No, Taiwan has not been under Chinese rule for nearly 2,000 years.

Tensions between China and the United States over Taiwan have never seemed so intense. Already sensitive, the situation worsened dramatically with the visit of Nancy Pelosi, president of the United States House of Representatives, to the island of 23 million inhabitants claimed by Beijing.

Since then, senior Chinese officials have multiplied in the media to justify the fact that Formosa (one of the island’s nicknames, Formosa, “La Belle” in Portuguese) belongs to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), a spokesman for diplomacy going so far as to count the number of Chinese restaurants on the island as proof.

The Chinese ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, also gives of his person. Jumping from TV sets to TV sets to defend his country’s position, he is the author of several questionable statements. On August 6, he was the guest of our colleagues from LCI.

The statement of the Chinese ambassador to France.  (Twitter screenshot)
The statement of the Chinese ambassador to France. (Twitter screenshot) – Screenshot

“You have to study history to better understand this question of Taiwan (…). [L’île] has been under the administration of China since 230 AD, at the time, in Europe, of the Roman Empire. Much earlier than the appearance of France. »

This assertion has made the most enthusiastic and specialist in history react, and for good reason… it is totally erroneous.

FAKE OFF

The date quoted by the ambassador is not chosen at random. The island of Taiwan appears in Chinese records in 239 AD, when an emperor sent an expeditionary force to explore the region. The point on which Beijing relies to justify the island’s membership of China. To support this argument, many Chinese representatives even speak of “troops”.

Terms to be moderated according to Antoine Bondaz, professor at Sciences po and research fellow at the Foundation for Strategic Research (think-tank), where he notably directs the Taiwan program on security and diplomacy: “The term ‘troupe’ is wrongly used. The words used could be translated as “people from the mainland went to the island”. But the island they landed on was not a Terra nullius “It was populated by aborigines who arrived millennia before them, from the mainland or the Philippines. No traces of any administration or even domination of the territory.

212 years of administration

For centuries, China will ignore this territory some 180 km from its coast. Until the 17th century exactly, when the Dutch colonized part of the island with the aim of creating a trading post to facilitate their trade with China and Japan. In search of labor, they bring in Chinese from the mainland. It was at this time that the Qing dynasty showed a new desire to control Taiwan. “It is always external initiatives that lead the Chinese to look at the island. Apart from that, they had little interest,” explains Antoine Bondaz.

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Eager to drive out the last resistants to the dynasty who had taken refuge on the island, the Chinese succeeded in taking control of it in 1683, and this, until 1895 when it was annexed by Meiji Japan after the defeat of the empire in the Sino-Japanese war. After 212 years of Chinese administration, it will remain under the control of Tokyo until 1945 and the defeat of the Empire of the Rising Sun during the Second World War. France will even make an appearance there at the end of the 19th century with the aim of using it against China in its conquest of Tonkin.

Taiwan, separated from China for half a century, was defiant of the power of the Republic of China, which led to a popular uprising in February 1947, violently suppressed by the Chinese Nationalist Party in power, the Kuomintang. , led by Chiang-Kai-Shek. A way for the power to regain control over the island.

“It’s not extrapolated, it’s not exaggerated, it’s false! »

But in 1949, the victory of Mao Zedong’s communists and the founding of the People’s Republic of China transformed the status of Taiwan, which became a refuge for nationalists. In competition with the continent until 1971 and the forfeiture of its seat at the UN in favor of the People’s Republic of China since then, the island is still attached to China but enjoys autonomy in its management and its government.

“So there was a limited and partial sovereignty for a little over 200 years, specifies Antoine Bondaz, but above all, the current regime in China, led by the Chinese Communist Party, has never administered Taiwan. According to the specialist, the statement of the Chinese ambassador is only a piece of language intended to sweep away the debate on Taiwan’s belonging to China. “It’s not extrapolated, it’s not exaggerated, it’s false! Even the Communist Party wouldn’t dare say that in China: that’s not even how Taiwanese history is taught there in school. »

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