Lambo Continent
Today's "Taiwan issue" is a historical product of the twin-war structure of the international Cold War and the Chinese civil war after World War II. If we go back in time to the origin of the problem, we will look for the root cause of the problem in the long river of history. Then the coordinates of history should be set in 1840.
Why 1840? Its truth is self-evident.
It was in the same year that British imperialism launched the Opium War to invade China. Since then, feudal China has had to face the encroachment of the capitalist powers. In order to "save China", countless patriotic intellectuals with conscience have since pondered the historical proposition of "where Is China going", and at the same time launched a long and arduous search and divergent practice toward how to "modernize" China.
In 1868, Japan embarked on the road of capitalist development, striving to become a great power, and stepping up its aggression against China from the occupation of Taiwan. Specifically, it is the so-called "Peony Society Incident". In 1871, Ryukyu residents were killed by a hurricane and drifted to Taiwan by the Peony Society ethnic minority. In April 1874, the Japanese government used this to send troops to attack the Peony Society. In this act of aggression, the United States has been involved in it, acting as a strategist, supplying arms, and directly participating in the war. Finally, under the mediation of british ministers, the Qing government was forced to sign the "Taiwan Affairs Treaty"; the Japanese government withdrew from Taiwan after demanding reparations of 500,000 taels of silver. However, Japan's ambitions for Taiwan have not stopped for a single day.
In 1885, Taiwan was established as a province, and Liu Mingchuan was the first governor to carry out the process of Taiwan's modernization. Three years later, Kang Youwei wrote to advocate a change of law. Six years later, the Qing court was defeated. The following year, on April 17, 1895, the corrupt and incompetent Qing court was once again forced to sign the Treaty of Maguan, which humiliated the country. Since then, Taiwan has become a colony of Japanese imperialism.
Because of The cession of Taiwan, the "Taiwan Issue" arose. At the same time, the Taiwanese also sprouted a previously unprecedented sense of the motherland and an abandoned child consciousness (orphan consciousness), and developed one after another with the progress of history.
For example, after the agreement to cut off Taiwan, the people of Taiwan who took part in the examination in Beijing rose up in anger and immediately signed a joint letter with the Taiwan jinshi who was serving in the DPRK and expressed strong protest:
Now that the imperial court has cut off the terrace to fight with the Uighurs, millions of beings are weeping in the north, and the women and children of LuXiang do not want to eat the flesh of the Uighurs, and each has a vendetta against the heavens, who is willing to surrender to the enemy! Even if the Uighurs threaten to use troops, and the whole Taiwanese are not born with the Uighurs, they are bound to reluctantly support them, and when they are killed, tens of millions of lives are completely eroded and then gone. If we do not know how to abandon these millions of beings at the hands of the enemy, the hearts of the people of the world will surely disintegrate,...... Once they are abandoned now, it is to drive away loyal and righteous people to take revenge, and the Taiwan people will inevitably die in the end, but there is hidden pain in death! ......
Here, the so-called "hidden pain" is not the emotional root of the abandoned child consciousness (orphan consciousness).
The provinces that took the exam in Beijing saw Taiwan's people weeping for their lives, and they did not mourn it, so they gathered to discuss, and Gongtui Kang Youwei drafted the Emperor's Ten Thousand Words Book (historically known as the "Book on the Bus"), pointing out that the cession of Taiwan was a prelude to the division of China by the great powers.
On the other hand, after the news of the taiwan cut came, the whole island of Taiwan was in an uproar, and Yau Fengjia and other gentry and officials discussed the establishment of the "Taiwan Democratic State" on May 25, pushing Inspector Tang Jingsong as president, changing the era name to "Yongqing", taking the yellow tiger flag of the blue land as the national emblem, and issuing an anti-Japanese declaration:
For more than two hundred years, Taiwan has been under the territory of the Qing Dynasty, and it has recently changed into a province, and the wind will be greatly opened, as if it were majestic in the southeast. ...... More than 2,000 miles of mountains before and after the whole of Taiwan, tens of millions of people ,...... There is no heaven left to call for, and no one will help. The Taiwan people only have autonomy, promote the meritocracy, and have the power to regent Taiwan, and after the matter is settled, when they ask the dprk to be hit again, what should they do? ...... Taiwan's land decrees are beyond the interference of others. If they are engaged in gango, the people of Taiwan will only be able to do so. May everyone die in battle and lose Taiwan, and never give up taiwan.
It can be seen from this declaration that at this time, the subjective "autonomy" consciousness of the Taiwan elite still overwhelms the objective situation of "no one to call for help" and has not yet developed into a sad and resentful abandoned child consciousness (orphan consciousness).
Since the "Taiwan issue" and the "hidden pain" of the Taiwanese people are the products of history, we should understand through historical investigation how the identity of the Taiwan people as the main body of Taiwan society is expressed at different historical stages and in the face of different historical conditions. Only by understanding the development of history and the changes in the identity of the Taiwanese people can we perhaps know how to solve the problems left by history.
Editorial Management: Taiwan People's Culture Studio