#taiwanchina #chinataiwan #reunification
China's Communist Party says that the only way to stop foreign attack of the island is to reunite with Taiwan.
Taiwan does not want to be ruled by China because it is a democracy. Five hundred years ago, China made a deal with Taiwan. Now, China is afraid that people will see what a democratic and free Chinese people and country can do.
A new book by leading Communist Party figures says that the only way for Beijing to permanently solve its problems with Taiwan is to bring it back into the fold. This way, Beijing can avoid having Taiwan attacked by a foreign power. No one knows who these outside foreign forces are. But Taiwanese people want to be free.
Only by fully reuniting the motherland can fellow citizens on both sides be freed from the shadow of civil war and work together to make and share lasting peace across the Taiwan Strait, a piece in the book said.The publication is the formal reason why the party changed its constitution last month.
The piece went on to say that "unification with Taiwan is the only way to keep Taiwan from being occupied by foreign countries again and to beat the attempts of external forces to contain China and protect national sovereignty, security, and development interests."
It also said that union was the only way to get rid of the threat that forces pushing for Taiwan's independence would "separate China."
The article gave a reason for the party's choice to add "opposing and containing Taiwan independence" to its constitution last month. This is the first time that the document has made a clear reference to the issue of tensions around the island.
About twenty leading party activists wrote the book Questions and Answers of the 20th Party Congress Constitution Amendments. It was supervised by three current members of the seven-person Politburo Standing Committee: Wang Huning, who used to be the party's ideology chief; Zhao Leji, who used to be its anti-corruption chief; and Ding Xuexiang, who is President Xi Jinping's chief of staff.
The book came out on October 28 from the Party Building Books Publishing House, which is connected to the Central Organization Department, which is the party's main body for hiring and teaching staff.
Even though Beijing has been very vocal about the Taiwan situation since US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taipei in August, the Communist Party rarely makes its points so clear when it comes to the Taiwan problem.
The book didn't talk about how Beijing would unify with Taiwan. However, in his work report given at the 20th party meeting last month, Xi said that Beijing would do everything it could to reunite with Taiwan peacefully, but that it would never promise not to use force.
In the most recent piece, the US is named directly, as some US groups saw mainland China as a major strategic enemy and long-term threat "out of a hegemonic and cold war mentality."
It said, "These forces do everything they can to contain and control China, using Taiwan to do so."
"Some people in the US say they support the one-China policy and not Taiwan independence, but they have been doing the exact opposite. They are strengthening official ties with Taiwan, planning military sales, and making military ties between the US and Taiwan stronger."
The story said that these groups pushed Taiwan's independence supporters to make things worse on the other side of the strait by accusing the mainland of "putting pressure on," "threaten[ing], and "unilaterally changing the status quo." The writers said that these steps were bound to fail.
"Unification is the right thing to do and the way things have always gone," the article said. "Taiwan independence" is going against the grain of history and will not lead anywhere."
In August, when Pelosi went to Taiwan, ties between the US and China hit their lowest point in fifty years. Beijing saw this as an invasion of its sovereignty.
Beijing had been warning Pelosi many times not to go, so it strongly condemned the visit and held days of live-fire drills around Taiwan, including dozens of crossings over the median line in the Taiwan Strait, which had been the real border up until that point.
Beijing thinks of Taiwan as part of its land that it needs to take back, even if it means using force. The US is one of the few countries that doesn't recognize Taiwan as a separate state. Washington, on the other hand, is against using force to take the island.
Since it began in 1921, the party's constitution has been changed at each national meeting. It now includes the political ideas of all of the party's most important leaders, from Mao Zedong to Xi, and a change made in 1982 that banned personality cults.
