Is it true that "Taiwan has been a part of China since ancient times", as Beijing often claims? No, not at all. Here are some inconvenient facts which most people don't know. I invite the swarm of CCP trolls to try to unpick them. ✅ FACT: Before 1624, Taiwan was inhabited by indigenous Malay-Austronesian populations with no official Chinese administrative presence. ✅ FACT: The Dutch established formal administrative control over Taiwan in 1624, which was recognised by Ming Dynasty representatives as being "beyond [Chinese] territory." The Dutch found no evidence of Chinese administrative control. ✅ FACT: In 1662, the Ming loyalist Koxinga expelled the Dutch after himself being expelled from the mainland. He founded an independent kingdom, seeking to reestablish Ming rule. But the Ming Dynasty itself had already collapsed. This was not rule by "China". ✅ FACT: From 1683 to 1887, Taiwan was managed as a province of Fujien; but Emperor Kangxi considered Taiwan beyond his domain. Indeed, he said as much: ‘Taiwan is outside our empire and of no great consequence.’ There were popular revolts throughout this period. ✅ FACT: Taiwan was formally administered as a province of China for eight years, from 1887 until it was ceded to Japan in 1895. This is the only such period. Shorter than the Dutch. ✅ FACT: Following the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, the Qing Empire ceded Taiwan to Japan "in perpetuity". ✅ FACT: Local leaders briefly declared an independent Formosa Republic in 1895 to resist Japanese rule, but the Japanese shut this down within five months. ✅ FACT: Between 1926 and 1942, both the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Kuomintang (KMT) supported independence for Taiwan, viewing it similarly to Korea (as an essential part of an anti-Japanese military strategy). ✅ FACT: The CCP changed its mind. After WW2, the party coalesced around an effort to reclaim "lost territories". In 1943 Cairo and 1945 Potsdam declarations were issued which, while not formal treaties, maintained that "all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa (Taiwan), and the Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China". The 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty left Taiwan’s legal status "undetermined." ✅ FACT: The People's Republic of China (established 1949) has never, in any capacity, exercised control over Taiwan. As to the territorial claim of what constitutes "China", worthy of note is the highly variable claims to territory (not to mention autonomy and governance structures) over even the past 150 years. See below.

The fight between freedom and authoritarianism is no longer a theoretical debate. It is unfolding in real time economically, technologically, culturally, and politically. And Taiwan stands at the very center of that struggle. Taiwan is not simply an island. It is the epicenter of the global technological race. More than 60 percent of the world’s semiconductors and over 90 percent of its most advanced chips are produced in Taiwan. These chips power everything from artificial intelligence and smartphones to fighter jets and missile defense systems. If you want to understand the future of AI dominance, economic strength, and national security, you must understand Taiwan. Read; 👇

🧾This open letter already collected more than 300 signatures and is going to be sent to policy makers on Monday🗓️. If you are a university student🎓 in physics 🧪🔭studying in the UK🇬🇧, you may consider signing it asap. Sign and share! ✍🏻🔄🌐

American staff took everything Chinese officials handed out - credentials, burner phones from WH staff, pins for delegation - collected them before we got on AF1 and threw them in a bin at bottom at stairs. Nothing from China allowed on the plane. We’re taking off shortly for America

Formal Response to the CCP's Harassment of My Family and Attempted Bribery — Yih-gyi Dông (唐埸淇) #CCPSurveillance# #BribingStudents# #TransnationalRepression# Since I spoke out against the CCP, they have repeatedly threatened and harassed my family. Beyond summoning my mother to a police station, they have made multiple phone calls pressuring her to make me stay silent. What is even more outrageous is that my earlier calls with my mother were completely ordinary conversations, yet the CCP had the shamelessness to monitor our video calls. This is coercion and bribery at its most shameless. During one call, I watched my mother suddenly pick up a pen and write on paper: "being monitored." I had already been speaking in our local dialect with her. When I found out on the spot, I asked her: can they still understand us even in dialect? She said yes. This means that from my very first WeChat calls with my mother, the CCP had already deployed its dirty tactics, with local police assigned specifically to watch her. They may have also used the content of those intercepted conversations to pressure her further. I hereby make the following solemn statement: The CCP's surveillance of ordinary family phone calls is a severe violation of citizens' right to privacy and freedom. It has made normal communication between me and my family impossible. Every call is spent in fear of being monitored. Every word spoken is recorded and analysed. There is not the slightest trace of human rights or freedom here. I demand that the Chinese Communist Party immediately cease this despicable and shameless conduct, and that the officers responsible apologise to my family. Time limit: 89 hours, 6 minutes, and 4 seconds. And it does not stop there. My mother has repeatedly told me that the CCP may be targeting my study abroad funding and cutting off financial support. My family has always been willing to support my studies, but there is a chance the money cannot be transferred out. I have already prepared for this. Seeing that intimidation had no effect on me, the CCP recently escalated its harassment, sending not just the original officer but his superior to continue pressuring my mother, specifically enquiring about our family's financial situation. That superior officer started by lavishing fake praise on me: what a brilliant student, what a waste of such talent, hoping I would return to serve the motherland one day (meaning: become another one of the CCP's expendable tools 🤣). He then repeatedly told my mother that if I agreed to stay silent, deleted all my content, and followed the CCP's instructions, he could apply to the relevant authorities for a special study abroad fund, with annual support of 400,000 to 500,000 CNY no problem. So that is the CCP's game: when the hard approach fails, try the soft one😂 I, Yih-gyi Dông, am an ordinary person with ordinary emotions and desires. But I believe deeply in this: wealth and status cannot corrupt me, poverty cannot break me, and power cannot bend me. I have no interest in your dirty money, CCP. I will not beg from a dictatorship for funds extracted through the oppression of its own people. No matter how much of it comes from exploiting ordinary citizens, even if it were a single cent, I would want nothing to do with it. Consider this: how many people in China earn less than a thousand yuan a month. Yet the CCP refuses to spend its money on improving people's lives. Instead it funds its own enforcers and stability maintenance apparatus, feeds its army of internet censors, suppresses dissidents, and uses the China Scholarship Council to control students abroad, sending them to steal technology, spy on overseas communities, and expand its student intelligence network. How many young lives have you destroyed. If I accepted that money, would you then try to recruit me as one of your overseas student spies? 😅 Words cannot express how angry I am at the CCP. But at the same time, I am genuinely happy. Not only because I have seen the CCP for what it truly is, but because after all this time studying in the United Kingdom, I have experienced firsthand what a free and democratic society looks like, and I have, step by step, overcome the fear that power once made me feel. Along this road, I have met so many kind-hearted people and strangers who supported and helped me. I am deeply grateful. To every one of you: thank you! You gave me strength. You made me believe that in this world there is still kindness toward the vulnerable, a call to conscience, and a commitment to justice. I now take this oath in my mother tongue, Taizhou dialect, before heaven and earth: I, Yih-gyi Dông, born in Taizhou, Zhejiang, will spend my entire life in unwavering pursuit of democracy and freedom. Having chosen to stand up, no matter what methods the CCP deploys against me, I will never give up. I have no regrets. Until my last breath!