Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

As Russia’s war on Ukraine grinds on into its second year, it continues to generate headlines as the largest land war in Europe since 1945. Yet 5,000 miles away, at the opposite end of the Eurasian land mass, a different conflict lies poised to ignite, kindled by another large country’s distortion of a shared cultural and ethnolinguistic heritage to threaten a smaller neighbor’s sovereignty.

Many headlines have also been written on the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to isolate and strangle the small but defiant democracy on the island of Taiwan. Yet many of these analyses fail to locate the sources of China’s obsession with its neighbor to the southeast. Any effort to neutralize Chinese aggression must begin with one question: why is China so obsessed with subduing a tiny nation of only 23 million people? Examining this question reveals four key motivators animating Beijing’s mania.

On May 18, 1980, students in Gwangju, South Korea, rallied against martial law. The Gwangju Uprising was soon suppressed, as then-South Korean general Chun Doo-hwan sent in troops to crush the protests. Consequently, 154 people were killed, 70 people disappeared and 3,028 were injured.

Fortunately, thanks to photographs taken by German reporter Jurgen Hinzpeter, the world learned the truth. After Chun became South Korean president later that year, the uprising was defined as a rebellion instigated by communists and their sympathizers.