Now here are some interesting historical quotes posted on World United Formosans for Independence that they say show Taiwan has not belonged to China since antiquity. They are interesting. Here’s the first:
Yongzheng Reign Period Year 1 (1722) The Xianhuang Emperor took the throne.He proclaimed that “Since antiquity Taiwan has not been part of the Central States. My Father (the Kangxi Emperor) traveled far and brought Taiwan into his realm…”
It was called Taiwan that far back? I thought they had a different name for it…
It’s just propaganda; Taiwan was never part of China and never will be. The closest thing that made Taiwan close to China was ten years of Ching misrule in their failed attempt to colonize our nation.
Did you even read where the quote came from? It’s from a website that supports Taiwanese independence! I don’t think you read any posts thoroughly, as soon as you see “Taiwan” and “independence” you just starting ranting like a raving lunatic. It’s a historical quote that supports the assertation that Taiwan has only been a part of China (or rather, the Greater Manchu Empire) since the 18th century rather than antiquity (as some would state). :loco: :loco: :loco:
[quote]http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~cindylee/taiwan/hist1.html
Taiwan was “Tapanga” meaning a big island in the 3rd century.
chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/200 … 246920.htm
In 230, King Sun Quan of the Kingdom of Wu sent 10,000 troops, led by generals Wei Wen and Zhuge Zhi, to Yizhou (Taiwan). Their starting point was Piling (near present-day Changzhou). This is the earliest historical record of large-scale mainland exploration of Taiwan[/quote].
Did you even read where the quote came from? It’s from a website that supports Taiwanese independence! I don’t think you read any posts thoroughly, as soon as you see “Taiwan” and “independence” you just starting ranting like a raving lunatic. It’s a historical quote that supports the assertation that Taiwan has only been a part of China (or rather, the Greater Manchu Empire) since the 18th century rather than antiquity (as some would state). :loco: :loco: :loco:[/quote]
If a unification website posts some obscure claims that Taiwan has been a part of China for the past 10000 years, will you have the same objection?
Did you even read where the quote came from? It’s from a website that supports Taiwanese independence! I don’t think you read any posts thoroughly, as soon as you see “Taiwan” and “independence” you just starting ranting like a raving lunatic. It’s a historical quote that supports the assertation that Taiwan has only been a part of China (or rather, the Greater Manchu Empire) since the 18th century rather than antiquity (as some would state). :loco: :loco: :loco:[/quote]
If a unification website posts some obscure claims that Taiwan has been a part of China for the past 10000 years, will you have the same objection?[/quote]
If he keeps babbling and posting nonsense, then yes. The point is that he supports TI, yet a piece of evidence that supports TI’s view that Taiwan was not part of “China” for very long he goes and shoots down as “propaganda.” That’s the point … he doesn’t read before he starts shooting off his mouth.
If this quote is accurate then we would have to move the inclusion of Taiwan into the empire to the late 17th century.
I think your point about Taiwan being included in the Manchu Empire is also important in dismantling Chinese claims to Tiwan as well. Modern China emerges from a Han nationalist rebellion against the Manchu Empire that then tried to preserve the non-Chinese components of the Manchu empire.While Taiwan may have been acquired by the Manchus in the late 17th century, it was still very much a frontier zone until the mid-19th century. Looked at this way, Taiwan can arguably be called Chinese for about five or six decades during the 19th century. Then it was acquired and modernized by Japan.
I may be missing something, but doesn’t this quote just confirm what is considered standard history anyway?
up to 17th century: General immigration of Chinese
1662: Koxinga arrives in Taiwan
1683: His son defeated by Qing
There isn’t really any dispute about these facts (and the quote you found confirms the last one) - the dispute is about how you interpret these facts. A Chinese perspective says that Taiwan was in some way ‘Chinese’ due to early Chinese immigration, Koxinga claimed it for the Ming dynasty, and then it was a fundamental part of the Qing. A Taiwanese perspective says it was only invaded by Ming/Qing loyalists, but you could hardly call it a part of China until much later (e.g. 19th century).
As far as I know, even the KMT around Chiang Kai Chek claimed that Taiwan belongs to China but to the ROC. After they landed they always said the want to just stay here until the time is due to enter the mainland again and fight Mao.
Another interesting fact in these days is: If Taiwan assumes to do something against the anti-secession law then it implies that China and Taiwan belong together. Otherwise a secession of Taiwan would not be possible and no action is needed.
No significant Chinese immigration took place until the early 18th century.
In the 17th century, Koxinga set up his base here but that was restricted to the Tainan area. I think the total size of the permanent, civilian settlement was not that large and may not have been entirely Hany anyway. I’m not sure about this part, but I think Koxinga is a special case and doesn’t really count as significant Han immigration.
After the Kangxi emperor defeated the Koxinga regime, the Manchus did not want any more trouble in Taiwan so they banned immigration and restricted the building of fortifications.
But after a series of famines in southeast China, the next emperor Yongzheng allowed investors to buy rice farming concessions in Taiwan. The investors could import Han labor to work their concessions, but the laborers could not bring their families. This ban remained in place officially until teh 1870s I think, but the enforcement slacked off in the first few decades of the 19th century.
Still there is an important period in the 18th century when after significant Han immigration began when Han immigration was largely male. It is also during this period that the Pingpu or plans-dwelling aborigines disappear, leading to the reasonable assumption that there was a lot of intermarriage during this period.
So if we combine a more precise picture of when Han immigration really began with a better understanding of how Han immigration worked in Taiwan, our picture of how Chinese this frontier society really was may be different.
So yes, the interpretation is important, but the naive Chinese nationalist view that Taiwan has been ‘Chinese’ for many, many centuries starts looking very untenable.
A fantastic book that may shed some light on this subject is John Shepherd’s Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier 1600-1800. Shepherd concludes a Han population of only 7000 landed (married) farmers in 1790, the bulk of Cheng’s forces had been relocated to the interior of the empire for security reasons.
The Qing court argued about Taiwan for a number of years following the Cheng defeat and the emperor was reluctant to incorporate Taiwan into the empire. It was Admiral Shi who finally convinced the emperor to make Taiwan a frontier region to secure the coast from foreign aggression. The Qing court still could not decide on allowing settlers to move to Taiwan as they feared rebellion, so they granted seasonal labor for young males with family in the empire, family that could be held accountable for any trouble on Taiwan. The frequent re-negotiation of aboriginal land rights exposes the Qing’s lack of control of the land and people of Taiwan. Taiwan was merely an island of islands, or rather islands of taxable populations along a wild frontier until the late 19th century.
Everyone’s simply looking for ‘facts’ to support whatever conclusion they’ve already arrived at. Comfort research.
The facts are really quite clear.
Taiwan became part of China in the Qing dynasty. That this information is on a pro-TI website, doesn’t change the facts.
The only thing that is partly debatable, and much more interesting is the extent to which, prior to incorporating Taiwan as a part of Fujian Province, China was aware of Taiwan, but specifically considered it to lie outside Chinese territory. Personally, I think China’s reactions to the Dutch colonisation of the Pescadores (Penghu) and then Taiwan, make it clear that at this time they considered the Pescadores, but not Taiwan, to be part Chiense territory. Quotes about this would be interesting.
Also worth note is that even when Taiwan was under Qing control, they did not claim sovereignty over the Aboriginal interior or the East Coast until a very late date.
And even more interesting is evidence that after Japanese annexation, in the period of the civil war and WW2 neither the communists nor the KMT considered Taiwan to be Chinese territory to be retrieved. They thought of it more like Korea than (for example) Manchuria.
There is no evidence whatsoever that the island they went to (assuming they really did go somewhere was Taiwan. It could have just as likely (more likely considering the difficulties of sailing to Taiwan) been a number of other places. Even assuming for a moment that it was Taiwan, this gives China no more claim to Taiwan than to say that Taiwan is Okinawan or Japanese, seeing as people form those places also visited Taiwan.
Brian
So after all the obfuscation by the Taidu separatists, the fact remains that Taiwan was part of Qing China. Obviouslly the PRC claim that Taiwan has been part of China for yadda yadda yadda years is inaccurate, but seriously, who didn’t know this already?
Maowang and Feiren and other sympathetic Taidu “intellectuals” (I will refrain from denouncing you as the stinking ninth class 
) only real purpose is psychological warfare. The whole exercise is a two fold step, the first is to simply refute the glaringly inaccurate PRC propaganda which a 5 year old could do, the next step is to launch a counter-offensive. This is more subtle yet even then obvious to those used to political games. Under the guise of “impartial” scholarship, a concerted effort is made to show the limits of Chinese sovereignty (which I readily admit are real) but at the same time blur the difference between central state authority and Chinese cultural penetration of the island. All of this is a concerted attempt to dilute the historical Chinese influence on Taiwan in order to better foster the revisionary(Nothing wrong with historical revisionism at all, history is not static but dynamic as more scholarship from new sources would lead to a more nuanced perspective. However in this case, the revisionism is self-serving and politicized in the extreme) separatist history.
I notice that while everyone is ready and willing to challenge the quack propaganda issued from a passive Xinhua, no one has anything to say in response to the very active MasaoTakashi’s claim that Taiwan has never been part of China. Bias by omission anyone? (edit: Whoops I forgot to mention littlebuddha who has called him out, my point still stands in regards to Feiren and Maowang)
I think MasaoTakahashi is a troll so I ignore him accordingly.
Did you even read where the quote came from? It’s from a website that supports Taiwanese independence! I don’t think you read any posts thoroughly, as soon as you see “Taiwan” and “independence” you just starting ranting like a raving lunatic. It’s a historical quote that supports the assertation that Taiwan has only been a part of China (or rather, the Greater Manchu Empire) since the 18th century rather than antiquity (as some would state). :loco: :loco: :loco:[/quote]
If a unification website posts some obscure claims that Taiwan has been a part of China for the past 10000 years, will you have the same objection?[/quote]
China itself has not existed for that long… only 2500 years…
[quote=“cmdjing”]So after all the obfuscation by the Taidu separatists, the fact remains that Taiwan was part of Qing China. Obviouslly the PRC claim that Taiwan has been part of China for yadda yadda yadda years is inaccurate, but seriously, who didn’t know this already?
Maowang and Feiren and other sympathetic Taidu “intellectuals” (I will refrain from denouncing you as the stinking ninth class ) only real purpose is psychological warfare. The whole exercise is a two fold step, the first is to simply refute the glaringly inaccurate PRC propaganda which a 5 year old could do, the next step is to launch a counter-offensive. This is more subtle yet even then obvious to those used to political games. Under the guise of “impartial” scholarship, a concerted effort is made to show the limits of Chinese sovereignty (which I readily admit are real) but at the same time blur the difference between central state authority and Chinese cultural penetration of the island. All of this is a concerted attempt to dilute the historical Chinese influence on Taiwan in order to better foster the revisionary(Nothing wrong with historical revisionism at all, history is not static but dynamic as more scholarship from new sources would lead to a more nuanced perspective. However in this case, the revisionism is self-serving and politicized in the extreme) separatist history.
I notice that while everyone is ready and willing to challenge the quack propaganda issued from a passive Xinhua, no one has anything to say in response to the very active MasaoTakashi’s claim that Taiwan has never been part of China. Bias by omission anyone? (edit: Whoops I forgot to mention littlebuddha who has called him out, my point still stands in regards to Feiren and Maowang)[/quote]
I actually agree with most of your post (heaven forbid).
I originally read the thread in a hurry, and didn’t say anything about Masaowhatsit’s post because I couldn’t understand what he was trying to say. Seems he was simply trying to say that the Qing only ruled Taiwan for 10 years. Yes, obviously rubbish.
Anyway, about revisionist history. Good revisionist history sets out to challenge assumptions. Of course it can go far, but I think in the case of China/Taiwan history, there’s some pretty big assumptions that need to be challenged. I would never go so far as to say that the impact of Han culture on Taiwan was minimal, but the assumption that Taiwan is ‘Chinese’ is a biggie. I am also very interested in challenging the construction of ‘China’ itself. Why do we always think of historical China differently than Europe?
Brian
[quote=“Bu Lai En”]The facts are really quite clear.
Taiwan became part of China in the Qing dynasty. That this information is on a pro-TI website, doesn’t change the facts.
The only thing that is partly debatable, and much more interesting is the extent to which, prior to incorporating Taiwan as a part of Fujian Province, China was aware of Taiwan, but specifically considered it to lie outside Chinese territory. Personally, I think China’s reactions to the Dutch colonisation of the Pescadores (Penghu) and then Taiwan, make it clear that at this time they considered the Pescadores, but not Taiwan, to be part Chiense territory. Quotes about this would be interesting.
Also worth note is that even when Taiwan was under Qing control, they did not claim sovereignty over the Aboriginal interior or the East Coast until a very late date.
And even more interesting is evidence that after Japanese annexation, in the period of the civil war and WW2 neither the communists nor the KMT considered Taiwan to be Chinese territory to be retrieved. They thought of it more like Korea than (for example) Manchuria.
There is no evidence whatsoever that the island they went to (assuming they really did go somewhere was Taiwan. It could have just as likely (more likely considering the difficulties of sailing to Taiwan) been a number of other places. Even assuming for a moment that it was Taiwan, this gives China no more claim to Taiwan than to say that Taiwan is Okinawan or Japanese, seeing as people form those places also visited Taiwan.
Brian[/quote]
This is the true history of Taiwan as pointed out by the moderator. This is why I am sceptical and it is pitiful that my fellow Taiwanese citizens have bought into the Red Chinese propaganda that Taiwan was part of China since the 3 Kingdoms.
Funny I thought that was standard procedure. Strong government sends an expedition group to uncharted territory. Sticks a flag in the ground…territory is claimed.
If you look at the propaganda war, PRC started this line of argument shortly after rise of TI movement in the USA, which cumulated into the CJG assassination attempt in NYC. A lot of TI exile went crazy in the USA due to the racial tension during the 60’s and 70’s.
Even this TI nutter agrees that Taiwan has been in the China’s history for quite sometime.
[quote]
taiwannation.com.tw/english.htm
Taiwan was known as Yizhou (barbarian