The Taiwan Conflict, Told From Both Sides

The Taiwanese & Chinese perspectives on the conflict over Taiwan.

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0:00 Intro
0:40 Taiwan's Perspective
12:34 China's Perspective
22:23 Outro

Sources:

The Rise Of China In Chinese Eyes - Xuetong Yan

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Links:

Potsdam Declaration:
Shanghai Communique:

[realryanchapman]

I've seen a number of commenters who believe that I crucially left out some details about the cultural and ethnic ties between Taiwan and mainland China. Mainly two details: 1) clarifying that Taiwanese isn't an entirely original language, but instead a dialect from Fujian province (they do call it Taiwanese in Taiwan, so I stuck with their language when telling their side of the story), and 2) stressing the high proportion of ethic Chinese people living in Taiwan. That's fine, if you want to call attention to those facts, but I didn't consider them essential for this video because they don't fundamentally change the arguments from either side. Taiwan's independence argument doesn't weaken because of ethnic and cultural ties to China. China's claim to Taiwan doesn't strengthen either. If you think those details do give China a legitimate claim to Taiwan (against the will of the overwhelming majority of people living there) then you're arriving at something like 'we own you through your blood, ' since the shared ethnicity seems to be the pillar of that claim. That's not something I saw my Chinese sources claiming, and that's also obviously something the Taiwanese side didn't say either. Perhaps I should have presented them here anyway since they seem important to Chinese audiences, but again they don't fundamentally change the logic from either side.

Many of those who stressed the ethnic ties between Taiwan and China went on to say people in Taiwan are rallying around a Taiwanese identity because they're being propagandized by their government in the education system. I think that's a fair point to get into, but if you want to cover the subject in a balanced way, you'd also have to look at how China's government propagandizes and controls their citizens too. The reality is Chinese people are among the most heavily propagandized and controlled in the world. Taiwan is one of the places with the freest speech (and freest access to information) in the world, and China is one of the places with the most controlled speech and most controlled access to information in the world. Look at any free speech index and it will tell you that. The Chinese government employs massive boroughs of people for the sole purpose of propagandizing and controlling its citizens (look up the 'Golden Shield' for example). So again, I could have covered that side of the subject, but it seems like virtually everyone making those arguments were sympathetic to China's side, and I don't think they'd be happy seeing balanced coverage of that.

On that note, this video only covered China's official position on Taiwan. Since there isn't free speech in China, this is pretty much how everyone covers it. In places like Taiwan, it's easier to make distinctions between public thought and official thought. You can poll people or just point to public backlashes against official positions. In China, widespread expression of dissent from official thought (like the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan) is rarely allowed, so we're mostly left with pointing at official thought. That all being said, I don't think there's reason to believe that the public in China doesn't more or less support or believe the official position laid out here.

Last note - many think this video tried to create the impression that Taiwan is mostly made up of aborigines, and I'm not sure who would watch this video and actually think that. As I kept talking about Taiwan being colonized by various powers, and even the KMT moving there as an entire party, I assumed people understood (and knew, even by common sense) that the aborigines eventually became a small minority there. I didn't think that was something that needed to be explicitly said, and ultimately I try to trust the intelligence of the viewer and avoid stating the obvious if I can.

- Ryan

[jerryluan]

fun fact: Mainland and Taiwan are still in war status, there is no any Armistice agreement signed by both parties since the civil war began. Seems few people aware this.

[koenigamd]

The “aboriginals” consist only 3% of the population of the island, what we call Taiwanese are indeed ethnic Chinese migrated from the mainland by various of waves

[reee]

As a Taiwanese thank you for the time and effort to make this video.
Few Westerners can understand the complex relationship between Taiwan and China in such a detailed and correct way.
If foreigners ask about this, I will recommend them to watch this video.😀

[frankni]

It should be mentioned that under the current Constitution of the Republic of China (ROC), both the mainland and Taiwan are part of ROC. Before 1971, ROC represented the whole China in UN, while PRC took over thereafter.

[suekis]

From what i have gone through, Tsai is the one who identifies herself as both Chinese and Taiwanese. When she was young, she referred herself to being a chinese with a shift to Taiwanese now. Generally, Elder generation refer themselves to be chiense while the younger refer themselves to be Taiwanese. Besides the media, the political system and the history, the education has played a very important role here.

[ThunderRay]

Overall, a great unbiased explanation of the Taiwan problem. I have just one thing to point out: majority of Taiwan people today came from China mainland, not those natives.

[billsugg]

Dude! I’ve watched a lot of videos about the history and relationship between the two countries...a lot (and have lived in both). This is probably the most well balanced, non-emotional, non-partisan, fact-based explanation of the issue. Once again, you prove to have a level head and no agenda other than dissemination of the facts. Thank you, sir. We need more tubers like you out there.

[kevinsiu]

You ignored a simpler reason why the aborigines held on to Eastern Taiwan against the colonialists. It's less to do with being hard core and more to do with simple geography. It's hard to build anything where typhoons hit all the time. Taiwan's center is all mountains, providing a natural barrier against them, which is why over 95% of Taiwans population lives on the west coast.

[fw]

1 correction for the video(17:23), giving Outer Mongolia to the Soviets was a deal made by Chiang Kai Shack and the Soviets, not Mao. Chiang wanted to do so to make CCP lose help from the Soviets. ROC declared Outer Mongolia independence on 19460105

[LuisDiuk]

Ryan you are making a great journalistic work, no one make it as well documented and informed as you, congratulations

[bellla]

You failed to mention that Republic of China (aka Taiwan) also officially claim Mainland China and Taiwan are all part of them. (ROC also claim Mongolia and other small territory, you could find some videos on Youtube.)

[xw]

This video is good for explaining the documented history of the conflict between China and Taiwan, but a lot of underlying geopolitical factors are missing.

US also plays an important role in the China-Taiwan confict. US has a huge interest building millitary and economic bonds with Taiwan since 1950s. The reasons are: 1. Taiwan can be used to contain the growth of communist China, the country deemed to be a threat as soon as its inception. 2. A prosperous weathly capitalist Taiwan will shake the confidence in communist in mainland China. Meanwhile, the Chinese leaders are extremely worried about the influence of the US. They cannot afford Taiwan to be independent and import US weapons, even build US military base. For Taiwanese, most want to side with the US because Taiwan is westernized pretty well. On the other hand, mainland China is giving out political favors (trade deals, business opportunities) and also threatening a war for Taiwan to not pick a side.

The bottomline is, what seems to be the conflict between China and Taiwan is actually the conflict between China and the US. Every time when the China-US relationship worsens, Taiwan makes the news.

[palmj]

One correction, he mentioned several times about native people, foreign colonialists. Sounds majority people are aboriginal and were fighting foreign colonialists all the time. But actually there are only 2.3% indigenous people (see wiki), more than 95% people are Han who come from mainland China long times ago, far far ago than Dutch. And there’s no local new language, it’s a direct of Fujian local language since Fujian province governs Taiwan area previously.
Also, need to mention that the constitution of Republic of China mentions the nation includes mainland and Taiwan, and Taiwan is inside Fujian Province, which hasn’t been officially changed yet, so it is still official valid in Taiwan.

[SurmaSampo]

I have seen a lot of videos on the subject of Taiwan yet yours is the first to actually explain the history and perspective of either side let alone both.

[jau]

This narrator did not mention that around 1895-1900 Japanese military in Taiwan killed about 300 thousand Taiwanese when the islanders resisted the occupation by Japan. At that time, there were about 3 million population. That means about 1 in 10 population was killed. During WW-II US airplanes bombarded Taiwan and killed about 5 thousands civilians.

[djkollar]

Probably the best explanation of this tricky issue that I’ve seen on YouTube.

[samsmith]

Just clicked on this and can’t wait to watch. Some incredibly high quality content in my opinion and I’m always excited for the next video

[SpinSurgery]

New favorite channel. you really seem to go out of your way to eliminate bias as much as possible. Plz continue these types of videos discussing political conflicts and their history that gives a birds eye view.

[jmarshell]

Another very fine presentation. Historically accurate and well nuanced, I really enjoyed this examination of the China
/Taiwan relationship.