【Article/Observer Network Columnist Wang Rui】
The mainland officially solemnly commemorated the 110th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution, and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping believed that the Xinhai Revolution was a historical monument to the salvation and survival of the Chinese nation since 1840, and he praised Dr. Sun Yat-sen as a great national hero, a great patriot, and a great pioneer of China's democratic revolution.
In fact, the CCP's admiration for Sun Yat-sen can be seen from the huge portrait of Sun Yat-sen displayed on the Eleventh Festival. This is not the same as Sun Yat-sen's gradual becoming an "endangered animal" in Taiwan in recent years; Taiwanese parents face students' ignorance of Sun Yat-sen, which is not only the unique voice of the writer Wu Tanru.
Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council claims that Taiwan has inherited the orthodoxy of the Xinhai Revolution, while the mainland side has shown that the Chinese Communists are the staunchest and most loyal supporters, collaborators, and successors of Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary cause. This can be distinguished from the cause of Sun Yat-sen and the Xinhai Revolution, as well as the performance of the cross-strait society in inheriting this cause.
On October 1, 2021, Beijing, on the day of National Day, a huge portrait of Sun Yat-sen appeared in Tiananmen Square. Image source: Orient Net
The restoration of Taiwan was the clear goal of Sun Yat-sen's revolution
Sun Yat-sen's explicit attitude toward Taiwan was to restore Taiwan. The beginning of the Japanese imperialist occupation of Taiwan coincided with Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary action. Yang Xinru, Chen Shaobai, and others were ordered to go to Taiwan to organize the Taiwan branch of the Xingzhong Association, which was the beginning of the formal engagement of the Taiwanese people in modern times into the cause of "Xingzhong".
Today's Taiwanese people are influenced by anti-communist education and propaganda, and most of them have a reflexive prejudice against the "united front." In fact, Sun Yat-sen's common purpose of restoring China, and the establishment of the Chinese League by revolutionary groups within the United Nations, are typical of the united front. In 1910, Wang Zhaopei, a Fujian member of the League, went to Taiwan to develop Tainan weng Junming and other progressive youth, established the Taiwan branch of the China League Association, and further incorporated Taiwan's anti-Japanese and anti-colonial struggle into the composition of the Chinese revolution. As for Sun Yat-sen's later unification of the Communist Party of Russia and the Northern Expedition, it is even more important.
After the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, the Taiwanese poet Qiu Fengjia, who had advocated independent resistance to Japan in 1895, said that "the Chinese nation is revived", but at that time Taiwan was still in the hands of Japanese imperialists.
The following year, when Sun Yat-sen became the provisional president of the Republic of China, he made it clear to Chinese and foreign journalists: "If China cannot recover Taiwan, it will not be able to stand on the earth." [1] From then until 1915, allied members and people in Miaoli, Taichung, Nantou, Chiayi, Tainan and other places in Taiwan revolted against Japan one after another, including Luo Fuxing, Liu Gan, Huang Chao, Luo Atou, Yu Qingfang and others.
The essence of Taiwan's armed resistance to Japan from 1912 to 1915 was a continuation of the Xinhai Revolution and a part of the history of Chinese salvation since the Opium War of 1840. However, just as Xi Jinping said in commemoration of the 110th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution, due to the constraints of the historical process and social conditions, because the correct path and leading force to solve the problem of China's future and destiny have not been found, the Xinhai Revolution has not completed the historical task of realizing national independence and people's liberation, and Luo Fuxing and others have sacrificed their heroic ambition to restore Taiwan with the five-color flag of the Republic of China.
In fact, before and after the Xinhai Revolution, Liang Qichao of the reformist faction and Dai Jitao of the revolutionary faction both told the Taiwan gentry that they would not be able to save Taiwan for decades Chinese mainland, but instead asked the Taiwanese to maneuver between Japanese political leaders to protect themselves.
Therefore, after the defeat of the armed resistance against Japan, since the 1920s, Jiang Weishui and others, who had always supported Sun Yat-sen's revolution, organized the Taiwan Cultural Association, and Lin Xiantang, who respected Liang Qichao, promoted the Taiwan Parliament. On the other hand, under the influence of Marxism, the Communist Party of Taiwan, the Taiwan Peasants' Group, and the Taiwan People's Party were also established one after another. But the organization and activities of these struggles were suppressed, arrested, or disbanded, as was the case with the 1930 Wushe Uprising.
The Taiwan issue is China's problem
"The Taiwan issue arose out of national weakness and chaos and will certainly be resolved along with national rejuvenation." These two sentences are not festive speeches, but deductions based on the historical process.
In 1926, when Lu Xun faced Zhang Wejun, the standard-bearer of Taiwan's new literature, in Beijing and lamented that "Chinese seems to have forgotten Taiwan, and no one has mentioned it much", his heart was "as if he had suffered pain", and he responded a little bitterly: "No." That's not going to happen. It is only because the country is too tattered, there are so many internal and external troubles, and there is no time to take care of itself, so we can only put taiwan these things aside for the time being. ”
Lu Xun, who participated in the Xinhai Revolution, wrote about this encounter in the translation and publication of "The International Labor Problem" by Zhang Xiuzhe, a young man in Taiwan, the following year, which became a historical footnote to the Taiwan issue as the China issue. It is precisely for this reason that when Japanese imperialism swept away all kinds of struggles in Taiwan and launched an all-out war of aggression against China, more progressive young people in Taiwan gradually realized that only the victory of the revolutionary cause on the mainland of the motherland can fundamentally liberate Taiwan.
Of course, the early progressive youth of Taiwan, such as Weng Junming, Jiang Weishui, Du Mingming, and others, planned to go to Beijing to poison Yuan Shikai to defend the achievements of the Xinhai Revolution, which was already a manifestation of that understanding. Not to mention the participation of a young man from Tainan, Xu Zanyuan, in the Battle of Huanghuagang in Guangzhou in 1911, is a historical example of colonial Taiwan's participation in the revitalization of China. As for Lin Zumi, a Taichung native, who went to the mainland to follow Sun Yat-sen's revolution from the beginning of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, and his son Lin Zhengheng who joined the CCP's underground work on Taiwan by participating in the Nationalist army's anti-Japanese resistance, it is with the lives of two generations that interpret the twists and turns and hardships of finding China's correct path and leadership force.
Lin Zumi (left) and Lin Zhengheng father and son
In 1935, the "March of the Volunteer Army", which preached the anti-Japanese struggle to save the country, came out. This song cooperated by the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China has aroused the fighting spirit of a generation of Young People from Taiwan to sneak back to the mainland to participate in the War of Resistance, such as Xiao Daoying, the historical protagonist in "The Song of the Carriage", and others. Ten years later, after China's victory in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the restoration of Taiwan, the March of the Volunteer Army was more widely known on the island and was the main theme of several anti-imperialist and anti-American movements, until the Kuomintang government withdrew from Taiwan and the March of the Volunteer Army became the national anthem of new China and was banned.
Although this history has been silenced, it has proved that the Taiwan issue is the main theme of the Xinhai Revolution on the Chinese issue.
Qiu Taisan, chairman of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, acknowledged that the Republic of China began with the Xinhai Revolution, saying that the main spirit of the Xinhai Revolution was to build a free and democratic national society, so Taiwan's development "fully shows that Taiwan has inherited the orthodoxy of the Xinhai Revolution."
The fact is that there were Chinese before the Xinhai Revolution and the Republic of China. Therefore, the main spirit of the Xinhai Revolution is, first of all, to liberate China's "sub-colonial" dilemma, to liberate the enslaved status of Chinese, that is, to revitalize China, that is, Sun Yat-sen's last wish to "peace, struggle, and save China.". Does Taiwan today inherit such "orthodoxy"? Does it inherit the story of the progressive Taiwanese mentioned above?
Historical Amnesia and "Endangered Animals" on the Island of Taiwan
Twenty years ago, Tsai Ing-wen, chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council, openly stated that she was Chinese, but now the Chinese on the island are "endangered animals" like Sun Yat-sen. Celebrating the Chinese Double Decade in a place where there is almost no "Chinese" is there some sense of discord that cannot be laughed at?
Those who led the singing of the national anthem of the Republic of China at the White Double Ten Ceremony no longer know that the lyrics were written by Sun Yat-sen to the students of the Whampoa Military Academy to unify China. Nowadays, Bai Shuangshi neither admits that he is a Chinese, nor allows others to participate in the Chinese celebrates the Xinhai Revolution, but strives to become his "orthodox" in the Xinhai Double Ten created by Chinese.
"Cross-strait non-subordination" is the language of the modern imperialists to slaughter China, not a declaration worthy of display, not the goal of the Xinhai Revolution, nor the aspiration of the above-mentioned Taiwan predecessors. At the same time that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait were separated, it was also the Cold War era of the imperialist century. Judging from this historical context, the 1992 Consensus can be seen as the result of breaking through the cold war imprisonment and inheriting the spirit of Xinhai. On the contrary, refusing to inherit the Xinhai spirit of rejuvenating China is tantamount to declaring that the Republic of China has committed suicide.
Speaking of the denial of the Republic of China, this year also marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Fishing Campaign and Un-General Assembly Resolution 2758. For half a century, China's representation in the United Nations has long been undisputed; but the greatest historical significance of Resolution 2758 has yet to be reflected in the protection of fishing and reunification. This is not only the original intention of the Taiwan and Hong Kong students to ignite the fishing movement, but also the significance of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai's evaluation of the fishing transport as the "Overseas May Fourth Movement".
Fifty years ago, when Taipei was still representing China at the United Nations, Young Taiwanese scholar Wang Xiaobo debuted the chapter "Defending Diaoyutai." Then, students studying in the United States in Taiwan and Hong Kong asked the government of the Republic of China to defend the Diaoyu Islands, which had been privately granted by the United States and Japan, and they shouted the slogan "China's land can be conquered, not destroyed", which is to inherit the spirit of the May Fourth Patriotic Movement and even the Xinhai Revolution to revitalize China.
However, at that time, Taipei needed the wings of the US-Japan alliance and did not assert China's sovereignty, so the students passed a resolution supporting Beijing's representation of China at the "Ann Arbor National Congress". More than a month later, with the support of a majority of its member states, the United Nations restored Beijing's representation of China on Taiwan's Easter's Day in 1971. Fifty years later, the phrases "Diaoyu Dao is China's indisputable territory" and "Taiwan is part of China's inherent territory" are still sonorous written words or table-top speeches, and they are also the beliefs and goals of many people.
However, that is still an unfinished historical work. The cognitive logic of the old fishing guards is that cross-strait reunification → China's strong → successful fishing. As Liu Huanxin said: "One day, when China is peacefully reunified, it will be the day when Diaoyutai will be recovered." I hope to see this day in my lifetime! ”[2]
The fishing campaign is a continuation of the spirit of the Xinhai Revolution
In other words, the Diaoyu Dao is still an island of disputes, and the two sides of the strait have not yet been reunified; the practical significance of fishing preservation is still a historical legacy in the face of imperialism. In fact, when Japanese imperialism occupied Taiwan, it regarded the Diaoyu Islands as a subsidiary island of Taiwan. However, Japan, which was supposed to be limited to four islands after World War II, was able to rely on another imperialism to continue to occupy the Ryukyu Islands and include the Diaoyu Islands in the scope of U.S. and Japanese security.
This disorderly status quo shows that as a subsidiary island of Taiwan, the Diaoyu Islands are in the hands of the imperialists, which means that Taiwan is still in the imperialists' sphere of influence.
Therefore, from the perspective of historical significance, the reunification of Baoyu and the Taiwan Strait is an integral part of the anti-imperialist movement of the Chinese and a continuation of the Xinhai spirit, which can understand why Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai commented on Baoyu as an "overseas May Fourth Movement". However, the mainland students who participated in the May Fourth Movement in history originally had different paths, and later they went their separate ways and ran for their own future. The same was true of the Taiwanese and Hong Kong students who participated in the fishing campaign in the 1970s.
The old anglers all agreed that the original intention of participating in the fishing was based on patriotism. However, once put into practice, there are differences in landing routes and methods, and this is the case with the division and even silence of overseas fishing transportation. Looking at "Spring Thunder Recollection: A Collection of Oral Essays on Fishing in the Library of Tsinghua University", it can be seen that the Taiwan students who participated in fishing in that year landed in three places in the future: the United States, the mainland, and Taiwan, and this spatial distribution precisely symbolizes the history of fishing protection and the reunification of the Taiwan Strait involving the three sides of the strait.
However, there are very few people who have returned to Taiwan to openly engage in unified transportation, fewer than the Kuomintang students who were inclined to "reform and protect Taiwan" at that time, which may be due to the restrictions of relevant laws and regulations and political climate on the island. Returning to Taiwan is more engaged in activities or organizations for grassroots people and social education, which may be a more grassroots enlightenment work than electoral politics. However, the syllabus of compulsory education in Taiwan is in the hands of the authorities on their opposite sides, which makes their activities and ideas increasingly marginalized, and thus lies in the dilemma of no successor.
Unlike today's young people in Taiwan, when Lao Baoyu received compulsory education in Taiwan, he embraced a strong sense of The Chinese nation, and historian Gong Zhongwu affirmed the national spiritual education carried out by Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan. [3] Zhang Jinluan even believed that before the 1970s, the pro-unification forces on the island of Taiwan basically had the upper hand, and after the adoption of UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, the pro-unification faction was even more imposing.
However, when China and the United States established diplomatic relations in 1979, the mainland, which had just finished the Cultural Revolution, was busy with reform, opening up, and economic construction, so it temporarily shelved the Taiwan issue. If the Taiwan issue is shelved, it is naturally impossible to properly handle the Diaoyu Dao issue. On the other hand, after the 1980s, with the localization and democratization of Taiwan, the island's pro-unification forces gradually shrank. [4]
In 2014, 600 kilograms of a bronze statue of Sun Yat-sen in Taiwan was pulled down by the neck
Political aftermath of General Assembly Resolution 2758 in Taiwan
In other words, students studying in the United States before the 1970s were able to accept Taiwan's forbidden modern History and Socialism from the embrace of the Chinese nation, which was the reason why most of the old Baoyu turned to the reunification movement. However, after the 1980s, Taiwan's students studying in the United States no longer cared about the reunification movement, but instead went to the majority of separatists.
At this time, Taiwan students who landed on the mainland had set up the "Taiwan Alumni Association" in Beijing, aiming to promote the reunification of the motherland. However, due to chiang ching-kuo's sudden death and changes in the situation on the mainland, the task of peaceful reunification of the Taiwan Strait in the 1980s was a failure. [5]
In the 1990s, Taiwan's local emerging bourgeoisie came to power in an all-round way, and under the condition that the United States further dominated Taiwan's political and academic media, the Taiwan Strait crisis repeatedly occurred between the two sides of the strait. At the same time that the conditions for armed reunification were not yet ripe, Taiwan entered a period of separatist reform.
Before the 1970s, the United States was the place where Taiwan students were enlightened to identify with socialist China and join the reunification movement; after that, in the same United States, it was no longer possible to awaken the "de-Sinicization" Of Taiwan students to join the reunification movement. Moreover, the former was still in the period of cross-strait isolation, while the latter was since the opening of the three direct links between the two sides of the strait.
It can be seen from this that the main key to Taiwan's refusal to reunify or the formation of an independent consciousness today lies in the transformation of Chinese identity, which is the after-effect of the failure to complete the reunification of the Taiwan Strait in the nearly two decades from the adoption of Resolution 2758 to the 1980s by the Un-General Assembly -- without recognizing my identity as a Representative of China, I do not want to be a Chinese, and I may try to admit my identity instead -- this is the cause of Taiwan's "correct name" and "joining the United Nations" heart disease.
But Taiwanese can think about whether mainland people and officials will not recognize their Chinese identity until the United Nations restores the legitimate rights of the People's Republic of China.
Identity, first of all, there must be an identity. Taiwan's Lao Bao Diao learned about China's modern history and socialism in the United States as a Chinese, and this identity made them overcome political estrangement and devote themselves to the reunification movement. However, in the two decades since Resolution 2758, the political estrangement between the two sides of the strait has not been resolved. Since then, Taiwanese have suffered Chinese stripping and alienation. In particular, the three decades since the 1990s have been a history of collective Chinese on the island of Taiwan, during which no "Chinese" have appeared on Taiwanese campuses.
Recently, Taipei Guangfu Primary School removed the bridge section of the bronze statue of Chiang Kai-shek, not to transform justice and abandon anti-communist authoritarianism, but to Chinese part of the identity transformation project. However, for Taiwanese students, the Xinhai Revolution, Sun Yat-sen, and Chiang Kai-shek are distant and unfamiliar images; not to mention Mao Zedong and national rejuvenation, they are no longer their own stories.
Cross-strait relations are viewed from the Xinhai Double Ten
From this point of view, it is clear that the two sides of the strait can recognize the right and wrong of inheriting the Xinhai spirit on both sides of the strait.
Judging from the statements of both sides and the social atmosphere, Xi Jinping's Xinhai speech, his insistence on "realizing the reunification of the motherland by peaceful means is most in line with the overall interests of the Chinese nation, including Taiwan compatriots", is standing on the height of history. In contrast, Tsai Ing-wen insisted that "the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China are not subordinate to each other", whether or not this is due to the instructions of the United States.
However, the founding of the Republic of China is a matter of Chinese, and the key lies in how Chinese view the relations between the two sides of the strait in the future. Or a change of dynasty? Is it opposition? Or inheritance? The Xinhai volunteers have become ancient, the Baoyu generation has also aged, and even ordinary spectators expect that the chaotic and ambiguous cross-strait relations will gradually become clear.
Although the success of the momentum may not be successful, in the identity and political identity of the parallel universe, in the psychological distance of each saying its own words, the achievement of historical events often requires a small thing that can be encountered and cannot be sought. It may be an election, it may be a misjudgment, it may be a miscalculation, it may be something out of the ordinary,......, in short, Sun Yat-sen will "have no worries about the road ahead and know himself, and no one in the world knows the king."
exegesis:
[1] Zhuang Zheng, "The Life and Aspirations of the Founding Father", Taipei JoongAng Daily (condensed edition), pp. 358-359.
[2] "Reflections on Spring Thunder: A Collection of Oral Essays on Bao Fishing in Tsinghua University Library", edited by: Research Center for Bao Fishing Materials Collection of Tsinghua University Library, Beijing, June 2020, p. 346.
[3] Ibid., note 2, p. 49.
[4] Note 2, pp. 465-466.
[5] Ibid., Note 2, Dictated by Wang Zhongping, p. 376.
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