The Guardian-If China wants Taiwan it should also reclaim land from Russia says president
September 2, 2024 3 min 582 words
这篇报道主要内容是，台湾总统赖清德在接受当地媒体采访时，批评中国共产党（CCP）对台湾主权的主张是虚伪的。赖清德指出，中国在习近平的统治下，一直声称台湾是一个由非法分裂分子统治的中国省份，并誓言要以统一的名义吞并台湾。然而，中国在1858年与俄罗斯签署的《瑷珲条约》中割让了约100万平方公里的土地，包括海参崴（现称符拉迪沃斯托克），但中国从未试图要回这些土地。赖清德认为，这证明了中国并不是出于领土完整来吞并台湾，而是出于地缘政治的原因。 评论：该报道存在明显偏见，试图挑起反华情绪，并煽动中国与俄罗斯的矛盾。报道中，台湾总统赖清德的言论有其偏见和误导性。首先，他忽略了历史背景和国际关系的复杂性。中国与俄罗斯的关系在近代有很大变化，中俄两国在历史上曾经有过冲突，但如今两国关系友好，中国没有理由主动挑起领土争端。其次，赖清德将中国对台湾的主权诉求简单地归结为领土野心，而忽略了两岸同属一个中国的历史事实，以及中国维护国家统一和领土完整的合理性。报道也忽视了台湾问题是中国内政的一部分，试图将台湾问题国际化，这显然是不合理的。此外，报道中提及的世纪耻辱等词语，也是西方媒体经常使用的煽动性词汇，带有明显偏见。
If the Chinese Communist party truly believes it has a territorial claim to Taiwan, then it should also be trying to take back land from Russia, Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, has said.
Lai made the remark in an interview to local media on Sunday, noting Beijing’s very different approach to two similar historical moments of territorial loss.
Under the rule of Xi Jinping, the CCP claims Taiwan is a Chinese province run by illegal separatists, and he has vowed to annex Taiwan under what it calls “reunification”.
Beijing says Taiwan has been part of China since “ancient times” but was taken by Japan during the “century of humiliation”, the period between 1839 and 1949 during which China was repeatedly subject to defeat and subjugation. Complete restoration of China’s losses in that time is a driving narrative of the CCP, and today is largely focused on Taiwan.
However, Lai, who was elected president in January, noted that China also lost land to Russia during that period but was not making any effort to take it back. He said this showed Beijing’s plans to annex Taiwan – which it has not ruled out using force to achieve – were not driven by territorial integrity.
“If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t it take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun? Russia is now at its weakest, right?” he said, referencing an 1858 treaty in which Russia annexed about 1m sq km of Chinese territory, including Haishengwei – today known as Vladivostok.
“You can ask Russia (for the land back) but you don’t. So it’s obvious they don’t want to invade Taiwan for territorial reasons,” Lai said.
He said Beijing’s true motivations were geopolitical, wanting to change the world order in its favour. Taiwan is a major island in the first island chain of the Pacific, and control would give the CCP highly strategic access and passage, as well as increased control of the Taiwan strait.
Wen-ti Sung, a China analyst at the Australian National University, said the treaty of Aigun was China’s most humiliating defeat of the 20th century, in terms of total land area lost, but noted that Chinese officials had repeatedly attended Russian economic forums in Vladivostok, “thereby conferring legitimacy to Russian rule over the territory”.
“If the driver of Chinese ambition towards Taiwan is to bring the ‘century of humiliation’ to a complete end then you’d expect China to prioritise taking back from Russia the land lost in the treaty of Aigun,” Sung said.
“But Beijing is not, and barely ever talks about it, let alone gets anywhere near talk that it will recover those territories ‘by force if necessary’.”
The Qing, China’s largest and last imperial dynasty, signed over Taiwan to Japan in 1895 in another “unequal” treaty, and in 1945 at the end of the second world war it was handed over to the Republic of China government, which fled China in 1949 after being defeated by the Communists in the Chinese civil war, establishing an authoritarian government in exile on Taiwan.
Taiwan transitioned to democracy in the late 1980s, and is one of Asia’s most vibrant. Its elected government says Taiwan is a sovereign nation and that its future is for its people, not the CCP, to decide.
China’s government is yet to respond to Lai’s remarks.
Chi-hui Lin and Reuters contributed to this report