By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Trump's Greenland Bid Stirs Debate in China About What to Do With Taiwan

Having Covered Taiwan extensively in the past. For years, the U.S. government has urged China to show "restraint" in pushing its claim on Taiwan and to drop military threats to bring the democratically governed island under its control.

Taiwan was never involved with the Chinese tributary system; neither were the Chinese to any significant degree living in Taiwan until the Dutch imported them as laborers. On the contrary, the first emperor of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) wrote: "Overseas foreign countries… are separated from us by mountains and seas and far away in a corner. Their lands would not produce enough for us to maintain them; their people would not usefully serve us if incorporated."1 As a result, he said, China would observe a strict Maritime Prohibition (Haijin 海禁)2, a policy stipulating that all contact between China and overseas foreigners must occur in official embassies, known as tribute missions.3 No unofficial visits were to be tolerated. Nor were the Chinese allowed to sail abroad except, on tribute missions.

The Ming's reluctance to support overseas adventurers was not an anti-imperialist stance, as the Ming had an active imperialist history. The Qing Dynasty, too, restricted foreign trade until the late seventeenth century.4

Instead, the Dutch, in the 1630s, realized that their port’s hinterlands could produce rice and sugar for export. Still, they could not persuade Taiwan’s aborigines to raise crops for sale; most were content to plant just enough for themselves and their families.5 The colonists considered importing European settlers, but their Dutch superiors rejected the idea. So they settled instead on a more unusual plan: to encourage Chinese immigration. The Dutch offered tax breaks and free land to Chinese colonists, using their powerful military to protect pioneers from aboriginal assault. They also outlawed guns; prohibited gambling (which they believed led to piracy); controlled drinking; prosecuted smugglers, pirates, and counterfeiters; regulated weights, measures, and exchange rates; enforced contracts; adjudicated disputes; built hospitals, churches, and orphanages; and provided policing and civil governance.6 In this way, the company, created a calculable economic and social environment, making Taiwan a safe place for the Chinese to move to and invest in, whether they were poor peasants or wealthy entrepreneurs.7 People from the province of Fujian, just across the Taiwan Strait, began pouring into the colony, which grew and prospered, becoming, in essence, a Chinese settlement under Dutch rule. The colony's revenues were drawn entirely from Chinese settlers through taxes, tolls, and licenses. As one Dutch governor put it, "The Chinese are the only bees on Formosa that give honey."8

Taiwan’s relative standing reflected that knowledge within the Qing government of Taiwan’s geography was so limited that it was not until the 1870s that serious efforts began to govern most of the terrain. Similarly, an official handbook for Fujian Province from 1871 presented a vague description of the location of Diaoyutai – today a hotly contested site that also often gets the label of “an integral part of Chinese territory since ancient times” and described it as a place where “over a thousand large ships” could berth.

These opinions and depictions do not suggest that Taiwan and its environs rose to the level of integral territory for Qing-era Chinese. On the contrary, historians have shown that popular and official discussion of Taiwan as a part of China, and formal efforts to gain control of Taiwan by the government of the Republic of China (ROC) and its ruling Nationalist Party, originated in the 1930s and 1940s, within the context of anti-Japanese sentiment and war.

After being chastened by the Ming, the Dutch settled into a more docile role and were rewarded by the Chinese trade, which flowed to their Asian outposts.9 When the Ming dynasty was replaced by the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), the Dutch were the first Westerners to have an embassy in the imperial court. The Dutch ambassador raised no objections to kowtow. The Dutch even allied with the Qing, briefly, against the remnants of the Ming dynasty, a mutual enemy. Hence two more Dutch embassies were received in the court before 1700, each engaging in the standard rituals.10

At the same time, the Dutch ran an Asian court of their own in their colonial capital of Batavia (present-day Jakarta, Indonesia). They received delegates from throughout Asia and as far away as Africa, adopting Southeast and East Asian diplomacy practices and trappings, such as parasols and parades of elephants. As historian Leonard Blussé has noted, “the Batavian government found its place among Asian rulers and learned to play by the rules of what it then observed to be general Asian diplomatic etiquette and protocol. The Dutch colonizers had to invent ‘oriental’ rituals to stay in tune with existing conventions for carrying out foreign intercourse at a diplomatic level.”11

Thus before the 1600s, Taiwan was self-governing, although there was no central ruling authority. It was a colony of the Netherlands for about 40 years in the early to mid-17th century and was subsequently independent again for nearly two decades. After which, not the Han Chinese but the Manchu-led Qing sent an army led by General Shi Lang and annexed Taiwan in 1683. Qing rule over Taiwan then ended abruptly when Taiwan was ceded to Japan by the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895. There were more than a hundred rebellions during the Qing period. The frequency of revolutions, riots, and civil strife in Qing Taiwan led to this period being referred to by historians as “Every three years an uprising, every five years a rebellion.”

Now - some Chinese commentators say - the power of that long-held U.S. message has been undermined by the threats by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal, by force if necessary. Trump takes office on Jan. 20.

The implications of Trump's comments on U.S. policy on Taiwan have been widely discussed on China's social media platforms in recent days and by foreign policy analysts.

Since China considers its over 2,000 missiles aimed at Taiwan insufficient for deterring independence, and its huge market has not made unification a more favorable prospect for the Taiwanese, China, and the United States are now locked in a security dilemma where China will increase military coercion against Taiwan regardless of the nature of the support the U.S. provides to Taiwan.

A controversial trade agreement sparked the "Sunflower Movement" in 2014 where students and activists occupied Taiwan's parliament protesting against what they call China's growing influence over Taiwan.

Their activist opposition to a pending free trade agreement with China attracted broad public attention and support, helped prompt a change in government in early 2016.

Officially, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) still favors eventual independence for Taiwan, while Chiang Kai-shek’s former KMT favors eventual reunification. Opinion polls show only a small minority of Taiwanese support pursuing one or the other at the moment, with most preferring to stick with the current middle ground.

In an earlier speech, President Xi Jinping stressed the significance of studying Party history that "led the people to create a new Chinese civilization with a long history.” Here Xi, among others, links the Taiping Rebellion, the 1898 100 Days Reform, the Boxer Rebellion, and the Xinhai Revolution as expressions of this desire.

While nothing in the military standoff over Taiwan is likely to change in the near term, some say Trump's break with the norms of American diplomacy could create an opening for China.

China's foreign ministry said it was "absurd" to try and link Greenland's status to Taiwan.

"The Taiwan issue is an internal Chinese matter, and how to resolve it is something for the Chinese people," it said in a statement sent to Reuters.

Taiwan's foreign ministry, asked whether Trump's comments could provide impetus to China creating trouble over Taiwan, said that the Republic of China, the island's official name, is a "sovereign and independent country".

"Any distortion of Taiwan's sovereign status will not change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait," it said in a statement.

Zhao Minghao, a professor at the Institute of International Studies at the Fudan University in Shanghai, said Trump's threats to take Greenland, the Panama Canal, and even Canada needed to be taken seriously.

Drew Thompson, a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and former U.S. Department of Defense official, also said it was "quite preposterous" to think Trump's Greenland comments could embolden China's claims on Taiwan.

"But it does strike me that should President Trump refuse to...rule out the use of military force to achieve and protect U.S. interests, I would think that type of statement and determination would serve to further deter Beijing to take any action that would prompt the U.S. to take military action to protect Taiwan," he said.

"That's a pretty mighty deterrent for China."

 

1. Quoted in Chang Pin-tsun, "Chinese Maritime Trade: The Case of Sixteenth-Century Fu-Chien" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1983), 14.

2. For a detailed look at the intention of the maritime prohibition and its rules, see Bodo Wiethoff, Die chinesische Seeverbotspolitik und der private Überseehandel von 1368 bis 1567 (Hamburg: Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens, 1963), esp. 27–50.

3. Much ink has been spilled on the question of the Ming tribute system. An excellent early work is Wang Gung-wu's "Early Ming Relations with Southeast Asia: A Background Essay," in The Chinese World Order, ed. John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 34–62. See the essays in The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 1, ed. Frederick W. Mote and Denis Twitchett, vol. 7 of The Cambridge History of China, ed. Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988); and William Atwell, "Ming China and the Emerging World Economy, c. 1470–1650," in The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 2, ed. Frederick W. Mote and Denis Twitchett, vol. 8 of The Cambridge History of China, 376–416. I have found especially useful Chang Pin-tsun's "Chinese Maritime Trade: The Case of Sixteenth-Century Fu-Chien"; and Bodo Wiethoff Die chinesische Seeverbotspolitik. J. K. Fairbank and S. Y. Teng's classic work on the Qing tribute system also contains essential information about the Ming system: J. K. Fairbank and S.Y. Teng, "On the Ch'ing Tributary System," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 6, no. 2 (1941): 135–246. An interesting article about overseas Chinese who accompanied tribute missions to China is Chan Hok-Lam, "The ‘Chinese Barbarian Officials' in the Foreign Tributary Missions to China during the Ming Dynasty," Journal of the American Oriental Society 88, no. 3 (1968): 411–18. For an argument about the effects of these prohibitions on southeastern China's economy, see William G. Skinner, "Presidential Address: The Structure of Chinese History," The Journal of Asian Studies 44, no. 2 (1985): 271–92. Skinner perhaps overemphasizes the role of Portuguese traders in reinvigorating the region's trade.

4. The Qing decision to open the seas came in 1683, after the capture of Taiwan from the Zheng regime. It was a momentous policy, causing changes throughout East and Southeast Asia.

5. This appears to have been less accurate of cultures in the far south of Taiwan and the northeast, around today's Yilan (宜蘭), where sizeable rice surpluses were produced.

6. An overview of the legal and administrative structure of the Dutch colony can be found in a brilliant article by a young Taiwanese scholar: Cheng Wei-chung 鄭維中. “Lüe lun Helan shidai Taiwan fazhi shi yu shehui zhixu” 略論荷蘭時代台灣法制史與社會秩序, Taiwan Fengwu 臺灣風物, 52(1) [2002]: 11–40. See also C. C. de Reus, "Geschichtlicher Überblick der rechtlichen Entwicklung der Niederl. Ostind. Compagnie," in Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap der Kunsten en Wetenschappen (Batavia: Egbert Heemen, 1894).

7. The concept of "calculability" is at the heart of Max Weber's important work General Economic History, trans. Frank H. Knight (New York: Greenberg, 1927). The much-discussed Protestant Ethic is only a minor part of Weber's general theory of capitalism, which focuses on institutions and practices that impede or foster calculability.

8. Governor Nicolaes Verburch to Batavia, letter, VOC 1172: 466–91, quote at 472; cited in De Dagregisters van het Kasteel Zeelandia, Taiwan, 1629–1662 [The journals of Zeelandia Castle, Taiwan, 1629–1662], ed. Leonard Blussé, Nathalie Everts, W. E. Milde, and Ts'ao Yung-ho, 4 vols. (The Hague: Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, 1986–2001), 3:96–97.

9. Leonard Blussé, “No Boats to China. The Dutch East India Company and the Changing Pattern of the China Sea Trade, 1635–1690,” Modern Asian Studies 30 (1) (1996): 51–76; Leonard Blussé, “Chinese Trade to Batavia during the days of the V.O.C,” Archipel 18 (1979): 195–213. 

10. Young-tsu Wong, China's Conquest of Taiwan in the Seventeenth Century: Victory at Full Moon, 2017, pp. 111–113.

11. Leonard Blussé, “Queen among Kings: Diplomatic Ritual at Batavia,” in K. Grijns and P.J.M. Nas, eds., Jakarta-Batavia: Socio-Cultural Essays (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2000), 25–41, p. 27.

 

 

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