By Eva Cheng
Are the people of Taiwan entitled to determine their own political future, particularly whether or not to reintegrate with China? This question was sharply posed by Beijing's intimidating military measures last year and its threatening exercises at the time of the recent Taiwanese presidential election.
The Chinese government has been clearly annoyed by Taipei's moves in recent years to strengthen it international recognition, which Beijing takes as steps towards political independence and a serious challenge to its claim of sovereignty over the island. Since coming to power in 1949, the Communist Party of China has maintained its claims over Taiwan, which came under the rule of the Kuomintang (KMT) in 1945 with the backing of the US-led allied forces.
Beijing put resolution of the Taiwan question on the back burner for some years, but reactivated the claim after the US government last June approved a visit by Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui to the US. Beijing saw that as a breach of Washington's 1979 agreement with Beijing not to recognise Taiwan diplomatically.
Though directed on the surface at the government in Taipei, Beijing's threats are clearly aimed also at curbing the growth of the opposition pro-independence movement, which has increased its open activities in Taiwan in the last few years. Ironically, Beijing's actions seem to have fostered a greater rejection of any form of political reintegration with China.
KMT pillage
The independence movement experienced significant growth in the late 1940s, following the KMT's massive looting of the island and large-scale massacres of the Taiwanese people. The latter took place over months, in 1947, with estimated deaths no less than 20,000 in a population of about 5 million.
Organised looting was carried out by the KMT's 30,000 troops, who drained the island of most conceivable supplies — from military and industrial supplies and grain to fertilisers and matches. Most of the booty was shipped to Shanghai, the KMT drafting most military and garbage trucks to carry loot to the ports (leaving garbage piled high in the streets).
Industrial machinery was also pillaged, slashing production and causing widespread unemployment. Hospital equipment, plumbing facilities, rail tracks, communications lines and equipment were ripped out and shipped off, some just as scrap metal. Petty theft and confiscation of private household property were extensive. Artificial shortages boosted inflation. The public health system broke down, leading to a return of cholera, tuberculosis and plagues in epidemic proportions.
To the people then, the KMT represented the mainland, towards which they developed a strong hatred. The independence movement then aimed to rid Taiwan of the KMT. (The KMT has ruled Taiwan since, with Washington's military and economic support, marginally relaxing its repression since the late 1980s.)
But Beijing's repressive rule is now what is feared. This widespread sentiment seems to have boosted support for the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) formed — initially illegally — in 1986. It has become the biggest opposition party.
In the short term, the KMT and its US sponsors are reaping political benefits from popular fears of the prospect of coming under Beijing's rule. Such concerns obscure the fundamental problems of class oppression and US economic domination in Taiwan, and foster a false sense of cohesion among classes with opposing interests.
With a perspective confined mainly to making class oppression more tolerable in Taiwan, the DPP is limited in its ability to address these crucial issues effectively.
Confusion has intensified over whether China has a legitimate claim over Taiwan and whether the Taiwanese population has to resign itself to reaccepting mainland rule, given the "inviolable" facts that Taiwan had been ruled by China for most of recent centuries, and that its population is predominantly Chinese ethnically and speaks one type or another of the Chinese language.
Separate nationality
However, the Taiwanese people are a distinct nationality. They have been subjected to oppression by other nationalities, and there is a desire among sections of them to end this relationship of oppression.
The people in Taiwan evolved into a distinct nationality based on a shared framework of material existence over an extended period: a common territory which facilitated the development of a common economy, enhanced by a common language and culture.
Except for some aboriginal people, who account for a tiny percentage of the population, most of the people on Taiwan came originally from China, mainly over the last six centuries. A significant influx took place during the 1600s: when the Ming dynasty was collapsing, remnants of it held on to Taiwan as a base (ending nearly four decades of Dutch rule). It was later conquered by the Ching emperors.
The latter surrendered Taiwan to Japan in 1895 after losing a war over Korea; Japan's colonial rule did not end until 1945. Another major influx from the mainland took place in the second half of the 1940s. The KMT took control of Taiwan and in 1949 shifted its entire base there as the Communist forces triumphed on the mainland.
For no extended period has Taiwan been an integral part of the mainland economy. Chinese descendants in Taiwan today have ceased to be part of the Chinese nationality in much the same way as British descendants in North America stopped being part of the British nationality despite the "blood" connection and the common language.
The brutality of KMT rule after 1945, especially in the first two years, decisively and swiftly killed what appeared to be a general excitement in Taiwan at being part of China again.
Self-determination
The aspiration for national self-determination in Taiwan should be supported to the extent that this movement contributes to the elimination of the ultimate cause of such oppression — class oppression. In the current phase of capitalist development, capital owners need to increase profits through production that cuts across state boundaries. This is often achieved on the basis of one or more nationalities oppressing others.
But a fetish of nationality differences does not help to end class oppression. There is also no reason why each nationality must set up its own state. Different nationalities can and do exist in the same state, which is not necessarily a disadvantage to the people.
Formation of its own state was crucial to the ruling class in the early days of the capitalist system to define and consolidate its sphere of control — its market. The state remains a concentrated expression of the power of a class. Working people, on the other hand, have a common fundamental interest with counterparts in other states to end this sophisticated system of cross-border class oppression, of imperialist domination.
But working people's understanding of the actual dynamics of class oppression and clarity about where their interests really lie often come about only through collective action in defending their interests. The struggle for national self-determination can be very useful in bringing this process about, notwithstanding the efforts of the ruling class in the oppressed nations to mislead working people of the same country that they are on the same side of the fence.
Such an attempt is now being made by the ruling class in Taiwan, but it is not yet determined what changes a struggle for national self-determination may bring to the consciousness of the working people. Provided the working people mobilise and organise independently, consciously not identifying with the ruling interests, the struggle for national self-determination can go a long way in bringing about the elimination of their class oppression.
The people on the mainland have their own pressing struggle against the Beijing bureaucracy, which, in recent years, has resorted to consolidating its rule through reintroducing capitalist exploitation, in part through collaboration with Taiwanese capital. The new rich, coming primarily from the bureaucracy itself, have new common ground to engage in "strategic" collaboration with the ruling class in Taiwan.
These developments and their historical links place the people of Taiwan and the mainland in a strategic position to be one another's partners in bringing about their own liberation.