Final Chapter: The Embers of a Century of Humiliation Still Burn—Can We Break the Historical Cycle?
Those who govern should consider the people’s hardships before their own comfort. — The hope expressed in this essay
Taiwan’s fate is not merely that of an island or more than 20 million people. It is one of the most sensitive, complicated and unresolved chapters in a national story shaped by a century of suffering. It reflects the upheavals of modern Chinese history, while a new cold-war structure presses it between major civilizational blocs. Every political upheaval, movement of technological resources and ideological alignment resonates throughout the wider Chinese community.
Chinese civilization describes a continuity stretching across five millennia. Beginning in the Yellow River basin, it has passed through cycles of division and unity, war and prosperity, recording both flourishing ages and catastrophe. It is more than a historical river; it is resilience sustained through time. As that river reaches Taiwan and winds toward the sea, it appears caught in uncertainty and drift. Can we still find direction amid the waves?
Taiwan is not merely an isolated island; it is a branch of civilization and an island of memory. Within a century, it moved from colonial rule during an empire’s twilight to the Republic of China’s final refuge, from a Cold War outpost to a semiconductor stronghold in technological globalization. Its story has always been connected to the wider Chinese experience, even as changing times and great-power strategies repeatedly pushed it into the eye of the storm.
Now, within the dark forest of overlapping American, Chinese and Russian power, Taiwan seems to be reenacting part of the Chinese world’s predicament a century ago.
1. An unfinished journey: from imperial abdication to fragments of civilization
The 1911 Revolution and the Qing emperor’s abdication in February 1912 opened a new phase of modern Chinese state-building. More than a century later, unity remains unfinished, cultural renewal incomplete and identity unsettled. The mainland rose after war, while Taiwan remade itself through rupture. This is not solely one side’s fault, but a historical consequence of national fragmentation.
After fragmentation, there must also be efforts at reconnection and understanding. History should help us remember how we arrived here, rather than simply divide us.
TSMC’s overseas movement is therefore not just an industrial question. In my reading, it forces Taiwan to confront the possibility of losing its roots—not only technological roots, but cultural and historical foundations, autonomy and a sense of purpose.
2. Why do recurring histories continue to trap us?
Over the past century, Chinese society has experienced domination by outside powers, civil war and Cold War division. Taiwan remains an especially sensitive point in that history. Ukraine today evokes aspects of the Republic of China’s past; Poland’s historical predicament echoes among states situated between larger powers.
Again and again, we hope for powerful outside support and lose agency; proclaim freedom and find its meaning defined for us. I see this less as fate’s mockery than as a consequence of incomplete self-understanding and institutional preparation.
Taiwan’s problem is not merely distinguishing friend from foe. It is also a loss of a clearly articulated self. How can a polity position itself among great powers if it cannot confidently explain who it is?
3. Rebuilding a future begins with memory
The greatest quality of Chinese culture, in my view, is not domination or expansion, but the pursuit of the Way and the construction of harmony: seeking order amid disorder, preserving differences within plurality and refining oneself through failure.
To escape short-term thinking, Taiwan must begin with memory—of culture, history and a connected destiny.
The island carries Koxinga’s resolve, the struggles of settlers crossing from the mainland, reforms under Chiang Ching-kuo, and fractures extending from postwar restoration to educational reform. These are not merely controversies; they are fragments of civilization. Reassembling them can make a larger picture possible.
4. What kind of Taiwan should Taiwan become?
A future Taiwan could be a center of cultural reconstruction rather than a front line for confrontation; a place capable of proposing its own order rather than a piece forced to choose sides.
Taiwan could help articulate a reconstructed East Asian order, provided it moves beyond reactive identity and develops an understanding of itself that joins institutions, culture and strategy.
Taiwan could be a leading home for the global circulation of Chinese-language culture, provided it actively defines a Taiwanese form of Chinese civilization rather than denying its origins.
Taiwan could help provide a shared intellectual reference point for future East Asian generations, provided it returns to its traditions and reanimates them with modern methods rather than severing cultural continuity.
Conclusion: civilization does not end because one island grows dark
We look back not simply to commemorate the past, but to learn how to recover from rupture.
The residues of a century of humiliation have not disappeared. A cultural flame still glows on the island. If Taiwan seeks its place, it must recognize that the task is not merely to oppose someone, but to find itself.
A flame that dims need not vanish forever. Memory can preserve its warmth, culture can transmit it, and renewed understanding can kindle it again. Our generation’s responsibility is not only to record but to ignite, not only to judge but to carry forward.
The future belongs to people who know where they come from. That is true of Taiwan and of the wider Chinese world.
Civilization advances not through impulse, but through a full remembrance of its history and the enduring resolve of those committed to renewal.
May peace and flourishing endure across the Chinese world. May its children feel the spring breeze and never meet one another through war. As I write these final words, I am in tears. I leave what remains unsaid within this chapter.