Thank you.
I teach a course in Taiwan history at the University of Calgary. Every other year, I teach it. I'm now completing a book on the White Terror in Taiwan, or Chiang Kai-shek's crackdown on suspected Communist agents between 1947 and 1986 or so.
I've been thinking and worrying about Taiwan for over four decades now. I first went to Taiwan in 1980 when I was still a teenager, and I have been criss-crossing the Pacific to and from that beautiful island ever since. I am still as besotted with it today as I was in September 1980, but now I worry more than ever about mainland China's military threat to the island.
In the free and democratic world, we feel an easy and natural affinity with fellow democratic countries and societies and long deeply to be in solidarity with them and protect them, if we can, against threats by non-democratic and anti-democratic dictatorships, but ironically and tragically, some of the steps that democratic countries wish to take towards protecting Taiwan's democracy may in fact achieve just the opposite result.
As far as Taiwan today is concerned, are high-profile visits by political bigwigs from democratic countries the best way to support Taiwan? What if they make us feel good but make hundreds of millions of people in mainland China feel very bad indeed?
As I wrote in the Calgary Herald on August 6 this year:
On the mainland, a large majority of Chinese support unification with Taiwan, even by force if necessary, not out of mindless pugnacity or sheer cussedness, but because they feel deeply, in their bones, that China's loss of Taiwan in 1895 is a longstanding grave historical injustice to China, one that must not remain unredressed indefinitely.
My wife of 38 years, who is with me here tonight, was born in Taiwan to Chinese parents who fled the mainland in 1949 in the face of the Communist takeover. She both strongly dislikes Chinese Communism and understands very well that the overwhelming majority of people who identify as Chinese, including her, will never accept Taiwan formalizing and normalizing its current de facto independence. For her and the overwhelming majority of people in mainland China, China's loss of Taiwan to Japan in 1895 remains a deep humiliation, one that will never be erased until the effects of the Treaty of Shimonoseki are fully reversed.
Today, she greatly fears that the failure of or refusal by many Taiwanese today to take this threat seriously will end in unspeakable tragedy for Taiwan.
I am sure that the situation in Ukraine right now does indeed give the CCP and the People's Liberation Army significant pause and great cause for concern, but this does not mean that the CCP will abandon the option of military force against Taiwan. China may defer its plans to invade Taiwan, but it will never abandon them.
Make no mistake: China will attack Taiwan if it becomes convinced that Taiwan will always decline any and all overtures for peaceful annexation. China's sabre-rattling and gruff pronouncements about Taiwan may look bellicose and buffoonish, and they may well be, but this does not mean China is bluffing. It is not.
I do not presume to advise this committee on all aspects of Canada-China relations, but your difficult—and prickly right now—management of these relations will require careful, prudent and multivalent formulations. I ask only that this committee take Beijing's firm and recently reiterated commitments regarding Taiwan into account as it navigates the troubled waters of Canada's relations with China.
A line in the ancient Chinese text Tao Te Ching says this: “No other folly or calamity is greater than underestimating one's opponent.”
I implore this committee and this Parliament not to underestimate or downplay or discount Beijing's resolve in this regard.
Thank you.