The Ambivalence of National Imagination: Defining the ‘Taiwanese’ in China, 1931-1941

Abstract

Liang replied: China will definitely not be able to provide any assistance to the Taiwanese struggle for freedom in the next thirty years. [...] it would be better for the Taiwanese not to initiate any bold moves so that no unnecessary sacrifice occurs. [...] Emma Jinhua Teng has studied changing cross-Taiwan Strait relations by examining Chinese perceptions of Taiwan from 1683 to the 1930s; her work shows how Taiwan came to be seen as an integral part of the Chinese domain, or "imagined geography", at the end of the nineteenth century.6 Second, focusing on the geostrategic dimension of China`s territorial claim over Taiwan and the "shifting salience" of KMT and CCP leaders seeing Taiwan as a part of China from 1942 to the Cold War,7 Alan Wachman delineates Chinese political eûtes` "indifference" to Taiwan in both the KMT and the CCP before 1942.