OPINION | Taiwan: blood will not reach the river

Editor’s note: Carlos Alberto Montaner is a writer, journalist, and CNN contributor. His columns are published in dozens of newspapers in Spain, the United States and Latin America. Montaner is also vice president of the Liberal International. The opinions expressed here are solely his.

(CNN Spanish) – It was called Formosa, “the beautiful island” in Portuguese. Taiwan is a mythical society transformed by the arrival of the Dutch and then the Chinese, thousands of years ago to that island. Indeed, it was beautiful. It has about 36,000 square kilometers and today it has about 23 million inhabitants.

But the most beautiful thing about that island is the income statement. In 1952, it had a per capita income of just under US $ 213. Today, it has one of more than US $ 34,000 and a robust middle class (the Purchasing Power Parity index in Taiwan is about US $ 52,304 per capita). In that year, most of the economy was driven by agriculture. Today, sectors such as information, communications and technology have taken their place. It is, frankly, a developed economy. A “miracle”, as I see it.

They do well to suppress the name. Calling yourself the “ROC” was fine when it seemed like a temporary phenomenon. Chiang Kai-shek had arrived in Taiwan in 1949, leading two million soldiers and authorities, fleeing Mao Tse-tung, in an exodus of about 1.5 million people. Shortly before, in 1945, some 300,000 Japanese had left Taiwan. The Japanese occupation of Taiwan had begun in 1895 and, according to the Taiwanese themselves, it helped develop the workforce, its irrigation systems and the railroad, but it also left a dark mark: some women were forced to serve as sex slaves during the Second World War.

Chiang came killing. Soldiers used their weapons at will in this period of resistance to a “foreign” power that involved them in war. For Chiang, a nationalist raised in the shadow of Sun Yat-sen, Taiwan was just a platform to return to China. He had a moment of respite during the Korean War, when it seemed that Washington was ready to destroy Mao, but that spirit ended with the triumph of General Ike Eisenhower. The WWII hero was determined to end the Korean War. So Chiang stayed put and invited for battle.

Almost 20 years later, in 1971, President Richard Nixon ended the fiction of Taiwan’s provisionality. He declared that there was no point in perpetuating the false idea that exiles on the beautiful island would one day return to mainland China leading a victorious army. In 1975 Chiang Kai-shek died and in 76 it was his turn to his intimate enemy Mao Tse-tung. But there was a great irony that affected both sides of the conflict: Chiang’s death was succeeded by Yen Chia-kan, the vice president, but in reality his son Chiang Ching-kuo had the real power. In the two periods that followed (1978-1988) the foundations of a liberal democracy were laid, reform by reform. After Mao’s death came Deng Xiaoping, who buried Marxism-Leninism, making room for a capitalist dictatorship ruled by a single party.

Today, the swords are raised again, but I don’t think the blood will reach the river. Ultimately, a substantial part of Taiwan’s investments have gone to mainland China, while the Kuomintang, Chiang’s nationalist party, is not pro-independence. In any case, Taipei – the capital – has the perfect excuse to develop nuclear weapons that would protect Taiwan from the risk of a warlike confrontation, as happens to North Korea. I don’t think anyone would “trade” Shanghai or Beijing for blowing up Taiwan.

The US position would be incontrovertible: at least for now a war between the US and China is unthinkable. At the same time, the reason why Japan, South Korea and Taiwan do not manufacture their own nuclear weapons is because the United States asks for it and, in return, protects them in the event of a war. For me, for this reason, all three are, in practice, protectorates of the United States, which avoids “nuclear proliferation” with this stance. Anyway: what is best for China is to show its teeth, but refraining from biting.