Tens of thousands of innocent Taiwanese were slaughtered by government troops sent from China following spontaneous riots one day after the death of a spectator shot by a stray bullet fired by a Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau armed agent in Taipei on Feb. 27, 1947. The massacre spawned the feud between the Taiwanese and the Chinese mainlanders and resuscitated Taiwan’s independence movement, first launched by the Taiwan Communist Party in 1928.

The feud was almost disarmed after decades of intermarriages and the popularization of Mandarin, which has taken the place of Japanese as the lingua franca on Taiwan. With the Democratic Progressive Party coming into power in 2000, the stage was set for an all-out “hate-China” campaign.

It was a government-coordinated movement to de-Sinicize Taiwan. People were taught they are Taiwanese, not Chinese, and have to give up historical association with China. A new Taiwanese nationalism has emerged as the result of a long separation of Taiwan from Communist China, which President Chiang Kai-shek did what he could to persuade the Taiwanese to hate. Older Taiwanese nostalgic for the good old days under the Japanese and dissatisfied with the Kuomintang’s five-decade one-party rule spearheaded the new Taiwanese nationalistic movement, which politicians of the two parties are encouraging for their political gains.

The fact is that the Taiwanese would like to have independence, if they can. They know independence is impossible, and do not want China to superimpose another quasi-colonial emigre regime on their homeland, like the one the Japanese or the Kuomintang did. They are afraid Beijing is trying to do so under the pretext of Chinese reunification. They feel threatened by more than 1,000 cruise missiles deployed along the southeast Chinese coast all targeting Taiwan. They bristle every time Beijing rattles its saber. They are angry with China, which bars their country from every world body which requires statehood for membership.

Ask Taiwanese, any Taiwanese, whether they hate Chinese and don’t want to have anything to do with China. Nine out of every ten answers are in the negative. They can’t, simply because they are ethnically and culturally Chinese. In his inaugural speech, President Ma pointed out all core values of the people of Taiwan, which he called the “Taiwan Spirit.” These core values, however, are no monopolies of the Taiwanese. They are the core values of all Chinese.

Nearly 60 percent of the voters chose Ma Ying-jeou as their president on March 22. The support would have been much higher, if a diplomatic brokering scandal had been unearthed in the run-up to the presidential election. Two liars cheated the government out of US$30 million by claiming they could help set up diplomatic relations between Taiwan and Papua New Guinea. A large number of voters for Frank Hsieh would have cast their ballots for Ma or stayed away from the polls in protest against rampant government corruption.

The Taiwanese, at least six out of every ten of them, have spoken loudly they want a Chinese mainlander at the helm of the state to improve relations with China, with which they never refuse to identify and associate themselves.

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