Perhaps some Americans have heard about Taiwan as a hot topic today from the headlines of the mass media, but few know the history and real issues of Taiwan. In this article, the author shall give the readers an analysis of Taiwan’s past, present, and future.

The Taiwan issue is a historical Chinese political problem created by the invasion of Imperialist Japan in China (Sino-Japanese War, 1893-1895). Japan defeated China and occupied Taiwan as a colony and its victory trophy. The Chinese people vowed to reunite Taiwan for however long it will take. After taking over Taiwan, Japan’s ambition of conquering a weak China was boasted and thus continued its aggression towards China. The Chinese people rose and toppled the corrupt Qing Government, and it was led by Sun Yat Sen. This did not deter the Japanese ambition; Japan accelerated its all-out plan to conquer the entire China. Consequently, Japan forced China to give up the Korean Peninsula and some northwest Chinese provinces. The Japanese further aggressively created 满洲国 Manchuria as its controlling puppet state.

Japan, not satisfied with its ambition, secretly established a plan to conquer the entire China and then Southeast Asia and the whole of Asia. It was estimated that it could defeat China in six months with its superior military, making China surrender. Japan started the all-out war in 1931 in China, but Japan was wrong in its expectation, the Chinese people united and fought the Japanese army with everything they got to the death. The Chinese fought for 14 years, not only stopping the Japanese from conquering Asia but also destroying its Axis alliance’s plot to win WWII. Everyone remembers the atomic bomb; the truth is that Japan was exhausted by the Chinese army in its occupied territories. The atomic bomb might have shortened WWII by months or years, but Japan’s surrender was inevitable, like a tiger being choked out of breath by a dragon.

The ending of WWII with Japan’s unconditional surrender to the U.S., U.K., China, and the Soviet Union resulted in returning Taiwan to China, which did give China and Taiwan a brief reunion while China was governed under the Republic of China’s Kuomintang (KMT) party. Unfortunately, China after WWII was in disorder, with many warlords controlling many local parts. In addition, under the influence of the Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rose and started a national revolution. CCP started from the grassroots with peasants’ support and eventually defeated the KMT government. KMT retreated to Taiwan. In 1949, the CCP established the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Thus, the Taiwan Strait was separated as two opposing political entities, each claiming to represent the entire China, each pursuing economic development but maintaining the position to eventually defeat the other.

Diplomatically, ROC was supported by the U.S. all along, and PRC was backed by the Soviet Union till the late 1950s. China wanted more freedom to pursue its national building, while Soviet aid was tied with strings. In 1960, the Soviet Union suddenly pulled back all its aid personnel, thinking this punishment would keep China forever in an underdevelopment status, thus China broke its relationship with the Soviet struggling on its own in economic development. Taiwan, on the other hand, benefited from the Korean War as a supplier to the U.S. Its economy rapidly improved. Politically, however, its goal of taking back mainland China is weakening and is not encouraged by the U.S. for its interests. On October 25, 1971, the U.N. passed resolution 2758, recognizing the PRC as the sole representative of all of China. In the meantime, the U.S., seeing the handwriting on the wall, secretly adopted a strategy to woo China into its camp to rival the Soviet Union (Kissinger-Nixon China policy).

The UN resolution is a turning point, and China began to interact with the West, learning about industrialization and the world economy. While Taiwan is fast developing becoming a little dragon of the Asian four little dragons and more Americanized in social development, China was humble in learning, diligently working, and figuring out its development path using its painfully developed five-year economic development plan, making progress every five years. Throughout 1984 to 2007, China maintained a double-digit growth in GDP with three dips affected by the Tiananmen event and the world economic crisis. Thus, China’s economic development has surpassed Taiwan’s. Today, Taiwan’s trade has 40% dependency on the mainland, and China has become the world’s manufacturer and the number one trading partner of over 120 countries.

Projecting Taiwan’s future, many political commentators have taken different perspectives to analyze this issue with background logic in three themes: one is U.S.-China relations, the second is China’s resolve in taking Taiwan by force, and the third is the Taiwanese people’s democratic ideology. The author will predict Taiwan’s future after analyzing the above three perspectives in reverse order. Taiwan’s political ideology in democracy has only a few decades of history, far from being mature. Its current political government’s behavior and people’s reaction have shown that there is no strong or firm ideology except believing in the one person one vote concept (OPOV), but OPOV is only one of many tools of democracy. The meaning of majority rules over minority elections is to elect capable people; voters must be educated and learned about each election, and the art of compromising among the political parties is all absent in Taiwan’s democracy (Some even absent in the U.S. democracy).

The Taiwanese people had no clue about ideology until they learned the meaning of a political party, for example, the CCP has 96 million rigorous party members, 1/14 of the Chinese population is a CCP member. (excluding children, almost one in three or four families). Don’t they represent the people’s opinion? The party’s grassroots opinion gathering consensus upward through the party’s democratic system surely represents people’s wishes (the majority) for the good of the whole country. So the Hong Kong governing system works under CCP guidance, Macaw works as well, and so will the Taiwan system. Taiwan’s future will not depend on the Taiwanese people‘s ideology.

China will never use force to take over Taiwan; she will not rule it out, to prevent Taiwan or any foreign influences from doing stupid things such as trying to declare Taiwan a separate nation. Taiwan, as an economic entity, has been a model to China; now its GDP is ranked below nine provinces of China (2023 figure) only comparable with the city of Shanghai. Now, Taiwan is serving as a stimulating model for other provinces to catch up. So Taiwan can rest for sure it will not become Ukraine unless the people are stupid enough to keep a political leader behaving like a puppy dog to blindly follow the current US anti-China foreign policy.

Now let’s consider the U.S. -China relations, which appear to be complicated, especially when the U.S. political system elected a leader who is an authoritarian, spending no effort in healing party rivalry or developing a sensible foreign policy, being realistic, future-looking, and beneficial to the long-term interests of the American people. America’s bipartisan system has become a rival entity only interested in power. The Taiwan issue may or may not be resolved by the mood of the U.S.-China relations, but the trend is clear with China’s steady growth and increasing influence on the world stage. The reunion of the Taiwan Strait is getting closer, possibly by a public resolution by the Taiwan people, triggered by a domestic political event or an international event, or the Taiwan people waking up to reality and forgetting their false fear brainwashed by the past. This is the best outcome and most likely outcome!