What you're not hearing about Taiwan

A guest post from Melissa Chan.

Hello everyone,

Today, something a little bit different. I’m delighted to bring you Proximities’ first-ever guest piece. And I couldn’t be more proud to say it’s from one of my absolute favorite journalists, the Emmy-nominated Melissa Chan.

I first became aware of Melissa when I saw her reporting from China for Al Jazeera English in the 2010s. Her work was smart and in-depth, and it provided context and focus that you didn’t see in Western media. I’ve never forgotten this report in which she found a secret “black jail” and knocked on the door.

Melissa remains one of the must-listen voices on China and many other topics. Recently, along with activist artist Badiucao, she published “You Must Take Part in the Revolution,” a graphic novel set in a near-future dystopia where a proto-fascist U.S. is at war with China, and Taiwan is divided. Quite the setting. I loved the book, it made me think, and I learned a lot. You can buy it here.

For Proximities, Melissa writes an explainer about Taiwan. It goes deeper than much of the coverage you’ll read elsewhere, in which the country is, as Melissa says, usually reported in all too shallow a manner.

Until next Saturday,

Barry.

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Taiwan makes international headlines — but primarily in two ways: 1) whether China will invade the island democracy, 2) and how world powers are trying to get their hands on the most advanced semiconductor chips in the world, which it produces.

In both cases, Taiwan is a contested space to be fought over. It is rarely presented as a place with its own agency.

Beijing’s attempts to dispute its status, and the fact most countries in the world — including the United States — do not hold formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan adds to the confusion.

So is Taiwan a country?

Taiwan might not have diplomatic relations with many countries, but de facto “embassies” exist that function pretty much the same way they do anywhere. As a top 20 economy globally, other countries naturally engage with Taiwan on trade and other matters.

Diplomatic relations are not the sole criteria for determining statehood. I could get into the nitty gritty of the Montevideo Convention of 1933 defining statehood, and we’ve seen how statehood is heatedly contested over Palestine, too — where Palestine has a lot more diplomatic recognition than Taiwan, but a lot less sovereignty. Here are some practical characteristics that non-legal normies will recognize as “country behavior.” Taiwan:

🗳️ Is a democracy that holds its own elections.

🏛️ Has a national government that does everything normal from taxation, public education, infrastructure, to running one of the best universal healthcare systems in the world.

💰 Has its own currency.

🪖 A military.

🛂 Its own passport.

✈️ Here’s one that’ll get ya: If you’re at the Beijing airport flying to Taipei … You do so out of the international terminal, even though China insists Taiwan is a “province.”

So yeah — about China. What is its deal? Why does it say Taiwan is a part of China?

Nationalism! China is led by an autocratic leader with maximalist geographic ambitions. Beijing has border disputes with India, Japan, and in the South China Sea with a host of Southeast Asian countries (most notably with the Philippines these days). It’s even encroached into tiny Bhutan and of course, has occupied Tibet for decades.

The fact is the People’s Republic of China has never administered Taiwan. What did happen is that the losers of China’s civil war — the Kuomintang — retreated to Taiwan and ran the island for decades, calling it “China.” There’s a lot more history there — earlier in the 20^th century, Taiwan was also a colony of Japan. Beijing will point to old maps and dissect promises made between and by the great European powers of old to justify its position — again, that may sound familiar to another statehood dispute half a world away.

As a foreign correspondent that has looked at territorial conflicts for a long time, I’ve long ago learned that reinterpreted history is used as a weapon to deny people self-determination. I think what matters most is very simply what people alive today want. Here’s what contemporary polls tell us: The vast majority of people in Taiwan consider themselves Taiwanese, with only 3% identifying as solely Chinese. And they want to be left alone — i.e., they want to maintain the status quo.

If Taiwan isn’t China, what is it?

It’s the sum of all the people and cultures that have passed through it. And yes — this means that the primary language spoken there today is Mandarin, which was brought over by the Kuomintang in the 20^th century. That doesn’t give Beijing any more of a pass to claim the place.

But you can go much further back, to the indigenous peoples of the island, who are Austronesian and have been around for 15,000 years. These groups expanded across the oceans, settling everywhere from Madagascar to Polynesia. We know this in part due to linguistic threads and genetic studies. And indeed — if you’re wondering whether that means Hawaiians might be related to indigenous Taiwanese… the answer is yes!

Contemporary Taiwan is innovative and complex. It is a young democracy. The country faces its own challenges with political polarization in a time of online disinformation, and its citizens must decide what they want on tough issues from migration to nuclear energy.

Further reading:

The non-fiction book I’d recommend is this year’s newly released Ghost Nation: The Story of Taiwan and Its Struggle for Survival, by Chris Horton. Chris is a longtime Taiwan-based foreign correspondent and his work deftly explains the contemporary context while providing critically important historical narrative.

Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuang-zi won the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2024. Set in the era of Japanese colonization, a woman from Nagasaki arrives in Taiwan and falls for her local interpreter, another young woman. A story about history, language, and power dynamics.

And one to highlight the country’s challenges: Taiwan’s Democracy Is in Trouble [Foreign Affairs]