Taiwan president: Why has CCP not taken land ceded to Russia?

FPI / September 11, 2024

Instead of "liberating Taiwan" in the name of national territorial integrity, why has the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) not attempted to retake its lost territories that were seized by Russia, Taiwan's president asked.

In a new interview, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te pointed out that CCP chairman Xi Jinping's purpose of invading Taiwan was not for the sake of China's territorial integrity, but rather to change the “rule-based world order” in order to fulfill the hegemony of the CCP.

In a Sept. 4 LinkedIn post, Dr. Junhua Zhang, Senior Associate at European Institute for Asian Studies, asked: "Why didn't Xi take back such a large amount of land ceded to Russia by the Treaty of Aigun in the Qing Dynasty? Even the CCP also calls it 'unequal treaty' and theoretically it still doesn't recognize it. Actually the Soviet Union had also promised to return the land to China."

Lai, who was elected president in January of this year, said in the interview: “Now is the time when Russia is at its weakest, the CCP can ask Russia for returning the illegally seized territories and annulling the Treaty of Aigun signed during the Qing Dynasty, but why don't you want it (back)? So it's clear that the CCP is not coming to invade Taiwan because of territorial ties.”

Lai's remarks triggered heated debate in the international media, which immediately led to reports by outlets such as Reuters, Britain's The Guardian, and the U.S.-based Newsweek, as well as re-posts of the interview on a number of social media platforms.

Zhang noted: "Even Mainland Chinese netizens responded on social media saying that 'Lai's clever shot hit the soft underbelly of China.' "

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Zhang continued: "A Taiwan national security expert analyzed that Lai's talk has attracted heated discussions not only because it accurately hit Xi's main point, but also because it revealed that the Taiwan Strait issue is Xi's excuse for authoritarianism, which is well accepted by the international community, so it's no wonder that Beijing is speechless."

China's vice premier, Han Zheng, is scheduled to soon attend a forum in Vladivostok.

"Beijing is so aggressively defending its claimed territories, be in South China Sea, be Taiwan, be the border area to India. But Beijing is ready to humiliate itself by going to Vladivostok, originally China's territory, to attend a Russian forum," Zhang noted.

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