Crisis of Taiwan

Crisis of Taiwan

At the time of the Tang dynasty, and later during the Yuan and
Ming dynasties, the Indonesian empires of Sriwijaya and Majapahit
covered a larger part of the archipelago, including Malaysia's
peninsular.

Many of the actual political boundaries are, in fact, the
inheritance of recent and more or less artificial colonial
divisions. The Portuguese settled in Macao and the eastern part
of Timor; the Netherlands occupied a large part of the Malay
archipelago; the British grabbed the Malay peninsula, Sarawak,
Sabah, Brunei and simultaneously created Singapore and Hong Kong;
and the Japanese occupied Taiwan, while most of mainland China
was divided by the colonialist powers of the time.

To a certain extent, Hong Kong is quite comparable to
Singapore, Macao to Timor, and Taiwan to Malaysia and Brunei.
Apparently, the legitimacy of the Chinese claims over many
temporarily separated territories from its mainland are now
widely accepted by the international community. Where else could
such similar principles apply?

BERNARD DORLEANS

Jakarta