Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

An article by University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer titled “Say Goodbye to Taiwan” in the March-April issue of the National Interest is thought-provoking. In his essay, first published online on Feb. 25, Mearsheimer predicts that in the face of China’s continued rise, Taiwan will have to give up even its present de facto independent status and seek a Hong Kong-style accommodation with Beijing.

Mearsheimer, who is a political scientist from the “offensive realism” school of international relations, did do his homework for the essay and studied local political attitudes carefully. For instance, he presents recent statistics showing that — assuming that China will not attack Taiwan — the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese, 80.2 percent, would opt for independence.

Right after arriving in Taiwan in the spring of 1947, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) troops started what is now known as the 228 Incident by machine-gunning Taiwanese indiscriminately on streets, executing many of the local elite in public, shooting wire-strung Taiwanese in groups and dumping bodies into the sea. In these scenes, KMT troops — an Allied occupation force — participated in slaughtering peaceful protesters.

This constitutes an ethnic cleansing of Taiwanese by Chinese — it is an atrocity, like those committed by the Nazis against the Jews and by the Khmer Rouge against Cambodians.