In an article published last week, the British 'Economist' parrots China’s lie that Taiwan is a part of it, and in the process erases the history of the nation’s indigenous communities
Last week the Economist (“A short history of Taiwan and China, in maps,” July 10) and Al Jazeera both sent around short explainers of the Taiwan-China issue.
The Al Jazeera explainer […] was fairly standard, and it works because it appeals to the well-understood convention that Taiwan enters history in 1949 when the KMT retreats to it.
Very different, and far more pernicious, was the biased, error-studded production by the Economist. Centering Taiwan against Chinese history, it claimed that “After Japan’s defeat in 1945 Taiwan was ceded to the nationalist government of the ROC [Republic of China]” and that Taiwan became a province of the Qing empire in 1885. Neither is correct: Taiwan was not made a province by the Manchus until 1887, and it was never ceded to the ROC. Moreover, in the best pro-China fashion, Japanese rule in Taiwan simply disappears from the discussion.
