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There’s been much talk about the costs of defending Taiwan in worst case scenarios of PRC invasion. But less about the nationalist outlook justifying such aggression – irredentism (民族统一主义). We should think carefully of what it means to accede to PRC irredentism on Taiwan 1/
Of course, nations may have genuine grievances when some of their territory is lost to unprovoked military aggression. Those grievances may rightfully persist for so long as the territory is not returned: for instance, Ukrainian grievance at the Russian annexation of Crimea. 2/
However, the irredentism I have in mind – displayed in Chinese claims to Taiwan – is not of this type. It typically presupposes 4 claims, or myths of the ethnic-based “national idea”: A. The claimant nation is ancient, with an unbroken history extending into the distant past. 3/
B. It consists of a people sharing a distinctive cultural-linguistic identity and history. C. There is a specifiable territory to which that people can make irrefutable historical claim to as their national homeland or “motherland”. 4/
D. Alienation or deprivation of any part of that homeland, no matter how historically distant, is a national loss or humiliation to be redeemed only by recovery of the lost territory. Irredentism of this type arose in the early 19th century, with the movement to “reunify” 5/
the German peoples as a nation after the Napoleonic Wars, fueled by the romantic nationalist movement in art and literature, in political thought and jurisprudence, which solidified in people’s minds the “national idea”. 6/
We hardly need to remember what wars and mass killings this idea has legitimated, even as its potent myths also (as Isaiah Berlin insisted) sometimes motivated genuine movements for liberation from injustice and repression - in 19th and 20th century Europe, 7/
in post-imperial and post-colonial struggles of nation formation world-wide, and so forth. In this light there is nothing unique or original in PRC national claims to Taiwan or anywhere else in Asia. Indeed, many have noted how drawn early 20th century Chinese nationalists 8/
were to early 19th century German nationalism, identifying with the humiliated, fragmented, defeated state of the Napoleonic era German peoples, and admiring the reforms, strategems and military genius through which they attained unification and great power status. 9/
More critical Chinese scholars of German nationalism – and of the uptake of German nationalist ideas in 20th century China – note how easily there is a transition from defensive nationalism seeking liberation from foreign domination and national progress, to a nationalism of 10/
expansionism and hegemonism. That is the conclusion of Chinese political scientist Gao Like in this article. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/rwfE_rst7iIwZhFWFYs01Q?fbclid=IwAR1CkoMKBLjl6cMawvYi9uOQGxZPpGTLmLzPX5WJPKgITZq0m_czY45ahEs Irredentism provides the most direct route for that transition. And now, with the resurgence of the “national idea” in the past decades 11/
under the Chinese Communist Party, we should think very carefully of what it means for regional and even global stability to accept the mythologies upon which China makes its claims to Taiwan, especially since the majority of Taiwanese repudiate such mythologies, 12/
and claim a distinct nationhood for themselves. For in PRC claims to Taiwan as "the sacred territory of the People's Republic of China" “we can discern the eastern echo of German nationalism”. end/
