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Yosief Abraham Z.
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China's Puzzles, US Equations and Taiwan' s Calculations: Result?

London, Britain Current Affairs 08 Feb 2023

History is now witnessing reversed historical landscapes. Back in May 1949, Taiwan was under a Martial law that was declared by the new relocated central government. Back then, the US government had an eroded interest on the effects of the repressing law and it's aggressive impacts. Reversely, Washington was expectin g Taiwan to fall under the auspices of the communists from mainland China.
Amid this, historically shifting war between North Korea and South Korea was inflamed on 25 June of 1950. With China and the Soviet Union on its side, North Korea invaded South Korea. With this scenario on its agenda, US also started engaging fiercely as critical supporter of South Korea. Beyond the North and South Korea's gaming calculations, however, US President Harry S. Truman intervened again and dispatched the US Navy's 7th Fleet into the Taiwan Strait by founding an invented reason: the inescapable criticality to prevent possible war that could have stemmed from the acrimonious hostilities between Taiwan and mainland China.
With various historical incidents that involved China and USA, both countries forceful warring in the Korean Peninsula also mounted China's sovereignty puzzles and US hegemony equations. Here, Truman's administration was deeply concerned about fishing out Japan from the drenches of war complications thus to tame the individually accumulated possible synergies of the Chinese and the Soviets.
As if his administration was not less interested on the Taiwanese and Koreans political puzzles, however, Truman's administration equation was reversed and came with new comparability : ensuring the containment of the communists sphere from, and in, every possible corner of the globe. Regarding this, the National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) (declassified in 1975) elaborates:
"Communism was acting in Korea, just as Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese had ten, fifteen, and twenty years earlier. I felt certain that if South Korea was allowed to fall, Communist leaders would be emboldened to override nations closer to our own shores. If the Communists were permitted to force their way into the Republic of Korea without opposition from the free world, no small nation would have the courage to resist threat and aggression by stronger Communist neighbors."
Taiwan soon started adding its own political calculations that was founded on appeasing the US thus to ensure its claimed legitimacy as governor of China's mainland. To do this, Taiwan requested to involve in the inflated Koreans war. Though US respond to Taiwanese request was --afraid of possible Chinese retaliatory actions-- negative, the US, however, chose to demonstrate its equation --as stated earlier-- by deploying it's Seventh Fleet under the pretext of 'neutralizing' the Taiwan Strait from hostilities. UN initiatives and America's movements then denounced by the Chinese premier Zhou as "armed aggression on Chinese territory".[149]
Back then, the administration in Taiwan was grinding the society's human rights to the ground awfully. The 'White Terror' system that was incubated under the 1949 Martial Law was not appealed until 1987 and served as trusted pretext for suppressing any political dissidence. Under this law, many citizens were exposed to mass arrest, imprisonment, torture and execution for perceived or real links and sympathy to the Communists. Truman's administration, however, was not ready for picking the 'human rights card' in calculating the game he had over Taiwan. US political equation thus entered to unprecedented results; complicating the political gimmicks against the mainland China was the core DNA of Washington.
Thus, mainland China's puzzles were continued getting factors of enigmatic actions from USA. As Washington was in grudge of the People's Republic of China's intervention in Korea and it's fierce military counter-measures, US had thus founded itself busy in creating new equations regarding China's puzzles over Taiwan. Its stance regarding the Treaty of San Francisco and the Treaty of Taipei was, therefore, such an opportunity for US to reveal its complicating political equations.
Here, as clearly bolded in the aforementioned treaties that were came into force respectively on 28 April 1952 and 5 August 1952, Japan officially relinquishing all the claims, rights and titles it had to Taiwan and Penghu. However, both treaties failed, absolutely, in specifying to whom sovereignty over the islands should be transferred. This resulted from the jeopardising gimmicks the United Kingdom and the United States conflicting stances. Here, both nthe United States and the United Kingdom disagreed on whether the ROC or the PRC was the legitimate government of China.
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