Why does China claim Taiwan? It is not so much because the island has “always been part of China,” as the Chinese Communist government's propaganda often states. Alan M. Wachman rightly tells us that the general principles used by the government to justify Taiwan's status as part of China are not any stronger than the ones applied to other once-peripheral territories that China does not claim anymore, such as Burma, Korea, or even Outer Mongolia. However, the author goes further and attempts to demonstrate that Taiwan's distinctiveness derives mainly from its critical geopolitical location. Although the case made by Wachman is carefully documented and, in many respects, convincing, this remains only part of the picture. Taiwan's geopolitical location, in this reviewer's estimation, is not the major explanatory factor in the intricacy and sensitivity of its status.
As we know, Taiwan became part of the Manchu Qing empire in 1684, after...
