TOKYO, March 8, 2023—Over the past several years, particularly the recent short months, global media have been flooded with news about China’s increasing bellicose attitudes toward its neighboring countries and the United States. China is rapidly spreading its naval fleets in the East and South China seas, reports said, warning that when its defense fault lines are secured, Beijing would invade Taiwan to end the one county two system policy, forcing the democratic island into a Chinese autocratic region and exposing 23.5 million Taiwanese under oppressive regime and destabilizing the regional security. Maybe so but reports on how do Taiwanese people see the situation are not equated and found nowhere in the western media.
The fact of the matter is that Taiwanese bear fondness toward the people across the Taiwan Strait, a strip bordering the East and South China seas less than 100 miles apart between the island and China. Which is hardly a surprise if one traces Taiwan’s history: It was in 1949 when the Kuamintang (KMT) military, which had ruled the entire Chinese continent, fled to the island after being defeated by Mao Zedong’s communist forces.
Priding themselves as the bona fide Chinese military, many of the 170,000-personnelTaiwanese military are opposed to Taiwan’s independence as they have close relatives in China. As many as 9/10th of the Taiwan military leadership are known to go to China to work after retirement, transferring Taiwan military technology, organization information to the Chinese government. Early 2023, four senior Taiwan military officers were arrested for passing on classified information to China. And it was only a small incident among numerous similar incidents.
Taiwan fishing near Senkaku
Dozens of Taiwanese fishing boats are operating around Japan’s Senkaku Islands everyday for years, but as Chinese patrol ships cruise inside or near Japan’s exclusive economic waters daily, Taiwanese are resonating with the Chinese in claiming that the islands are part of Taiwan. In fact, Taiwan president Tsai Ingwen has made that claim.
Japanese businesses paid homage to China
As tension between Japan and China rises corresponding to Tokyo’s collaboration with the United States over the Taiwan issue, Japanese business leaders rarely visit China now, but until the early 2010s, the business lobby Keidanren often did so, and before then they sent a large trade mission annually to the Chinese government leadership to ‘make donations’ of cheap financing and high technologies. Even in the current condition, Japanese business leaders would express ‘love for China.’.
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Insight Into the Future