Taiwan is not (and has never been, not even for a day) a part of the People's Republic of China. Period. On that same note, the People's Republic of China is not a part of Taiwan. Period. Perhaps that's easier to understand.
Recently, the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party in China concluded with a reshuffling and an election of new leaders to China's powerful ruling elite, and the predictable trumpet-tooting nationalistic message, somehow, "the Taiwan issue is an internal issue," was reiterated once again. Of course in his closing remarks, President Hu Jintao also mentioned China's movement "towards democracy" - a democracy with one party and a democracy like that in Hong Kong, where leaders are ceremoniously voted for by the people but ultimately chosen by the Party itself.
Perhaps a definition of democracy is what China is really seeking, and it need only to look towards its neighbor across the Taiwan Strait to understand what democracy is. Emerging from one of the world's longest periods of martial law, Taiwan has peacefully transitioned from a country where speaking Taiwanese meant imprisonment, to a fully-democratic country which today reaches out through humanitarianism to the far reaches of the world. Further, Taiwan does this even though it is subject to China's bullying every day: because of China's veto power, there is no United Nations or World Health Organization membership for Taiwan, whereas other countries like North Korea and Sudan, whose modern day atrocities are well-documented, have been members of these organizations for years.
Taiwan controls its own military, runs its own democratic politics, has its own laws, culture, language and history for its 23 million citizens, maintains its own diplomatic relations with countries, and just as America is its own country, no external country controls any of the aforementioned components of Taiwan. How does China still have the nerve to say that Taiwan is a part of China, or that Taiwan is an "internal affair?" This is the rhetoric that has been piled upon Taiwan in an attempt to bury the emergence of democracy on a tiny island nation where many of its inhabitants still remember being unable to speak their native tongue for fear of arrest. These are the citizens of a country that refused to let democracy fall even when during its first democratic elections, China fired missiles into Taiwan's commercial ports in an attempt to intimidate the citizens of Taiwan. And of course, the Chinese are wont to remind the people of Taiwan that the number of ballistic missiles pointed at Taiwan increases every day with a recent count at nearly 1,000. To Taiwanese people, that's 1,000 missiles pointed at our parents, our grandparents, our cousins, and our friends.
So let us choose for ourselves. Let us, our parents, our friends and our grandparents choose. The Taiwan issue has long been overshadowed by China's insistence and propaganda that it is an internal affair to be decided by the Chinese. Let the people of a country that stands up to China determine their own place in the international community, free of Chinese missiles and China's doublespeak that tries to force and seduce blind eyes over the world. And let the United States, in true form, uphold its values and support the successful democracy that is Taiwan, instead of appeasing China and feeding the fantasy of the PRC-Emperor's new clothes. Just because the Communist Party continues to say Hong Kong "has retained" its democratic freedoms under the "One Country, Two Systems" policy, does not make it so. Just because the Communist Party says the next reincarnate of the Dalai Lama must be approved by the PRC, does not make it so. Just because the Communist Party says that the Falun Gong is an evil, harmful religion deserving of persecution, does not make it so. Just because the Communist Party still insists the Tiananmen "incident" was not a massacre of its own citizens but an overblown uprising instigated by students, does not make it so.
To any logical mind holding the true facts, Taiwan is absolutely no "internal affair" of the PRC Communist Party, so let us all speak out against the fallacies of regurgitated rhetoric like Demafeliz's, and ensure that Taiwan does not end up a character in China's fictional fantasy.
Rich Hsieh '03, Johnny Lin '10, Sara Lin '03, Peter Chai '06 MD '10, Abraham Young '05 and Zoe Tseng '06 co-authored this column.
