions that she recently went to see the movie Maverick, a sequel to Tom Cruise’s 1986 blockbuster Top Gun. In the old movie, Cruise wears a jacket with the flag of Taiwan on the back. During pre-Covid publicity for Maverick, images surfaced of Cruise’s jacket with the Taiwanese flag obliterated so as not to jeopardize the film’s potential success in China. But when the film finally came out this year, the original Taiwanese flag was still in place. “I gave a little cheer when I saw the flag,” says Annie, excited at the memory. “So did some of the moviegoers. It made me so happy. It’s a shame Taiwan can’t fly its own flag at the Olympics and has to go by the name Chinese Taipei! Pah! Chinese Taipei in blood, what does that mean?” Taiwan’s future remains uncertain. It is officially recognized by only 13 countries worldwide, most of them small or remote – Guatemala, Paraguay, Haiti, the Holy See – that Taiwan has helped financially and which Beijing now wants to recapture in an effort to diminish Taiwan’s global standing. . America and Europe, although they consider Taiwan an ally and offer economic support, do not fully recognize it to avoid sparking a major conflict with China. It should be remembered that more than 400,000 Taiwanese still live and work on the mainland. A strange status quo prevails.
Taiwan ‘wants to carve its own destiny’
Earlier this year, a fascinating feature on the TV show John Oliver Tonight revealed that in extensive polls of the Taiwanese population, a tiny 1.5 percent want unification with China and about 6 percent support full independence for Taiwan . The lion’s share, however, are content to continue with the status quo, including Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s quietly defiant president, who already describes her country as independent, but without having to legally label it. When I first came to Taiwan, I couldn’t understand this seemingly stupid status quo. Now living in Taipei for two years, I totally do. The Taiwanese don’t want to be wrapped up in Beijing’s grim, restrictive clutches either. nor do they want to be manipulated as a useful pawn in the sometimes selfish power games of Western grandstanding politicians. She wants to make her own destiny. Indeed, since Portuguese sailors spotted the island in 1600 and named it Formosa (Beautiful), it has survived many transformations. Besides the long-standing indigenous communities that have been Taiwan’s most consistent presence, it has seen the Dutch, the Spanish, the Chinese (but not the Chinese Communists), the Japanese, and the Americans dominate at different times.
