The Taiwan Ministry of National Defense concluded that reports made by China Central Television (CCTV) saying the ‘Chinese Army stationed near the Taiwan Strait conducted a large-scale maneuver’ were false, as they did not coincide with the army’s winter training affairs.

China’s false reports are said to have been a way of politically pressuring Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party, who won the Taiwanese presidential election held on the 16th. This is because Tsai has never touched upon the 1992 Consensus between China and Taiwan.

The 1992 Consensus is an agreement stating that both parties agree that there is only “one China”. The current Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou and Chairman of China Xi Jinping came to a mutual agreement that both Taiwan and mainland China are part of one China, and agree that each country may maintain its own interpretation of that statement. Tsai has yet to expressed her stance on this consensus.

Historically and politically, however, Taiwan and the current People’s Republic of China have never been one country. On the 22nd, cultural anthropologist Yanhai Yin published an article in Newsweek Japan that the people of Taiwan were ethnically people belonging to the Austronesian language family, so Taiwan is not an island that the ancient Chinese chose to inhabit.

China is strengthening its power, and a Chinese military official says that if Taiwan attempts independence, China is prepared to enforce unification through military means. It will be able to besiege Taiwan from the waters east and west as soon as China completes the aircraft carrier it is now building.

Will Taiwan accept the ‘one China’ ideology? Or will it succumb to unification through China’s military enforcement?

The military reports may have been false, but they served to pressure Taiwan into making a decision. The Chinese government is to take possession of Taiwan. If this becomes a reality, China will gain more power to claim the South China Sea and the Senkaku Islands as its own.

Since December of last year, China has been sending armed ships to navigate off the shores of the Senkaku Islands. This year, it has already overstepped its territorial waters 3 times.

With the Tsai administration coming to power, Japan is expected to have good relationship with Taiwan. At the same time, Japan needs to support Taiwan so that Taiwan can express its dissatisfaction over the 1992 Consensus on a more independent footing. The TPP will become a key factor for this. Currently ,Taiwan is dependent heavily on China in economic terms. The TPP will allow Taiwan to form links with other democratic countries, thus allowing them to stop relying on China. This will make it all the more easier for Japan and other countries to approach Taiwan.