China's Unification Bid Backed By Only 1.4% Of Taiwanese

China may prattle about Taiwan’s being part of the mainland since time immemorial but the fact remains that for 6,000 years, only the indigenous people of the island governed themselves and it was only in 1887 when imperial China declared it as part of the mainland, only to yield it to Japan in 1895.

Photo Insert: The 1992 consensus was the result of a meeting between the KMT and the Communist party on the mainland. Both parties agreed that there was “One China”, but the meaning of this term was interpreted differently.

In short, China never intended to rule Taiwan, Brian Hioe wrote in a column for the Guardian.

“One has to wonder why ancient, pre-modern history seems to trump the contemporary will of the Taiwanese people for self-determination, which is to say, the pragmatic position of maintaining Taiwan’s status quo of de facto independence. Polls released by National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center last month found that more than 80% of the population prefer maintaining the democratic status quo in some form, while only 1.3% wanted immediate unification with China,” Hioe added.

China otherwise touts three communiques between the US and China on Taiwan in the 1970s and 1980s, or the 1992 consensus between the CCP and Taiwan’s ruling Kuomintang (KMT), as more historically recent rationales for its claims over Taiwan.

Yet, the US and China did not come to any agreement on Taiwan in the three communiques. And China frequently conflates the US One China Policy, which acknowledges (but does not recognize) the PRC position that Taiwan is part of China, with its own One China Principle, which asserts that there is only one state that is China, which is the PRC, and that Taiwan is part of China.

The 1992 consensus was the result of a meeting between the KMT and the Communist party on the mainland. Both parties agreed that there was “One China”, but the meaning of this term was interpreted differently.

Moreover, non-KMT political parties have long questioned whether any agreement was actually made or was a post-facto fabrication – ultimately, this was not a decision negotiated by a democratically elected Taiwanese government.

Rather it was negotiated solely by the KMT, which ruled over Taiwan for decades as a one-party dictatorship, before the first direct presidential elections in 1996, Hioe concluded.

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