Chinese TV series Features Manchu Conquest of Taiwan

ESWN has a pretty good piece on a bit of Chinese propaganda about how the Manchu Qing Dynasty General Shi Lang "recovered" Taiwan. Yes, he recovered a land that had never been Chinese. There's a long post from a Chinese blog, which does a good job of showing how confused the Chinese are about the situation here and history here....

++++++++++++

2. This will be made use of by the Taiwan independence elements. At the present, mainland China proposes that as long as the principle of One China is upheld, peace and stability can exist across the straits. The Taiwan independence forces want to achieve the goal of separation and they actively create ethnic divisions and denigrate China. Under these circumstances, it is extremely inappropriate to compare mainland China with the Manchurian dynasty and Taiwan with the Zheng family.

(1) This will be used to attack the Chinese policy for Taiwan. Presently, the people of Taiwan only have a fuzzy idea of Chinese policies towards Taiwan, but the history of Shi Lang's pacification of Taiwan is well-known. Psychologists have shown by experiments that people often have extreme psychological reactions to lively and vivid information and therefore create a wrong impression that will increase mutual mistrust. Since the Taiwan independence forces control public opinion, they may use this to suggest that mainland China intends to conquer Taiwan by force, and so the people must not be fooled and they must purchase American weapons to protect themselves.

(2) This will be used to attack Chinese civilization. At presently, the Taiwanese independence forces is promoting the "de-Sinofication" process. Within the textbooks, they list Chinese history after the Ming Dynasty under world history. If we promote Shi Lang every day, the Taiwan independence forces will say that mainland China is still prettifying the history of the Manchurians enslaving the Chinese. "They are overlooking the civilization of the Han and Tang dynasties, but they dwell with great relish on the days of "wearing a pig tail" as slaves. Since Chinese civilization is beyond salvation, we must become independent in order to rid ourselves of this degenerate civilization and enter into the ranks of developed countries such as the United States and Japan." This is benefiting the Japanese ghouls. It is worth mentioning that the mother of Zheng Chenggong is Japanese and he was born in the Japanese history of Nagasaki. The Japanese treat Zheng Chenggong as their national hero, with a famous drama about Zheng Chenggong taking back Taiwan. The fantasy of the Japanese is to treat Zheng Chenggong as their own national hero in order to take over Taiwan. If we denigrate the Zheng family, it would be heaven-sent for the Japanese! They would then link up with the Japanese-loving Taiwan independence elements, and inject more complexities for the Taiwan problem.

Based upon the above, at a critical moment in the twists of cross-strait history, we ought to give up speaking about how Shi Lang took Taiwan back and praising how the Manchurian Qing dynasty unified China. This can only create more distance between Taiwan and mainland China, and isolate the unification proponents in Taiwan.

This is a fascinatingly bad reading of the situation, but interesting nonetheless....

[Taiwan] [China] [Taiwan Independence]