 leader of the cut the Pentagon divest for more campaign that could pink. And she also coordinates could pink Congress and is our tech genius. So thank you so much for joining us today and welcome to another episode of China is not our enemy. First, I wanna thank our co-host Pivot to Peace who's been organizing in the streets of San Francisco and Washington, T.C. today, raising awareness and celebrating the Shanghai communique. It was a profound and historic event for peace and cooperation that we wanna really raise up today and join with them online as they were in the streets. And also thank you to our co-sponsors, the Chow Collective, the People's Forum New York City, Massachusetts Peace Action and Veterans for Peace, the China working group. And I wanna thank the team that's making this all happen and supporting you in the chat. And that'll be Julie Tang and Mike Wong from Pivot to Peace and Che Le Boe and Lauren Gotsky from Could Pink. So while our hearts and minds are caught in the blinding distortion of a bombing campaign, it was avoidable. And we hear strange comments like Taiwan is next. It seems important to recall and reaffirm the guiding principles that were established with the Shanghai communique. We do these episodes as we know we are swimming eyeball deep in distortions and lies from the U.S. State Department. It seems determined to destroy Russia and China at all costs, which includes all people and the planet. So one thing we can do as peace activists is spread the truth to undermine imperialism and their wars and raise up the need to care for people and planet. So on this 50th anniversary, it felt important to educate that there is one China in hopes to ratchet down the hysteria brewing that post-Ukraine Russia, Biden and his administration are ready to pivot to China. So 50 years ago today, on February 28th, 1972, President Richard Nixon and Prime Minister Zhou Enlai issued the Shanghai communique at the end of Nixon's historic visit to the People's Republic of China. While acknowledging that the United States and China have separate and distinct social systems and foreign policies and cultures, both countries committed themselves to conduct the relations on the principles of respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states, non-aggression against other states, non-interference in the internal affairs of other states, equality and mutual benefit and peaceful coexistence. Ah, were we really that much smarter 50 years ago? Both countries clearly stated their views on the crucial question of the status of Taiwan. United States declared that it acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China. The United States government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves. This remains the binding obligation of the American government. You know, the Shanghai communique came about after an invitation to the US Table Tennis Team from China and the message out of that was friendship first, competition second. And I hope we can return to ping-pong diplomacy for the people in the world and the planet, especially after the terror of the last week we've just lived through. The communique was created to advance opportunities for peace and prosperity and it is time for us to return to that spirit. You can learn more about the Shanghai communique as explained by Pivot to Peace at their website and please sign their message to the leadership of the United States government asking them to affirm it where they say, as Americans believing that is better to seek peace than to promote war and that the interests of all people will be better served by policies of cooperation with China in a quest for a mutually beneficial future and economic development, addressing climate change and reducing the global menace of militarism and armed conflict. We call upon American political leaders of both parties in the White House and in Congress to publicly affirm the respect for the principles embodied in the Shanghai communique, to turn away from a path which leads to confrontation and reorient America's relationship with China in a positive, constructive direction. Withdraw US troops from Taiwan, seize provocations in the Taiwan Strait and allow the question of Taiwan to be resolved by the Chinese people on both sides of the Strait themselves without outside interference and manipulation. So you can sign that and I'm sure someone will be sharing that in the chat soon but after this I'm sure you're gonna really wanna sign it and share it. So now it's time to hear from our special guests today we'll hear from Shagu, KJ Nooh, Anne Wright and Lauren Ganski. We begin with Zheng Yu who's a student and educator of anti-imperialism and a Golden Indie Music Award nominated Taiwan based rapper. He co-hosted a Taiwan history series on Carl Zaw's Silken Steel podcast and has also guest starred on other podcasts such as Escape from Plan A. Follow him on Twitter as he likes to make posts that educate people and debunk imperialist lies and we'll share his Twitter in the chat. Zheng Yu, thank you so much for joining us. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this historic day. So I hope, I don't disappoint and thank you to Pivot to Peace and Code Pink and all other co-hosts for inviting me to speak at this event and thank you to everybody who's taking their time out of your day to watch this. I know it's late and for a lot of you on the East Coast but it's my fault because you know, work. And there's gonna be a lot to cover so I'm just gonna dive into the content and start by saying outside of China I find that people's understanding of Taiwan mostly begins and ends in 1949 with the defeated Chiang Kai-shek retreating to the last KMT stronghold of China which is Taiwan. And there's only so much I can cover in my allotted time and unfortunately the time we have is far too short to really get into all the nuances. So I highly recommend the Soakin' Steel series that was mentioned earlier just now. You can find it by searching Soakin' Steel podcasts. I'll post a link to the whole playlist so you can just watch it all in order because it's very long and even though it's very long, it's still a TLDR. So anyways, to begin the discussion we must clear the confusion about what Taiwan is. A lot of people mistakenly believe Taiwan to be the name of the government Chiang Kai-shek and his successors led after retreating to the island. But really Taiwan is just the name of the island and the island's been known as Taiwan for centuries and will continue to be known as Taiwan even after reunification. And although there are overlaps between Taiwan, the KMT or the KMT is short for Guomindang which is Chiang Kai-shek's party and the government that continues to call itself the Republic of China despite legally having been succeeded by the People's Republic of China under international law. These things, you know, the Taiwan, the KMT, the so-called ROC, they're not one and the same. And although I wish I didn't have to spend so much time explaining this, having a basic understanding of this is crucial for understanding the rest of the presentation. So I found that many people seem to think that Taiwan was a barren island until 1949 when the KMT forces retreated to Taiwan or that it was an island populated solely by the indigenous people until 1949. And implying that Taiwan today is majority Han due to genocide carried out by the KMT. And both of these statements are cannot be further from the truth. And while there was a tragedy in 1947 known as the 228 incident, which is February 28th, characterizing it as a Han on indigenous genocide is very inaccurate when nearly all the deaths on both sides were Han people. With 98% of Taiwan's population today being Han, we can roll out the pro-US separatist movement as a movement for indigenous rights. And while there is a lot to be discussed about the past and present treatment of indigenous Taiwanese people by Han migrants, the Ming loyalists, the Qing dynasty, the Japanese imperialists, and finally the current administration of the Taiwan area. It is my view that we cannot begin to address these issues without addressing the elephant in the room, which is US imperialism and the fact that Taiwan has been a US client since the end of World War II. The earliest inhabitants of Taiwan arrived as early as over 10,000 years ago back when there was a land bridge between Taiwan and the Asian continent. By the Song dynasty, even though Taiwan had not been incorporated into China, there was already significant cross-strait activity going on. And some people from the Chinese mainland began migrating to Taiwan. And fast forward to the late Ming dynasty, there was a pirate named Zheng Zhilong, who led a crew of people from Fujian province to Taiwan where he set up his base. Back then pirates set up shop in Taiwan because it served as a good trading post outside of the jurisdiction of both China and Japan for trade between the two countries during the time when China banned trade with Japan. So as you can see, even from even centuries ago, Taiwan was already played a significant role in trade and was like a little gateway to the Pacific. Significant numbers of Chinese mainlanders did not arrive in Taiwan until the Dutch established a colony on Taiwan in southern Taiwan in the early 17th century. And with the increase in demand for cheap laborers, they started getting a bunch of people from the Chinese mainland to go over. And this is all during the final decades of the Ming and eventually Zheng Zhilong capitulated to the Qing and left Taiwan, leaving Dutch rule over southern Taiwan uncontested. And when the final remnants of the Ming were defeated in southern mainland China, one Ming loyalist by the name of Zheng Chenggong, who was the son of Zheng Zhilong, known in the West as Guoxingya, set out to turn Taiwan into his base. So he went there and he kicked the Dutch out and set up a Ming loyalist kingdom called Dongning Wangguo, or the Kingdom of Dongning, which means the Kingdom of Eastern Tranquility. Situated in modern day on Tainan, the city in southwestern Taiwan, and that lasted from 1661 all the way to 1683. Zheng Chenggong died in 1662 and was succeeded by his son who governed the kingdom until 1680 when he set out to return to the Chinese mainland, defeat the Qing and restore the Ming. Obviously, we know how that turned out. It didn't happen and he returned to Taiwan then died in 1681 and then was succeeded by his son, Zheng Ke Shuang. The Qing saw the state of affairs on Taiwan and they didn't really, they were well aware of the power struggle for succession. So they offered Zheng Ke Shuang the right to rule his kingdom as a tributary to the Qing, but he refused every time. So finally, Qing Emperor Kang Xi sent his men to Taiwan and defeated him. So from 1683 until 1760, Taiwan, the Qing limited mainland migration to Taiwan because they were worried that Taiwan would once again become a base for rebellious activities. This however did not really stop people, mostly single men from illegally relocating to Taiwan in search for opportunities. And they came mostly from the southern provinces of Fujian and Guangdong. And additionally, the Qing limited Han migration, Han movement from the plains areas of Taiwan to the mountainous regions to prevent conflicts between the Han and indigenous peoples. Though the indigenous peoples in the plains area did eventually adopt Han customs, language and culture due to contact marriage and assimilation. So from the 1760s until the early 19th century, more than two million migrants from the Chinese mainland moved to Taiwan. And this is really important to note, back then there wasn't a unifying Taiwanese identity and the Han people identified with their ancestral cities on the mainland while the indigenous people was identified with their tribes. And back then the Han on Taiwan could be divided into two broad groups, Hukluo, who came mostly from Zhangzhou and Chenzhou which are both cities in southern Fujian province and Hakkang who came mostly from Meixian and Guangdong. And to demonstrate how there wasn't a single Taiwanese identity, people who hail from these three regions like killed each other all the time and got into conflicts. And yeah, it was a pretty bloody mess. And during this time, Western Taiwan had strong agriculture while the coastal regions of the Chinese mainland had good handicrafts. So, Tainan, Lu Gang and Taipei, Taipei all became important trading ports. So even though Taiwan and mainland China were separated by the Taiwan Strait physically, contact between the two sides was continuous. And this is quite evident if you visit places like Shaman or mainland China today, the cultural similarities are uneniable. And I want to point out, all this happened during when China was a feudal country which was like the concept of nation states like nation states that go along like in an imperialist world order under global capitalism, that stuff didn't exist. So, but then in China, but it started existing in Europe and then China was kind of just thrown into the system and had its borders drawn. So really it's just kind of, yeah, it's, can't really compare it with say, the settler colonialism of the, in the Americas. Anyways, in 1684, the Qing set up the Taiwan Prefecture Government which was administered as part of Fujian province. This was when Taiwan was formally incorporated into China. Then in 1887, Taiwan became its own province but shortly afterwards, it was ceded to Japan in 1895 due to China's defeat in the first Sino-Japanese War and the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki. And here lies another point of confusion. Taiwan became a Japanese colony from 1895 until 1945 when the Japanese were defeated. And when the Japanese were defeated, almost all of them returned to Japan including those born in Taiwan. And I've heard on many occasions people with limited knowledge of Taiwan saying that Taiwan's like traders today are like, are actually Japanese, which cannot be further from the truth although Japan's colonization which separated Taiwan from the rest of China for 50 years did have a huge impact on the dynamics between the people on Taiwan who had lived under Japanese rule and the new arrivals from the mainland that arrived between 1945 until the mid 1950s and never lived as subjects of Japan. And this brings another point. A lot of times people ask, why Koreans tend to hate their former colonizers more than Taiwanese people do? And I attribute it to time. Taiwan was colonized for 50 years whereas Korea was colonized for 35. So there was much more time for the Japanese imperialists to stabilize their rule over Taiwan and educate a new generation of Taiwanese to be more pro-Japanese and not really identify with their motherland. But to show that this wasn't always the case, the first major resistance against Japanese rule was also the only time Taiwan declared itself to be an independent country or people on Taiwan declared it to be an independent country. And this was done in 1895 under the leadership of Taiwanese people who were loyal to China who refused to become Japanese subjects without a fight. And their goal was to get on Taiwan to return to the Qing. This movement unfortunately was crushed in October of that year. And until the 1910s, there was lack of consensus within the Japanese ruling class on whether or not to assimilate the Taiwanese people into Japanese culture. But in 1919, the official policy of Japan finally became to view Taiwan as an extension of Japan rather than a mirror colony. And that Taiwanese people would be educated as Japanese subjects, albeit while still being considered second class citizens. This is kind of, you can kind of see how the second class citizen dynamic worked because the Japanese people who were born in Taiwan, when they returned to Japan after World War II, they were discriminated against. Think about it. You're Japanese born in Taiwan and you're discriminated against. How do you think people in Japan would view, you know, Taiwanese people who aren't Japanese? So, I mean, it's easy to look back in time and just remember the good times and forget all the atrocities that were carried out. And that does tend to happen nowadays with certain segments of Taiwan's population. Anyways, the policy of assimilation ramped up in 1937 as Japan's war of aggression against China and like was coming to full force. And during this time, there was something called the Koming Kai movement or literally the movement of transformation into subjects of the emperor. Koming Kai is Japanese for like, you know, the transformation into subjects of emperor. The same term in Chinese would be called on Huangminghua. Just FYI. And this movement encouraged people to fully adopt Japanese customs even in their personal lives, such as, you know, speaking Japanese at home or wearing Japanese clothing and even conveying to Shintoism. But of course, like, you know, these sorts of policies, like people just don't really tend to go along with them much because majority of the people in Taiwan still can continue to speak their own languages at home, whether it'll be like Hokkien, Hakka or indigenous languages. But there was a part of the population that actually formally became Koming, which elevated them to a status above a typical Taiwanese. And this had to be done by meeting all the criteria, such as, you know, speaking Japanese at home and adopting Japanese customs in their personal lives. And once these conditions were met, like these people would go through this sort of ceremony where they would adopt Japanese names, renounce their Chinese ancestors and adopt a new set of fake Japanese ones. But only 2% of Taiwan's population became Koming and they were mostly from the landed aristocracy. Now this is significant because you'll find that today, a segment of the political elite come from, came from like these types of families during... And during the KMT dictatorship, they were kind of involved in the liberal struggle against the KMT. So for a while, for the longest time when, you know, Chiang Kai-shek was still in power and his son, these people, like, they were traditionally like the privileged and they were like the bosses of Taiwan, basically. They were kind of sidelined and marginalized. And this is important because we had to understand Chiang Kai-shek and his son's role of Taiwan to be Bonapartist with one segment of the ruling capitalist class, suppressing other parts of it in an attempt to, you know, save capitalism from its own crisis and stabilize rule. And keep this all in mind when I later explain the origins of the Taiwan separatist movement. So anyways, as you know, Japan was defeated in 1945 and as a result, Taiwan was returned to China. Japan's instrument of surrender states, we hereby undertake for the emperor, the Japanese government and their successors to carry out the provisions of the Potsdam Declaration of Good Faith. Now article eight of the Potsdam Declaration reads, the terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out and Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine. And the relevant excerpt from the 1943 Cairo Declaration reads, all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese such as Manchuria, Northeastern China, Formosa, Taiwan, the Pescadores, which is on Penghu, shall be restored to the Republic of China. The instrument of surrender was included in volume 139 of the UN treaty series issued in 1952. And hence it is a legal binding document as far as the UN is concerned. So this shuts down the argument that Taiwan status is undetermined simply because the Cairo and Potsdam declarations were just communicates and not actual treaties because the conditions of both of these documents were mentioned in the legally binding instruments of surrender. So now we get into the return of Taiwan to China. And as you know, the Chinese civil war resumed after the alliance between the Kuomintang, the KMT and the Communist party CPC to fight off the Japanese imperialists ended. Things weren't looking good for the US ally KMT and already parts of the US ruling class began to conspire to China solution. In February of 1949, US diplomat Livingston T. Merchant was sent by Secretary of State Atchison Atchison. I don't know how to pronounce this, you know that dude to Taiwan to see if an autonomous government could be set up. He met up with Taiwan's provincial governor Chen Cheng and promised 25 million of annual US aid if he separated the provincial government from the rest of China and cut off communication with the communists. And he stipulated if Chen Cheng were to accept this offer then the allied forces would occupy Taiwan and oversee the transfer of power to a new government. And after this proposed meeting, the US would send its Navy and Air Force to the Taiwan Strait to prevent attack. And Chen Cheng was to inform his boss, Chiang Kai-shek that if Chiang Kai-shek wished to go to Taiwan he would have to do so as a political refugee. I mean, this didn't happen, but from this we can see the US is already trying to do damage control and also marginalized Chiang Kai-shek. The US, however, made the offer to the wrong person Chen Cheng was loyal to Chiang Kai-shek. And although Chiang Kai-shek was anti-communist he was a Chinese patriot of sorts. Like his idea of Chinese patriotism didn't really align with the masses of China as history showed. But still his version of Chinese patriotism meant that he refused to turn Taiwan into a separate country. So to get things like kind of straight like the position back then was under Taiwan, in Taiwan Rubei Jiangjie Shi was Chiang Kai-shek was that there was only one China and that China is a Republic of China and Taiwan is a part of that China basically. So anyways, another segment of the US ruling class did not wish to split China. I mean, they didn't necessarily want to recognize this new socialist government but they still wanted to cut ties with them Chiang Kai-shek says they didn't want the Taiwan issue to ruin relations with the communists. And parts of the US ruling class thought that the Chinese communists could be won over from the Soviets by taking advantage of historical animosities between China and Russia namely Mazarist Russia to help isolate the Soviets. Now the PRC was established on October 1st, 1949. And in 1950, the communists were planning on liberating Taiwan. And this was during a time that the when the US had already decided to give up on Chiang Kai-shek so the moment was perfect for the communists except there was only one problem. They didn't have strong enough of an air force or Navy to carry out the task. And the Soviet Union did not provide planes or pilot training for this mission since they already suffered huge losses during World War II and did not want to risk war with the US over Taiwan. However, while they were unwilling to make promises to China regarding Taiwan, the Soviets had a different attitude towards Korea since Korea is in their neighborhood. So Stalin promised Kim Il-sung material age should war break out on Korea. And as fate would have it, the Korean war broke out on June 25th, 1950 and China enters the war later that year. And because the Korean war broke out after some wavering on what to do with Taiwan in the US ruling class, the US sends the seventh fleet through the Taiwan Strait and whereas the US had intended to give up on Chiang Kai-shek, they now decided to renew their support for his regime on Taiwan. However, you might think, oh, the seventh fleet was just there to block the PLA from entering Taiwan. No, it was both ways. It was also to block Chiang Kai-shek from entering from trying to recapture the mainland because they wanted to somewhat neutralize and stabilize the situation while not really recognizing the PRC. However, there's a little work around with this because the regime on Taipei holds two islands off the coast of Fujian Province and they're legally still a part of Fujian Province. Like a stone's throw away from Xiamen and Fuzhou respectively. And while the US kind of pressured Chiang Kai-shek to give up these islands, both Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong kind of tacitly agreed that the situation should stay the way it is because if the islands got liberated, then Taiwan and the mainland would be separated by a very big Taiwan Strait. But if those two islands were left unliberated, then the two sides would only be separated by like what, like two miles. And then they also started this thing where both sides would shell each other on alternating days. As a reminder to the US that we are one country and this is a civil war and that this is a domestic dispute. It's kind of, yeah. Anyways, the timing of these events though left, meant that the Taiwan question was left unresolved and because the People's Republic of China is recognized as the legal successor of the Republic of China. And because Taiwan independence was never declared, this makes the so-called Republic of China administration legally, that's on Taiwan, legally the governing entity of a renegade province of China per international law. So this provides us with an understanding of the situation of Taiwan and the international arena. But we also need to understand what went on on the island during this time. And I think this is the piece of the puzzle that's missing a lot too kind of from people on both the pro and anti-China sides of the argument, I guess don't really get into this. So it's kind of, they get the different strands of reaction mixed up. So when Taiwan was returned to China in 1945, the civil war was going on, which meant that properly governing Taiwan at the time was not a huge priority for the KMT. And Taiwanese people were taxed heavily to support the civil war going on on the mainland. And because Taiwan had been separated from the rest of China for 50 years, there was a lack of mutual understanding between the newly arrived mainlanders who took over the governing of Taiwan from the Japanese colonizers. And for one, most of Taiwan's Han population up until the 1940s came from southern Fujian province and Guangdong's Meixian. And the mainlanders now in charge came from all sorts of different parts of China. So there was regional unfamiliarity with these new arrivals. And at the same time, there was also a classism because Taiwan as a Japanese colony did get to enjoy a certain level of economic development not found on the mainland at the time. So many of the new arrivals were seen as backwards by the Taiwanese people. And on the other hand, the KMT saw Taiwanese people as potential traders because the younger generation had been educated under Japanese rules. So this is one contradiction that wasn't really resolved well. And I like to say, although the KMT was opposed to Taiwan separatism, it really did a lot and paved the way for the movement to really rise. Anyways, I have to get into one of the events that kind of led it to rise. Though, decades later, because of poor military discipline, government corruption, bad economy and a plethora of other issues, rebellion broke out on February 28th, 1947. Reinforcements were sent to Taiwan to quash the rebellion and it was a tragic event of civilians and rebels getting killed by the military as well as random civilians from the mainland being killed by violent Taiwanese mobs who kind of reduced the issue of like, the ruling class and the people to just an issue between like local Taiwanese and people from the mainland. And please note that nearly everyone involved in this incident, like I mentioned at the beginning of this presentation, so both the mainlanders and the Taiwanese were haunt. So it's, while it was a huge tragedy and I'm not in any way defending the KMT for the way it handled the situation, it was absolutely not a genocide against indigenous Taiwanese. So the two pro categories of people on Taiwan are called Ben Shengren, which literally mean people of this province, which refers to those whose families arrived in Taiwan generations ago and Huai Shengren, which literally means extra-provincial people and refers to people who arrived to Taiwan between 1945 and the mid-1950s, as well as their descendants. I say the mid-1950s because although the PRC was established in 1949, there were still parts of the mainland that were not liberated. So there were like still like a few waves after 1949. Anyways, the former group Ben Shengren is sometimes translated into English as native Taiwanese, which is why some people unfamiliar with the intricacies assume those people are indigenous and why some people also assume that the current administration on Taiwan is trying to like pull a huge Elizabeth Warren and claim that everyone is indigenous, which is not the case as much as, as reactionary as a DVP is, this is not something that they do. A lot of it's just kind of missing just things that are lost in translation. Anyways, this massive uprising and repression in response resulted in martial law that wasn't lifted until 1987. And before martial law was lifted and the democratic reforms were carried out, elections were suspended with the fact that the country was in a state of disunity as justification. So it was, hey, we're a democratic country, the so-called Republic of China as a democratic country, but because most of the territory has fallen to the communists and we have not yet restored our country to its full territory, that means we're in a state of war and democracy needs to be suspended. And this meant that the so-called national assembly of the so-called Republic of China was appointed by the KMT and nearly everyone in the higher echelons of power was, we're, why shouldn't it? So like the mainland, the newer people from the mainland. So like I said, we need to understand Chiang Kai-shek's rule over Taiwan as a Bonapartist in nature, which means one segment of the ruling class. And in this case, it's the mainland elite suppressing the others. And this meant that there was a segment of the capitalist class in Taiwan that felt that their rightful place as the elite in Taiwan were taken by outsiders. And Chiang Kai-shek's government also suppressed communists very heavily from 1945 into the 1950s. And until like the 70s and 80s, the majority of the opposition to the KMT on Taiwan were communists, both Ben Tsingran and Y Tsingran alike. And with the communist movement on Taiwan thoroughly crushed the opposition to the KMT that later rose became the segments of the capitalist class with anti-mainland sentiments, as well as those from like the middle classes who long for a liberal democracy. So think about like the middle class, like intellectuals and yeah, but who are liberal minded, they weren't communist, they weren't left to say, they just wanted, they long for liberal democracy. And so note that during up until the 1980s, until the late 1980s, Taiwan separatism was actually illegal in Taiwan. And although Chiang Kai-shek's rule was limited to Taiwan, Penghu, Kimmen and Matsu, the official stance I can mention earlier was that the so-called Republic of China was a so legitimate government of China and that the mainland will one day be reclaimed. However, as the mainland built up of its industrial base and developed nukes, it became evident that this was never going to happen. And when the seat of Taiwan was taken from the so-called Republic of China and given to the People's Republic of China, this illusion kind of faded even more. And without a realistic political goal, the ideological vacuum left behind formed in Taiwan. An ideological vacuum formed in Taiwan during a time when a sizeable Ben Sheng middle class was increasingly anti-KMT. And the bubble really burst in 1979 when the US shifted its recognition of China's government from Taipei to Beijing. And by then Chiang Kai-shek had already been dead for two years and his son and successor, Jiang Jinguo, knew that in order for the KMT to maintain power in Taiwan, it had to really build up Taiwan's economy and allow Ben Sheng or the local Taiwanese into higher levels of government to shed the image of the KMT being the party of mainlanders for mainlanders. So he oversaw the 10 major construction projects that catapulted Taiwan into the ranks of the four Asian Tigers. So although political repression was still there, people's lives were noticeably getting better and better as the economy grew quite remarkably. But because of the growing economy and middle class, like more and more Ben Sheng intellectuals were calling for a redistribution of political power with democratization, localization and independence being common themes and discourse. But notice how it's the redistribution of political power and not really much being said about economics. And I'll get more into, and if you listen to my series on Carl's Oz on Silk and Steel podcast, I get more into detail with the class analysis, but for time's sake, I just had to unfortunately skip that for today. And anyway, dealing with this new opposition, new liberal opposition was a challenge for the KMT because it got really good at suppressing communists and it got really good at kind of like buying off the local Ben Sheng elite for the most part and also just kind of winning over the working class that's how as Bonapartists tend to do. But it did not have much experience dealing with middle class liberal opposition. And this marked the beginning of the Dangwai movement, which Dangwai means like outside of the party. And it was basically a united front against the KMT. It was called that because all parties besides the KMT were banned, but people were allowed to run for positions and government as independence. And this united front eventually formed the Democratic Progressive Party, which is the party that is currently incumbent today. And I'll start calling the Democratic Progressive Party the DPP for short, because that's what we usually, that's how it's usually referred to in English. And after years of opposition struggle, Jiang Jingguo decided in 1987 to end martial law as well as lift the travel restrictions so that civil war veterans could travel back to the mainland. And just two weeks before he died in January, 1988, he lifted the ban on independent newspapers and parties. And it said that around the time that he died, he was starting to rethink a lot of these issues and was actually getting ready to enter talks with Deng Xiaoping, the leader of mainland China during that time, who actually happened to be his classmate when they both studied in the Soviet Union. But that didn't happen. And he was succeeded by Li Denghui. So as you can probably tell by now, the Taiwan issue involves many layers of contradictions, but hopefully this very condensed and simplified history shows that the primary contradiction at play here has been US interference for its own geopolitical interests in the Asia-Pacific that kind of got further sharpened by the mishandling of internal contradictions by a not so obedient puppet regime. So there was a mishandling of internal contradictions by the KMT in Taiwan along identity lines. And this reality was exploited by other segments of the ruling class that were later represented by the DPP. And although Taiwan's liberal democratization was a rupture from the Bonapartist dictatorship that governed it from 1945 until the late 1980s, it was nonetheless a continuation of Taiwan's status as a capitalist US client. And back then the US supported the Zhangs because strongmen like Zhang Kai-shek and Zhang Jingguo are what's needed to keep communists oppressed. Because after decades of Japanese will follow immediately by a corrupt domestic government, the rise of communist sympathies was quite inevitable. But the problem with these Bonapartist clients like Zhang Kai-shek or Zhang Jingguo or like say, for example, Park Chung-hee in Korea, from the US's perspective is that they have too many ideas of their own. For example, the Zhang sought to build nuclear weapons so they could become more militarily self-sufficient and not depend on US support, which they rightfully deemed unreliable. And from this, you can understand why with the communist movement essentially wiped out and with the socialist bloc standing on its last legs in the 1980s, a liberal democracy that's more malleable and more easily influenced is preferred by the US, which is why it supported the liberal faction of the KMT represented by Li Denghui, Zhang Jingguo's successor. It was under Lee that the liberalization of both Taiwan's politics and economy was completed. People often focus on the liberalization of politics but equally important, if not more important is the liberalization of the economy because this is where things get interesting because up until this point, Taiwan kind of, usually US client, like US puppets don't enjoy, don't get to enjoy the certain level of self-determination that Taiwan and like South Korea did, but they were allowed to really build up their economies because they needed to, because the US needed an example of successful capitalist societies. But anyways, remember that up to this point, Taiwan's separatism was not popular and even until the early 2000s, the majority of Taiwanese people sought eventual reunification with the mainland one way or another. And this would have threatened Taiwan's role as a US client because the Chinese patriotism that was mainstream in Taiwan at the time, despite being anti-communist in content, would have gotten a significant portion of the population to look at the rise of the Chinese mainland positively, especially as on contact between the two sides increased and more and more Taiwanese people were traveling to the mainland and seeing how it was improving with their own eyes. And if this were to have been continued unchecked, it would have been very bad for the opportunists who live cozy lives by maintaining Taiwan status as a US client. So as you can see, there are legitimate grievances against the KMT, but without a class-conscious perspective, identity lines could easily be exploited. And this is what happened. The thinking goes like this, the KMT is bad. The KMT is made up mostly of mainlanders. The Communist Party of China is on the Chinese mainland and therefore also made up of mainlanders. The Communist Party of China is bad because the KMT said it's bad, but it's also bad like the KMT because it's made up of mainlanders. But we're good because we're now a democracy and we fought those and we fought the KMT. So why even bother being Chinese at this point? So mainlanders are Chinese and we're not mainlanders and we've been governed separately for so long that we're just not Chinese anymore. So starting in the 2000s after the first DPP leader, Chen Xiebian was elected, the education system in Taiwan was changed in a top-down fashion such that a new generation of Taiwanese people would spend much less time studying Chinese history and literature and naturally stop viewing themselves as Chinese. And because the US client state is not going to teach its people about US imperialism, it's easy to see the Taiwan issue as a simple matter of the big bad mainland China wanting to swallow up Taiwan while ignoring the fact that the Taiwan issue is a manifestation of Sino-US contradictions. At the same time though, we must realize that the leaders of Taiwan are using separatism as a rallying point, but are not serious about pursuing it. And this is dangerous because while they are not serious about pursuing it, they're tricking common folks into buying it and pushing for it and basically moving Taiwan, like justifying US imperialism in Taiwan in a way that pushes China towards war, like all of China, like mainland and Taiwan. I mean, the ruling class knows that separatism will not happen, which is why to dodge the question of separatism, they'll say Taiwan is already an independent country called the Republic of China. But if you read the DPP's party program, one of the stated goals is the abolition of the so-called Republic of China and the establishment of a Republic of Taiwan. So this line goes against their own party program, interestingly, so to reiterate, the reality is the separatist movement as it exists today is the attempt to maintain Taiwan's position as a US client in a world where mainland China is becoming more and more influential, but formal independence will never be pursued by the leaders who sell the idea to voters who have been sold the idea to voters, who have kind of bought into the whole idea of talent independence. So, and I also wanna point out, what does independence mean? Because if you're being pushed towards more dependency on the US while achieving, you know, de jure independence, which never will happen, but let's say it does, you're not independent. Independence from the neoliberal imperialist world order is a necessary first step towards any form of independence. And this begs the question though, is the US our friend who has our best interests at heart and I promise I'm closing my little spiel because I know I've, I don't know how long I've gone, but it's been quite long. History tells us otherwise. The first country to ever attack Taiwan with a warship was the US in 1867. The country that supported Japan and invading Taiwan during the Muran incident was the US in 1874. The country that sold weapons to Japan during the first Sino-Japanese war leading to China's defeat, forcing China to see Taiwan and Japan was the US from 1894 to 1895. The country that actively pushes for Japanese containment of China and Taiwanese containment of mainland China is the United States. From the 19th century until today, the United States is not our friend. The Taiwan Relations Act, which by the way is a US, is a unilateral US law, is a unilateral US law and not like bilateral states that it is a policy of the US to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character. Nowhere in the English language is the word provide imply the sale of something, but that's how things have been going on since the last few decades. We've been kind of just being coerced into buying outdated US weapons that won't do anything in the event of war with the Chinese mainland. And so basically it's just a way to get protection money. And like when the mafia goes to an establishment and asks for protection money to protect the owners of the establishment from a threat, usually the threat is the mafia itself. It's clear that we're being used to serve US imperialist interests, yet we're still expected to pay for the tools required to do so. It's kind of like if you get a guard dog and you somehow make the dog pay for its kibbles. Are the weapons purchased from the US sufficient to defend Taiwan from an attack by the mainland? And this military information I'm about to present is a little bit outdated. So today the discrepancy is bigger and the people's liberation army is much more powerful than before. So anyways, here are the stats. Mainland China's WS-2 missile costs $10,000 to produce, whereas a single Patriot missile costs Taiwan $3 million. It takes three Patriot missiles to intercept a WS-2, meaning it costs 9 million to intercept each missile that costs 10,000. Then there's the HN series of land attack cruise missiles capable of attacking from an altitude of a mere 10 to 30 meters. Patriot missiles operate at altitudes of 50 meters and above. So that means Patriot missiles are kind of useless. The US is not our friend. In regards to the above reality, experts say that although such arms cannot effectively defend Taiwan from mainland attacks, it demonstrates Taiwan's willingness and determination to self-defense. Something about bringing, I don't know, I could bring a knife to a gunfight and say that it demonstrates my willingness and determination to self-defense, but I don't know how useful that would be. But if you don't agree with the assessments that Taiwan cannot, Taiwan is doomed in a military situation with the mainland, go read assessments by US military experts published by the RAND Corporation. And some quote, Taiwan's leader, Cai Yingwen, who said that in the event of war with mainland China, Taiwan can defend itself from the first wave after which the international community will join in. And this cannot be further from the truth and it's very disgusting how she's telling that to a global audience and to the people of Taiwan because she's emboldening opportunist elements to further, to play with fire even more with the mainland and rather pursuing more amicable relations, pushed for war, and the people who will ultimately pay the price would be these naive voters while the ruling class, they'll be the first to flee, you know? Nowhere in the Taiwan Relations Act does the US state its obligation to defend Taiwan, by the way, in the event of war. It simply states that efforts to determine Taiwan's status by non-peaceful means are matters of grave concern and the US lawmakers are keenly aware of this lack of commitment. And as highlighted by the fact that former US Senator Charles H. Percy, I think he's the Senator for Illinois at the time. Proposed changing the words grave concern and the act to security interests. But this was vetoed because they would commit the US to war with China should cross-strait antagonisms intensify. Senior Pentagon official Edward Ross said, as alone superpower, our interests are plentiful and our attention short. We cannot help defend you if you cannot defend yourself. Let me kind of look at what's going on in Ukraine right now. Like what's NATO doing to protect their so-called allies? You know, the puppets they installed there in the first place. Anyways, the US is not our friend nor is it the friend of any of the common folks in the world. It's friends of certain compradors and, you know, profiteers, but for the vast majority of people, it's not our friend. Its policies regarding Taiwan have nothing to do with the well-being of the Taiwanese people and everything to do with US imperialist interests and war profits. The idea that the US is Taiwan's friend is a lie started by the KMT and continued to this day by the DPP. And if you believe it, it's because you've been sheltered from the realities of US imperialism. And this concludes my presentation today and I hope it helps everyone better contextualize what they see in the media regarding Taiwan. There's simply no way for me to have gone into all the nuances and I definitely had to skip over a lot of important history. Unfortunately, I'm sorry, I had to do that. But if you found this informative and want to learn more, I recommend once again, just kind of a self-plug. The history of Taiwan series I recorded with my friend Carl's on his podcast called the Silk and Steel podcast. And I will post a link in the chat right now or in like two minutes. And I'll also give the organizers the link of the playlist. So everyone who's interested, go check it out. And I just want to end by saying thank you all very much for your time listening to me ramble and thank you, Code Pink and Pivot to Peace and everyone else for organizing this event and inviting me to speak. Wow, she knew that was a lot. Thank you so much. Thanks for the depth of your sharing and also for taking us into the complexity of Taiwan which is already enough. It doesn't need U.S. interference adding on to what is complex and layered and layered. A lot of it was kind of the result of U.S. involvement in the first place. I mean, many times you brought us back to this moment also in history where it's the U.S. playing off Russia and China and so here we are again. So I want to turn to our next speaker, K.J. No, who's a journalist, political analyst, writer and educator specializing in the geopolitics and political economy of Asia Pacific region. He's a member of Veterans for Peace and Pivot to Peace and maybe K.J., you could take us deeper into this question of China, U.S. domination. Why is the U.S. so interested in Taiwan? Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you and thank you, Shangyu. Thank you, Code Pink. Thank you, Jody and Lauren. I'm gonna start out with a presentation and I'm going to see if I can accelerate my presentation a little bit. So why is Taiwan important for us? I think well, as Shangyu stated, it is a province of China and its majority of the people are culturally, demographically, socially, linguistically, religiously Chinese. There is a Taiwanese language that is sometimes referred to as Min Nan Hua, which means South of the River Min. And of course, if you look on a map, you'll see that the River Min is in Fujian province. If you look at the flags of the United Nations, you will search high and low for a Taiwanese flag because it's not recognized by the United Nations as a nation. In fact, UN resolution 2758 determined that Taiwan is a part of the People's Republic of China, the PRC, the U.S., Britain, Germany, et cetera, supported the resolution. But there are some countries or regions that recognize the Taiwanese government. And they are St. Kitts and Nevis, Tuvalu, Marshall Islands, Eswatini, St. Lucia, Paraguay. These are relatively smaller countries. If you look on a map, you can see that that recognition is very, very sparse. As a point of reference, these are the countries that recognize Palestine, which is still not received full status at the United Nations. You'll see that the settler colonial genocidal states and their proxies are the countries that oppose Palestine's full recognition. The Taiwanese constitution claims all of mainland China as its territory. Article four says the territory of the Republic of China, according to existing boundaries shall not be altered except by resolution of the national assembly. And of course, the U.S. itself has agreed that Taiwan is part of China. This is the 1972 Shanghai communique. And they agree that there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The U.S. government does not challenge that position. Another part of the Shanghai communique, sometimes forgotten but equally important, is the U.S. says that it will withdraw all U.S. forces and all military installations from Taiwan will progressively reduce its forces as tension diminishes. And of course, the leader, the current leader, Tsai Ing-wen herself said, I am Chinese. So why do people think Taiwan is a separate nation as Shanyu pointed out? It has to do with Japanese colonization history, U.S. intervention and the creation of Taiwanese identity as a client state. And specifically, if we look at the 1895 Sino-Japanese war and the Treaty of Shimano-seki, essentially Taiwan was split off from China as war booty along with the Liaodong Peninsula, et cetera. Now, China cannot tolerate an independent and possibly belligerent Taiwan province because not simply because unfinished history but because of the geo-strategics involved. It is a direct threat to China. It is the cornerstone of the first island chain which is an encirclement of China of the Asia pivot. The enemy is directly on your doorstep. Taiwan is about 100 miles from the mainland and there are islands that are less than three miles from the mainland. So this is a tremendous force projection platform for the United States. And of course, the U.S. has gained this all out SE battle third offset, fourth offset diffusion, swarming automation, island hopping, subsurface warfare, standoff, et cetera. But the gist of it is that Taiwan is a dagger aimed at China and it's the closest part of any offensive force to the Chinese mainland. Of course, there is the unfinished history. The KMT took over Taiwan by force and initiated martial law, continued to shell and terrorize China from the island at the time when China did not have an air force or even a Navy continues to try to undermine China. 1947, as Xiang Yu pointed out, there was the February 28th massacre started with a vendor selling untaxed cigarettes. And then there was the wholesale slaughter of protesters as an article from the New York Times March 28th. They say 10,000 innocent civilians were slaughtered, completely unjustified, unarmed people whose intentions were peaceful. This also reminds me of George Floyd who was also murdered by the authorities for selling untaxed cigarettes. There was 1979 Kaohsiung incident which resulted in the call of the death penalty for the leaders. Henley Liu in 1984 was a Taiwanese dissident living in the United States and he was murdered by the Taiwanese government in his daily city suburban home. It's not unlike the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. And of course, who can forget Roberto Dobisant, he was the right-wing death squad leader of El Salvador. He was trained in counterinsurgency in Taiwan and there were 30,000 killed in these dirty wars. And of course, who can forget Singh Manri. Singh Manri was also a genocidal president of South Korea, Park Changi. All of these people looked up to Taiwan, allied with Taiwan. It was a kind of a base and a axis of military dictatorship and terror until the late 80s. So it has been a questionable actor on the international stage. And for the mainland, if we take this history into account, it could pose a serious threat in particular because of its client state status with the United States. There's been a constant stream of propaganda and disinformation from Taiwan. For example, Taiwan requested information about COVID and then claim that it had warned China about people to people transmission, human to human transmission, when no such thing had happened, but it was instrumental in disseminating this canard that China covered up or held back information. So this is the security dilemma. The U.S. has plans to take down China. It is encircling China through the Asia pivot. Taiwan is the cornerstone. And it also controls access to certain submarine channels that will determine China's capacity for deterrence. The Shanghai communique agreed that Taiwan as part of China agreed to demilitarize. At the current moment, the U.S. has essentially broken all of its assurances. It has direct official contact. It continues to militarize. It specifically talks in its sense of Congress document about militarizing Taiwan. It is of course an encouragement towards independence. And of course, Chas Friedman, who was the U.S. Ambassador Chas Friedman, who was actually a translator at the time of the Shanghai communique, has said that the communique has essentially been salami-sliced. There's nothing left of it. And therefore we are potentially looking at a Ukraine-like situation. Now China doesn't want war. It wants peaceful reunification. And as the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. said, people on both sides of the Taiwan Straits are Chinese. We are compatriots. The last thing we should do is fight with compatriots. We will do our utmost to achieve peaceful reunification. But Taiwan's authority is working down the road towards independence emboldened by the United States. The Taiwan issue is the biggest tinderbox between China and the United States. If the Taiwanese authorities emboldened by the United States keep going down that road, it will most likely involve China and the United States in military conflict. This was one month ago, the Chinese ambassador to the United States. The Taiwanese don't want war. Majority of said they will not join in U.S.-Tina war. The U.S. is creating a situation where China may have no choice. U.S. claims about self-determination and sovereignty are not credible as we have noted. But the U.S. has stated that we inhabit a post-Westphalian order. That is to say sovereignty is limited. It's contingent upon the dictates of the Imperium, i.e. the U.S. And Taiwan is clearly a proxy for U.S. interest in the area. I just want to say that the Chinese have a culture of peace. They say, good iron is not used as nails, good men are not spent as soldiers. And it has the earliest record in continuous tradition of anti-militarism, this is a poem by Tufu. And even the art of war, which people like to read, always talks about not fighting, avoiding battle. But the U.S. does want war. It's creating alliances that are very, very belligerent and it is trying to blunt China's rise by funding promoting causing internal strife to dismember it in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan and Tibet. I remind our listeners that war of secession, some of the deadliest wars in history have been about secession. Up to 750,000 died in the U.S. Civil War. And once again, I point out that the Taiwan independence that the U.S. is goading could be a trigger to war. And this is why we all have to work for peace, have to work for de-escalation everywhere. Thank you. Thank you so much. Both of you are just teaching us a lot today. And I think it's so important that as we recognize the miseducation of the U.S. government, state department that just floods our mainstream media, what a gift it is for you both to be sharing with us today. So our next guest is out in the streets in Hawaii saying no to war in the Ukraine. And a few hours ago, she sent us her message, which we'll play now. And also I just wanna let you all know that we've launched a global day of action for March 6th next Sunday. And we invite you to join us in the streets and share Lauren will, after Anne speaks, post the link where you can organize something locally and we'll put it up on the site that we just finished building. So Anne Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army and Army Reserves and retired as a colonel. She was also a U.S. diplomat and served in the embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan, and Mongolia. She resigned from the U.S. government in 2003 in opposition to President Bush's war in Iraq and has been part of the Ku Klux Pink team for the last 19 years and is a member of Veterans for Peace. Shay will share her words with us now. Good afternoon, good evening. My name is Anne Wright. I'm a retired U.S. Army colonel and a former U.S. diplomat resigned in opposition to the war in Iraq, in 2003 and since then I've been a part of a lot of peace groups to include Veterans for Peace, Pivot to Peace, Code Pink Women for Peace. And it's great to be with you today as we talk about a very important part of the world, the Western Pacific, Asia and the Western Pacific. And I'm very proud to be part of this Pivot to Peace and Code Pink presentation on the Shanghai communique. And the very interesting part of the communique, let's see. The, you know, 50 years ago the communique was signed between Richard Nixon and Prime Minister Joanne Lai. And it brought 50 years of reasonable cooperation among the two countries. And today in 2020 we're here to update the communique in terms of our personal views on it. And some of the things that were written about the communique in Pivot to Peace, a very excellent document that we want peace rather than promoting war, that we will all benefit by policies of cooperation with China. A best future will reduce the global menace of militarism and armed conflict that we need to turn away from a path of confrontation and here we go right up there, this little sign of today, you know, no war on anyone. We need to reorient America's relationship with China in a positive construction direction, withdraw US troops from Taiwan, seize provocations in the Taiwan Strait and let issues around Taiwan be resolved by the people of China on both sides of the Strait. So here I am in Honolulu, Hawaii. It's the headquarters of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command military command that covers, it's the largest command and covers all the way from the West Coast of the United States all the way to India and all of the Pacific areas. And as you will see for a minute, this military command really has a lot to do with the U.S. relationships in the Pacific and that's what I'm going to focus on, U.S. military relationships right now. You'll have other speakers that I'm gonna talk specifically about Taiwan and other places, but I just wanted to focus on the military aspects of this. We do know that out in the Western Pacific right now there are two U.S. carrier groups that are out there with what they call freedom of navigation exercises which really are military war maneuvers that are taking place in the front yard of China, the front yard being the South China Sea and the East China Sea. Each one of these carrier groups has 10 other vessels that are with it to include nuclear submarines. Here's another aspect of it. The United States has enticed the Brits, the French, the Dutch, the Germans, the Australians to send in ships and submarines also into that area of the world. So it is a very, very dangerous place because missteps, miscalculations, mistakes can occur and all of a sudden huge, huge implements of war may collide with each other, may have confrontations with each other. So it's a very dangerous place and we need to, as Americans, be tapping down this need for confrontation that our politicians seem to think. Not only on the sea, but on the land. Last year in Australia was a very, very large land exercise with 17,000 military from Australia, the US, Canada, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, France, India and Indonesia. Every other year, Talisman Saber is held in Australia. Australia is becoming quite the US ally in what's also called the, what was it though? US, Australia, UK, submarine debacle where the US enticed Australia start buying US and British submarines versus French submarines. AUKUS, that's the name of it, AUKUS. Another part of this naval thing is a naval military war maneuver held right here in Hawaii, right off shores of the Hawaiian islands. The US Navy, it's called Rim of the Pacific and this year it's held every two years also the US Navy expects 27 countries to send their warships and aircraft up to 25,000 personnel will be out here in Hawaii. My apologies for this, it's a little bit blurry but they expect 42 ships, five submarines and more than 170 aircraft to be a part of this. So this is the militarization continued and expanded militarization of the Pacific as the US has really started going after China. Just a week and a half ago here in Hawaii, our US Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, met with the foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan as they discuss threats coming from North Korea. North Korea certainly has been demanding attention from the Biden administration by sending missiles up and the Biden administration really has not been paying much attention to it or not the attention that Kim Jong-un fields should be so he's sending missiles. And now of course, there's the publicity of what is considered to be a threat. I was in North Korea seven years ago and we definitely need to talk to the government there. The reason they developed nuclear weapons is because the US air 70 years after the end of the Korean War has never signed a peace treaty with them. And so they consider that the United States at any moment might attack invade. So they developed an opposition to the US ever signing peace treaty and the continual presence of up to 30,000 US military in South Korea. So they developed nuclear weapons and these missiles that they continue to fire. Other places in the Pacific are getting tiny little islands like Palau which is just a long Palau federated states of Micronesia tiny little island groups that are now seeing the United States focus its attention on it. The US Marine Corps has totally revamped its strategies and tactics and now it has given away all of its tanks. The tanks that you see right now that the Russians are using to invade Ukraine. Well, the US is having a new policy for the Western Pacific, no tanks out here but instead the Marines are going to go into small island groups and they're going to have missiles that will be from these small island groups to go after any seacraft that comes around the small island groups. The US is getting Japan to increase its defense presence getting more cost sharing going. Other things are big missile radar systems. Here in Hawaii, they want to put this massive radar system out on the little island of Kauai. It would be the largest building on the whole island. It's the amount of weight it would take to build this would crumble all the bridges that are there. Residents of Kauai do not want this mainly because it doesn't work against threats. Here in Oahu where I live, we think successfully pushed it off here saying we don't want it. Citizen activism being very important but unfortunately now the friends over in Kauai are having to do the same thing to say no, we don't want it. Even the military doesn't want it but one of our senators from Hawaii, Senator Maisie Hiroto wants this nearly $2 billion infrastructure project for the islands of Kauai. Another aspect of the marine switch and its strategy and tactics is that the Marine Corps for the very first time is going to start using assassin drones Reaper drones out here in the Pacific. And they have now assigned six assassin drones here on Oahu, six over in Guam. And you ask, well, who are they going to go after? I mean, we're one of the most isolated island chains in the world. So what are they doing out here? Well, they're practicing so they can use them in the Western Pacific. They can use them in Southeast Asia on the Asian continent, on the Northeast Asian continent. So not only them, the US Air Force has had them and operated them in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya with the CIA of course, Pakistan. Now the Marine Corps is going to be operating them and they'll be operating them properly from these small islands on which they will use their own landing craft. They've said, we don't want you Navy guys taking us around, we want our own ships. So the Marine Corps is trying to get ships. They're getting assassin drones and trying to make their name for themselves out here in the Western Pacific. Let's just a little talk about Taiwan even though other people are going to be talking about it. On November 15th, the 2001 virtual summit, Joe Biden told Xi Jinping, he strongly opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo or undermine the peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. Well, I agree with that, the status quo, it's going okay except the US continues to send in the top level diplomats it ever has in the last 50 years. So the US is not after the same status quo. It is actually unbalancing it. And the fact that every time the United States sends in another top level Democrat diplomat or sends in more military armament then the Chinese come with armadas of aircraft, right? To the air defense zone of Taiwan. It's to say, we thought we had an agreement but no, so it's a very dangerous place these days both on the air and on the sea and on the land. And the bottom line for me and I think for all of you all, no war is not the answer to any of this. So with this, I want to thank you all very, very much for your kindness and being with us on this excellent, excellent webinar that we've been having about the Shanghai Communique. Thank you very much. And she's fabulous. So we continue to learn more. And so I know that there's just so much more to learn. And I see a few questions. We have one more speaker and super important because we need to bring it home. And that's Lauren, who's our campaign coordinator at Coodpink's China's Not Our Enemy campaign. She's worked in various capacities including our communications and community building, education, and she's organized many of our educational programs and campaigns. So Lauren, if you can bring this home for us tonight, thank you. Yeah, of course. Thank you to everyone for staying with us late into the night. And in bringing it home, I just kind of want to speak to the human cost in the West, especially in the United States. Earlier this month, Christina Yunalee, a Korean American woman was followed home to her apartment in New York City, Chinatown and brutally murdered. She was stabbed 40 times and her death was on the heels of the death of the death of Michelle Ellis-Ago, who was pushed onto an oncoming New York City train and among the kind of vitriolic coverage by many media outlets of I-Lean Pool. So the United States Congress is trying to reconcile two bills, one from the Senate and one from the House, that both have a lot of anti-China provisions. And although the FBI's China Initiative is ending, these two bills currently being reconciled pretty much take their place with a lot of McCarthyist surveillance provisions and this kind of attitude that is in Congress and in the media of meeting to counter China is only adding to a very normalized anti-China sentiment, which directly relates to the violence that we're seeing. So these interpersonal tragic acts of violence and attacks on Asians in the US are not unrelated to the way that Congress and the media talks about China. People will see people that they perceive to be Chinese and to them, those people represent China and that's why we're seeing an over 300% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes just between 2020 and 2021. So the new Cold War on China by the US is has real human cost already at home and we can see it in real time. So that's why we need to continue to advocate for peace and to stop the US's aggression on China because it has real casualties already happening even before there's any sort of like official war people are being affected by this. So yes, I just want to reiterate that it is our duty to for our own government advocate for peace and to stop aggression on other countries because it has an effect on people who are associated with those countries at home in the US and that's not something that is acceptable and we should continue forward on advocating for a path towards peace. Thank you. Thank you, Lauren. And I think as we've heard from all the speakers is that this is a provocation that's longstanding from the US and that as we've felt terrorized in the last week that war, weapons, violence are fires that should be criminalized. It should be a criminal to be playing with these fires and that we know war is not the answer and that is always a crime as we heard from BJ often in the last week. So I know we have like five minutes left. I see a few questions in the Q and A. I don't know if any of our speakers can answer. How are people in Taiwan reacting to the recent revelations of secret US special forces assassination squads and the new fleet of US fighter jets? Anyone can comment on that? Thank you. Presidents of US forces on Taiwan has always been an open secret. It's just like and the Beijing knows, Taipei knows that Beijing knows, the US knows they all know, but it was just kind of the understanding was we have it but we're not gonna bring it up. And the other thing is usually these military professionals when they're sent to Taiwan, they're temporarily stripped of their official titles and they go there as technicians or whatever and then they're kind of given those titles back. So it's like, it's nothing really new but it's a lot of it's like media being sensationalist like kind of bring up the media hype. Yeah. Thank you. And then for Roy, he said he cannot turn in his used cars and buy a new one because the Americans are told supply chain issues, prohibit construction of new automobiles here due to shortages of computer chips, arising from Taiwanese owned factories and the PRC. Why do Taiwanese entrepreneurs have family in both Taiwan and PRC, capitalist homes in Taiwan and factories in PRC? Who is being game tier Americans, Taiwanese or Chinese? Well, I would like to suggest that, I know you mean well, just reword it. So instead of saying Taiwan and the PRC, Taiwan and the Chinese mainland. So unless you do view the two sides as two countries and now we disagree, then at least that's consistent with your views. Well, I mean, a lot of times these people, they have these cross-strait businesses because they're not really, I mean, they're not really anti-China but it's just when you're like TSMC and they're the major chip provider in the world. I mean, the administration that you're under is going to leverage that and like you're kind of just, do you really have a choice in any of this? That's a good question to ask. But the other thing that you raised though is there are DPP supporters and DPP members who do push for Taiwan separatism on Taiwan while they do have businesses on the mainland that they have no problem accepting RMB and it just kind of goes to show that they are opportunists. And it's also one of the, one of the miscalculations in my view of the Communist Party is trying to win Taiwanese people. Like this was kind of like the way the go-to method in the past was to win Taiwanese people over by winning over the business people. But a lot of the people in Taiwan rightfully see these business people as opportunists. So, yeah. What was the other part of the question? Sorry, I'm just getting tired. I think you did it and I think KJ might have been answered too. If Shay could bring him into the screen, that would be great. Thank you, Shay. Yes, I just wanted to make a comment about the fact of US trainers and military officers in Taiwan. The fact is there has been a kind of don't ask, don't tell agreement. But the fact that the Taiwanese have come out, the US and the Taiwanese have come out explicitly and publicized it means that all bets are off. They're explicitly sending the message that the Shanghai communique and the agreements between China and the PRC are off. They're literally saying essentially FU, we're going to do whatever we want. And they're not even, they don't even have the discretion to hide what's going on. So that's a very, very bad sign. It's not simply a matter of, we always knew this, it doesn't change anything. It actually changes everything. And it's what Kurt Campbell said. He said, the era of engagement with China is over. It's just underlining that fact. As for the question about semiconductors, we have to understand that the United States is currently in a trade war with China. And semiconductors are one of the products that they're trying to disable China's production and they're trying to decouple China's supply chain. So there is a Chinese semiconductor company, SMIC. They're trying to disable it. They've actually, the Trump administration put SMIC on a blacklist. And they're trying to do everything to prevent it from getting source materials, gases, lithography machines, so that it can improve its production. On the other hand, they have put a lot of pressure on the Taiwanese semiconductor company, TSMC, to move its production to the United States or to India or to other countries and to move their production out of China. And TSMC did some of this, but this actually backfired first because it's not easy to build a semiconductor fab and to train workers to work in it. But more than that, because COVID struck these countries and so then production was tremendously curtailed. And so what this really is, it's part of a larger ongoing war between the US and China where the US is trying to shut China out of its semiconductor production chain and shift it over as it did from Japan to Korea to Taiwan. And that has backfired in a very, very bad way. And this is one of the reasons, not the only reason, but one of the reasons why there is a tremendous shortage not simply of semiconductors, but of many retail goods. Well, I just wanna thank all of you for sharing your words tonight and on your deep research and your knowledge. Thank you so much. I can see in the chat that the audience has been very grateful because we're so impoverished with real education in the United States. Just wanna reiterate that war is not the answer and watching the US State Department continue to provoke and US policies to provoke war is disgraceful and may we continue to share voices and share knowledge to undermine that because as Lauren said that it's already being by lives, it's not coming, it's happening and the synophobia in relation to it is not just in the United States, but it's growing globally. So we need to continue to be peace activists calling for what we're celebrating today, which is the goal of cooperation, of friendship and non-competition that we live on a very fragile planet and that security is relationship. It isn't cutting off communication, it is being in communication and that given the nuclear powers that at play, we're playing with fire and that's what we must all continue to call on. Thank you so much for being with us tonight. Thank you for your commitment to peace. Thank you, Shinju. Thank you, KJ. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you, Anne Wright in the streets and please join us next Sunday in the streets globally that we must all stand up for peace and the world must see that there are, there are those of us that want peace and it's the majority. So thank you, continue your amazing work, onward to peace. And thank you, Pivot to Peace. You can go there for more information and to our partners, Chow Collective, the People's Forum, Massachusetts Peace Action and Veterans for Peace. Thank you everybody for attending and thank you to all the other presenters for your excellent presentations. I learned a lot. Thank you on Pivot to Peace. Thank you, Code Pink, People's Forum, Chow Collective, Massachusetts Peace Action, Veterans for Peace, yeah. Thanks, Lauren. Everybody got something out of it. Pulling it all together. Good night, everyone.