Taiwan Trump Op

Taiwan is a country with history and people.
Its not just a

diplomatic nuisance.
Trump's controversial phone call is a chance for us to talk about
Taiwan for Taiwan's sake.
By Shawna Yang Ryan December 9
Shawna Yang Ryan, a former Fulbright scholar, is the author of Water Ghosts and Green Island and
teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Performers dance during a parade to reflect Taiwans history as part of an inauguration ceremony of Taiwans
President Tsai Ing-wen in Taipei, Taiwan May 20, 2016. (REUTERS/Tyrone Siu)
In third grade, I received a school assignment to interview a family member. I chose my mother, who had
immigrated to the United States after marrying my white American father. We began with a simple question.
Where were you born?
Taiwan, my mother answered.
No, I argued. I had seen it with my own eyes: Republic of China in sharp black ink on the letters and
packages my grandmother sent. I insisted that she was from China. She tried to explain the difference
between the Peoples Republic of China and the Republic of China, but I could not comprehend how a place
could be called China but not be China. The interview ended there, at the first question, with my mother
frustrated and me in tears.
This past week, reading news accounts and analysis of President-elect Donald Trumps controversial phone
call with Taiwans president, Tsai Ing-wen, it was my turn to feel frustrated. Taiwan was discussed primarily as
an appendage of U.S.-China relations, an irritant in the delicate relationship between two countries.
Bargaining chip has been a common descriptor of Taiwans role. A flood of headlines reorients the attention
on China: Trumps Phone Call To Taiwans Leader Risks China Tensions. Trumps Taiwan call shows China
hes not a pushover. The Taiwan call was no courtesyDonald Trump means to wreck USChina
relations. A former Asia director at the National Security Council, Evan Medeiros, said of the call, Trump is
setting a foundation of enduring mistrust and strategic competition for US-China relations. Even those who
supported the call made it about China. On Twitter, New York Representative Pete King called it a strong
message to China.
What is the story behind Trump's phone call with Taiwan?

Play Video2:32
The Washington Posts Jia Lynn Yang explains the back story on relations between the U.S., China and
Taiwan and the ramifications of Friday's telephone call between President-elect Donald Trump and Taiwanese
President Tsai Ing-wen. (Alice Li, Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)
Even though Trumps repudiation of diplomatic protocol is troubling, this is a long overdue chance for us to
return our attention to Taiwan for Taiwans sake and reconsider Americas outdated position on it.
When I started working on my novel Green Island, set in Taiwan during the second half of the 20th century, I
had to wade through the history of words used to describe it. Free China. Chinese Taipei. Republic of China.
Taiwan. Reunification. Unification. Province. Country. I have watched the media struggle through this
negotiation around language in the past week. In the clamor to parse what China will do, or what this means
for America, the perspectives and stories of the people of Taiwan have been ignored.
From 1895 to 1945, under the Treaty of Shimonoseki, Taiwan was a colony of Japan, acquired from the Qing
From 1895 to 1945, under the Treaty of Shimonoseki, Taiwan was a colony of Japan, acquired from the Qing
Empire. When Japan gave up its colonies at the end of World War II, the Kuomintang (KMT), also known as
the Chinese Nationalist Party, which then ruled China, took control.
One of Chiang Kai-sheks most successful projects after the KMT occupied Taiwan was revamping the
educational system. Not only did the KMT enforce Mandarin language use, but it also replaced Taiwans
history with Chinas. This erasure continued throughout Chiangs authoritarian regime and over 38 years of
martial law.
The end of World War II also saw the resumption of the conflict between the Chinese Communist Party and
the KMT. Losing the Chinese Civil War, the KMT fled to Taiwan in 1949, establishing the island as its base for
the Republic of China with a plan to return and rule China again. There was no split but rather a retreat by
KMT members and their families, around 2 million people, to Taiwan, where nearly 6 million people already
lived. Having recently emerged from 50 years of Japanese colonialism, the Taiwanese encountered
considerable friction with the newly arrived Chinese, who had spent eight years fighting the Japanese.
This is why words matter when it comes to Taiwan. Much of the coverage describes Taiwans history as if it
began in 1949. Using words like split and reunification effaces the history that existed before that. I cant
help but think about what stories get lost.
For example, the story of Mona Rudao, chief of the Seediq tribe, one of 16 indigenous groups of
Austronesian heritage that have inhabited Taiwan for thousands of years. In 1930, Rudao led an armed
resistance against the Japanese colonizers. The Japanese countered with double the forces and mustard
gas bombs in such an appalling display of violence that their policies regarding the indigenous population
would subsequently be revised. Rudao killed himself to avoid being caught, and his remains were put on
display as warning to other would-be rebels. His image now graces the 20 Taiwanese-dollar coin.
We lose the story of the painful Japanization movement, during which Taiwans people were forced to speak
Japanese and take Japanese names. Young men conscripted into the Japanese army paid a blood tax by
proving their loyalty to Japan with their lives. Young women were forced to serve soldiers as sex slaves.
Also gone is the story of the people who wished for American-style democracy after the Japanese colonists
left in 1945, only to have their hopes crushed by the Kuomintang forces.
A narrow view of history makes it easier to forget Feb. 28, 1947, when protests began in response to the
beating by Tobacco Monopoly Bureau agents of a young widow selling black-market cigarettes the kind of
tragic encounter that surely resonates in contemporary America. The KMT responded with a month-long
massacre in which as many as 30,000 Taiwanese were murdered or disappeared to suppress resistance to
its authority.
And it erases the tens of thousands imprisoned and executed during the decades of terror that followed the
massacre. For nearly 40 years, the people of Taiwan had barbed wire wrapped around their tongues as they
were forbidden to speak of the horrors committed by Chiang and his men. The sorrow of that era still lingers:
Martial law ended only in 1987. Claiming that Taiwans history begins in 1949 is a second silencing.
Finally, we cant forget that despite this painful history, Taiwan transformed itself into a democracy, with
freedom of the press, universal health care and a democratically elected female president. These are
achievements of resilience we should recognize and applaud.
We cant change policy in a day, or reinstate recognition of Taiwan with a snap of our fingers (or a phone call),
but we can at least do the honest work of understanding the nuances of the history of Taiwan and its people.

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Taiwan is a country with history and people.

Its not just a

What is the story behind Trump's phone call with Taiwan?

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