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Correction: The description of this article has been updated further, as it should reflect Lai Ching-te’s stance on Taiwan independence.
Taiwan has a new president in Lai Ching-te, who took office last weekend. In the past, he has called himself a “Taiwan independence politician” — comments that infuriate Beijing, which sees the island as a breakaway province that wants to be reunified with Taiwan. President Biden has pledged to protect Taiwan, making it a potential flashpoint between the United States and China. Nick Schifrin reports.
Note: Transcripts are generated through machines and humans and are modified for accuracy. They would possibly involve mistakes.
Geoff Bennett:
Today, Taiwan’s lawmakers clashed in parliament, a day after the island swore in its new president.
Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway province and accuses Lai Ching-te, known as William Lai, of defending Taiwan’s independence. Lai promises the quo.
Nick Schifrin returns to the tension and history between Beijing and Taipei.
Nick Schifrin:
In downtown Taipei, pomp, dancing and an F-16 flyover to Beijing to back up.
Lai Ching-te, President of Taiwan (through an interpreter):
I want to call on China to stop its political and military intimidation against Taiwan and for the world to be free of war.
Nick Schifrin:
Lai Ching-te, known as William Lai, is the eighth democratically elected president of Taiwan, officially known as the Republic of China. His inauguration message: Taiwanese democracy is here to stay.
Lai Ching-te (through an interpreter):
I hope that China will face the truth of the ROC’s way of life and interact in cooperation with the elected legal government through the Taiwanese people.
Nick Schifrin:
But Beijing is in no mood to cooperate, claiming that Taiwan’s legal government is the People’s Communist Republic of China.
Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (through an interpreter):
Taiwan’s independence is a dead end. Accepting Taiwan’s independence is doomed to failure, and no outside force can impede the historic momentum of China’s unification.
Nick Schifrin:
Did the People’s Republic of China ever have Taiwan?
Sulmaan Khan, Professor of International History and Chinese Foreign Affairs, Tufts University: Of course not. It has controlled Taiwan.
Nick Schifrin:
Sulmaan Khan is a professor of foreign history and Chinese foreign relations at Tufts University and a professor of “The Struggle for Taiwan: A History of America, China, and the Trapped Island. “
In pre-modern times, Taiwan was a separate stopover for sea travelers.
Sulmaan Khan:
Let’s say you’re a pirate, fisherman, or merchant and you sail from Southeast Asia to East Asia. You would avoid getting to Taiwan.
Nick Schifrin:
In the 17th century, the Qing Empire conquered the island and in 1895 ceded it to Japan until World War II.
Narrator:
Today, communist leader Mao Zedong is victory after victory.
Nick Schifrin:
In the Chinese Civil War of the 1940s, Mao Zedong and his communists defeated the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek.
Narrator:
Escaping by sea from Communist China, some remnants of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist army.
Nick Schifrin:
In 1949, Nationalist troops fled the mainland to the island then called Formosa.
Narrator:
At the Government House, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.
Nick Schifrin:
Chiang was the dictator of Taiwan and had his own dream: to reconquer the communist mainland. After that, Mao would no longer tolerate Taiwan’s self-determination.
Sulmaan Khan:
The purpose of the civil war shifts from keeping Mao’s small piece of China to absolutely exterminating Chiang Kai-shek in a combination of anger, more than anything.
And its withdrawal from Taiwan means that Taiwan will have to be part of China, especially since Chiang Kai-shek still intends to regain the entire mainland. This has a decent magnitude. It is a fanaticism that took hold in the 1950s, and the quest for the liberation of Taiwan is inscribed in the soul of everyone in China, to such an extent that it is difficult to move away from this plan.
Nick Schifrin:
He says PRC President Xi Jinping’s self-proclaimed dream of reunification is more about emotion than history.
Sulmaan Khan:
If you take a look at Xi’s policy toward Taiwan, you see that it is calculated to alienate the population there, but these are policies that arise from a position of bitter suffering. And bitter wounds admit neither rational negotiation nor ancient reflection.
Nick Schifrin:
Then, decades later, today’s China has new ammunition to fuel its dream. China is putting increased military pressure on Taiwan with unprecedented election interference, cyberattacks, and disinformation such as deepfakes.
It is the genuine Lai of the left, the manipulated Lai of the right. And as Beijing has become more aggressive, Taiwanese have realized that they are different.
Sulmaan Khan:
In many ways, China has sharpened the sense of independence that already existed in Taiwan, but it is more pronounced, outspoken and proud of itself than before.
Nick Schifrin:
This pride is now connected to democracy. Lai continues the legacy of fellow Democratic Progressive Party chairman Tsai Ing-wen, a quarter of a century after Taiwan’s first relaxed presidential election.
Sulmaan Khan:
We are a democracy, not a Chinese democracy, especially young people would point this out to you. We are a democracy, period, and that makes us different.
As you go through the democratic process and continue to build a successful transition of force on top of a successful transition of force, that sense of pride grows, that sense that we have created something here that is precarious, fragile, but worth protecting.
Nick Schifrin:
Even if this democracy is messy, as it was today in parliament, Lai inherits a divided government, but an island that is united almost to be part of China.
For “PBS NewsHour,” my name is Nick Schifrin.
As deputy director of foreign affairs and defense at PBS NewsHour, Dan plays a key role helping to oversee and produce the show’s foreign affairs and advocacy stories. His articles broke new ground on a range of military issues, revealing debates that were simmering. the public eye.
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