Taipei Admits IP Groups Were Original Taiwanese

Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Han majority in China might as well eat their own words for claiming that Taiwan is Chinese and must be “reunified” with China.

Photo Insert: Between 18,000 and 28,000 IPs were killed, many of them from the Tsou and Amis peoples.

Writing for CNN, Eric Cheung noted that Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen recognized the fact that the 16 indigenous peoples (IPs) of Taiwan had governed themselves continuously for 6,000 years, long before China became a country, while the Han Chinese migrated to the island only in the 17th century.

When China “ceded” Taiwan to Japan after being beaten in a war, there were more Japanese in Taiwan than Han Chinese.

Beijing never formed any kind of government in Taiwan while the IP groups governed themselves, spoke their 42 languages without interruption and maintained trade and cultural exchanges with their cousins in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

Both imperial China and the Kuomintang Chinese abused them, referred to them as “shan pao” (mountain compatriots) in the Taiwanese Constitution, and even massacred them, by way of the White Terror on Feb. 28, 1947, when the Kuomintang violently suppressed an uprising against corruption.

Between 18,000 and 28,000 were killed, many of them from the Tsou and Amis peoples, who had pleaded for more autonomy from the Chiang Kai-shek regime.

President Tsai apologized for this in 2016 and compensated each family of the victims US$390,000 or NT$12 million. Today, IPs number 580,000 in Taiwan, or 2.5% of the population of 23.5 million.

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