OPINION:
China’s “reunification” slogan is a hoax sustained by fear, ideology and deception. Taiwan is not a rebellious province but a living refutation of communist determinism, a society that chose freedom over fear. Here are the 10 most salient reasons:
Taiwan has never been part of the People’s Republic of China
Not a single inch of Taiwan’s territory has ever been governed by the Chinese Communist Party. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Taiwan has remained entirely outside its control politically, legally and militarily. The claim of “reunification” is therefore a deliberate falsehood: One cannot “reunify” with what was never unified.
Taiwan’s sovereignty is not an extension of the KMT-CCP civil war
Taiwan’s sovereignty and independence are not byproducts of the Kuomintang-Communist struggle. Nor are they rooted in ethnolinguistic connections with China. To claim otherwise mirrors the logic of Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine: invoking shared language and history to justify invasion. Taiwan’s modern sovereignty emerged not in 1911 with the fall of the Qing, nor in 1949 when the KMT fled to the island, but in the late 1980s when it democratized and ceased claiming to represent “China.” Like Ukraine after 1991, Taiwan’s statehood stems from its political awakening, not from the collapse of an empire.
International law rejects historical justifications for conquest
The 2016 Hague tribunal ruling against China’s South China Sea claims decisively refuted the use of “historical rights” as grounds for territorial claims. China’s “nine-dash line” was deemed legally baseless. The same principle applies to Taiwan: Ancient ties, migration or dynastic rule cannot justify modern annexation. Yet Beijing continues to weaponize history to justify expansion, pressuring neighbors such as India, Bhutan, Vietnam and Japan. Its behavior is that of a neo-imperial power, not a postcolonial victim.
The CCP’s motivation is ideological, not territorial
The CCP’s fixation on Taiwan is not about “national reunification.” It is about completing the unfinished communist “liberation” of 1949. Taiwan’s continued autonomy stands as an ideological wound, a reminder that the communist revolution never conquered all of “China.” The party’s military, the so-called People’s Liberation Army, still defines its mission in terms of “liberating” Taiwan. This obsession reveals not patriotism but revolutionary revanchism, an unyielding drive to prove the infallibility of the party and its founding myth.
The CCP has never cared about historical borders
If territorial integrity were the true motive, Beijing would not have willingly ceded vast tracts, many times larger than the small island of Taiwan, of historically Chinese land to its ideological allies. The CCP recognized Mongolian independence in 1945, handed large land areas to the Soviet Union, and settled boundaries with socialist Burma and communist North Korea. The party’s history of giving away “Chinese” lands exposes the hollowness of its Taiwan rhetoric. Ideology, not geography, has always guided its choices.
U.S. policy does not recognize Taiwan as part of China
None of the U.S.-China diplomatic and legal instruments, including the Three Communiques, the Taiwan Relations Act and the Six Assurances, accepts Beijing’s claim that Taiwan belongs to China. America’s One China Policy merely acknowledges that the PRC claims Taiwan, without agreeing or disagreeing. Washington opposes any attempt to alter the status quo by force and insists that any settlement must have the consent of the people on both sides of the strait.
Poll after poll shows that the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese support the status quo, i.e., de facto independence, and identify as Taiwanese, not Chinese, just as more than 75% of the ethnic Chinese in Singapore identify as Singaporeans, not Chinese.
As for U.N. Resolution 2758 of 1971, it only transferred China’s seat from Taipei to Beijing; it did not declare Taiwan part of the PRC. U.S. administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, have consistently affirmed this interpretation, most recently in August. Beijing’s distortion of the resolution is propaganda, not international law.
Taiwan as a convenient distraction
Beijing’s obsession with Taiwan conveniently diverts domestic and international attention from the CCP’s real transgressions: its role in global fentanyl trafficking, the origins of COVID-19, systemic human rights abuses, religious persecution, and serial violations of trade and treaty obligations. By inflaming nationalist fervor over Taiwan, the CCP deflects scrutiny from its own crimes and manipulates international discourse. The “Taiwan issue” is less about sovereignty than about scapegoating.
Fear of freedom: Taiwan as the CCP’s existential threat
What terrifies the CCP is not Taiwan’s geography but its example. Taiwan’s success as a free, democratic, ethnically Chinese society demolishes Beijing’s central lie that Chinese culture is incompatible with liberty. With vibrant elections, protected property rights and the rule of law, Taiwan embodies what China could be without the party’s tyranny. The CCP’s fear is existential: A prosperous, democratic Taiwan proves that the Chinese people are fully capable of self-government.
Hence, the party’s crusade to “eliminate” Taiwan is also an effort to extinguish hope for freedom among 1.4 billion mainland Chinese.
The machinery of disinformation and its Western proxies
To reinforce its false narrative, Beijing has spent decades cultivating a sophisticated disinformation network in the West. Its proxies include business elites entangled in Chinese markets, globalist opinion-mongers and columnists who echo CCP talking points, past and incumbent federal bureaucrats with a passion for diplomatic harmony and bilateral tranquility, blame-America-first academics, university research centers funded by the CCP’s United Front Work cash and think tanks bankrolled by corporate interests. These apologists cast Taiwan as the provocateur, its elected leaders as “reckless” and the United States as the “instigator.” This ecosystem of influence, rooted in greed, ideological sympathy, self-seeking sycophancy and willful ignorance, serves the CCP’s ultimate goal: to erode Western moral clarity and normalize authoritarian aggression.
The final hoax: ‘Reunification’ as imperial restoration
The word “reunification” masks a project of imperial restoration. The CCP’s claim to Taiwan is not about restoring Chinese unity but reasserting one-party dominance over all Chinese-speaking peoples. It is the same logic that drives its repression in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong: that no alternative political model may exist within the “Chinese nation.”
“Reunification” is thus not a national project but a totalitarian one. It demands submission, not cooperation, erasure, not harmony. To call it a matter of “internal affairs” and “national reunification” is to grant legitimacy to conquest and to betray the universal principles of sovereignty and self-determination. The question before the world is not whether China and Taiwan are “one” but whether truth and tyranny can coexist.
History suggests they cannot, and that is precisely what Beijing fears most.
• Miles Yu is the director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute. His “Red Horizon” column appears every other Tuesday in The Washington Times. He can be reached at mmilesyu@gmail.com.
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