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Sucked into the Chinese Civil War
By J. Michael Cole 寇謐將
Wednesday, Sep 08, 2010, Page 8
There is no knowing whether an editorial in the People’s
Daily on Friday that for all intents and purposes removed the Chinese
Nationalist Party (KMT) as the principal defender of China against Japanese
invasion during World War II was simply out-of-control Chinese nationalism, or a
more sinister attempt to blur the lines in the Taiwan Strait.
For years now, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda has played down the
KMT’s role in the war of resistance and elevated that of the communists to one
that defies the historical record, a form of revisionism that, sadly, continues
to be swallowed and reproduced by a number of Western academics, one of the
latest being Martin Jacques in his influential book When China Rules the World.
While, for reasons of historical accuracy, the CCP’s claims should be countered
with factual information (in many instances, CCP forces avoided directly
confronting the Japanese, preserving their strength and weapons for the
continuation of the Chinese Civil War after the war), the editorial comes at an
odd moment in cross-strait relations, at a time when we would expect Beijing to
play nice with the KMT as it gets ever closer to accomplishing the annexation it
has long coveted.
At its most innocuous, this could be yet another example of Beijing shooting
itself in the foot by failing to rein in its brimming nationalism. That it
would downplay the KMT’s leading role in the war against Japan would be par for
the course for the Chinese propaganda apparatus. However, that it would ignore
the KMT’s role altogether gives the impression that it is attempting to pick a
fight, and that it is doing so with an ulterior motive.
This is where the truly disturbing ramifications of this latest rhetorical war
lie. Although the People’s Daily claim is an affront to the millions of KMT
soldiers who died or were wounded defending their country against a stronger
enemy amid on-and-off internecine warfare pitting the KMT against the
communists, it invites a response from the KMT-led government in Taiwan that
once again risks sucking Taiwan into the quicksand of Chinese history. What it
does, in fact, is turn back the clock, undo decades of national consolidation in
Taiwan and resurrects the unresolved Chinese Civil War in a way that victimizes
Taiwanese, who now, as in 1945-1949, had nothing to do with that foreign
madness.
The resumption of civil war following Japan’s defeat in 1945 saw some Taiwanese
forced by the KMT to leave their homeland and fight communist forces in China,
while dictator Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) defeat led to the KMT exodus to Taiwan,
where it imposed itself upon a powerless people. Rather than make them safer,
these developments pushed Taiwanese into the trenches of the Cold War and
exposed Taiwan to the risks of nuclear annihilation, turning a nation that had
no stake in the conflict into the potential victim of an ongoing foreign war.
This time around, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, amid recent
efforts to turn back the clock and deny Taiwanese the nation that is theirs (on
matters of the “national language” and culture, among others) has responded to
China’s taunt in a way that cannot but serve as a major distraction. Facing
this, we should ask ourselves why a new, supposedly localized KMT voted into
office by the Taiwanese public would willingly step onto Beijing’s tripwire (no
editorial in the People’s Daily would be published without the approval of
senior CCP officials), when a far better answer would have been silence, the
avoidance of a trap set to reopen old wounds.
Of course, such a reaction could only have been possible if the Ma
administration had truly let go of the past — and its attachment to China — and
become a ruler for and of the people of Taiwan, which, it increasingly seems, it
hasn’t.
With the crucial November elections looming and a presidential poll less than
two years away, Ma’s KMT will be flirting with danger if it steps into the ring
with the CCP over the civil war. The great majority of people in Taiwan — Hakka,
Aborigines, ethnic Taiwanese and waishengren, blue or green — are wise enough
to have recognized long ago that the poisons of that distant war are better left
untouched. More than that, it is not their war; it never was. What matters to
them, even to those who voted Ma into office and who are growing increasingly
disillusioned with his policies, is what the government can do to improve their
lives and ensure their security, and do so in a dignified fashion. Anything
else, especially ancient history involving an entirely different cast of
characters, has no place in presidential office communiques and should be left
with academics and military historians to harangue over.
Today’s KMT should have nothing to do with the despot who lost the war, at
tremendous human cost, to former Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) communists
more than six decades ago. Should it fail to realize this, it could very well
face another defeat — this one at the polls, in 2012.
J. Michael Cole is deputy news editor at the Taipei Times.
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