For millennia, empires have risen and fallen and borders have shifted countless times. Chinese civilization has sustained a rich inheritance of writing, classical texts, and historical memory. This continuity is precious, but recognizing it does not require denying the continuity of other civilizations.
The Liao, Jin, Yuan, and Qing dynasties arrived in succession, bringing their own institutions, languages, and beliefs. These interacted with and reshaped the writing, texts, and ways of life of this land. Cultural continuity was not a one-way process of domestication: rulers absorbed some traditions while retaining and introducing their own.
“When I set out, the willows swayed softly; now I return, and snow falls thickly.”—The Book of Songs, Lesser Court Hymns, “Gathering Ferns”
At the height of the Tang dynasty, the Church of the East, Manichaeism, Islam, and Buddhism coexisted in Chang'an. Persian merchants traded in its markets, while Turkic and Khitan generals could receive noble titles and high office. Yet establishing oneself in the Central Plains meant accepting its rules. Chinese writing, Confucian classics, and the imperial examinations offered many people entry into political and cultural networks. At the same time, hereditary privilege and military achievement remained longstanding avenues of advancement; neither examination success nor poetic talent was a universal prerequisite. Ultimately, across this vast realm, Confucian culture endured and Chinese writing continued to be transmitted.
“Though Zhou is an ancient state, its mandate is renewed.”—The Book of Songs, Greater Court Hymns, “King Wen”
Here lies the strength of Chinese civilization: not only in force of arms, but also in cultural and institutional systems that continually reconstituted themselves. They absorbed outside elements and changed through encounters. Cultural resilience does not mean that every conqueror was fully assimilated. The Mongols established the Yuan, yet their commands had to be written in Chinese. The Manchus founded the Qing, and imperial edicts ultimately became extensions of the Four Books and Five Classics. The Central Plains seemed to be conquered repeatedly, yet in the end it was the conquerors who were truly domesticated, unwittingly becoming vehicles for the continuation of Chinese civilization.
Generation after generation, yesterday's mortal enemies laid down their weapons and sat at desks to write history. Yesterday's mounted conquerors read the Confucian classics. Though the realm changed hands and dynasties succeeded one another, they continued its order by tacit agreement. Following the practices of preceding dynasties, imperial courts compiled the Twenty-Four Histories. In the strokes of Chinese characters, the rise and fall of earlier regimes became lasting lessons, and the new rulers became the next recipients of the Mandate of Heaven.
Across five thousand years, China's body of shared knowledge has extended far beyond the Twenty-Four Histories. The Four Books and Five Classics provided spiritual foundations; the Hundred Schools of Thought opened vast intellectual worlds. Historical works included the Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government, Comprehensive Institutions, Comprehensive Treatises, and Comprehensive Examination of Literature. Literature encompassed countless Tang poems, Song lyrics, and the Four Great Classical Novels. The accumulated practical wisdom of earlier generations produced the Compendium of Materia Medica and The Exploitation of the Works of Nature. These cultural treasures and intellectual foundations span history, philosophy, literature, politics, ethics, and the natural sciences. If the Twenty-Four Histories summarize the experience of imperial government, the Confucian classics, the Hundred Schools, and the four traditional divisions of learning—classics, history, philosophy, and belles-lettres—form the foundations of Chinese civilization's intellectual system.
Retreating Against the Current, Then Collapsing
Taiwan today, however, suggests the possibility of running this history in reverse.
After 1949, Chiang Kai-shek brought to Taiwan a claim to Chinese legitimacy, along with scholars, classics, institutions, and even a substantial part of the Forbidden City's collections. In principle, Taiwan should have become a continuation of Chinese culture. Yet legitimacy is more than a symbol: it requires public recognition and roots in people's hearts. Repression and alienation under authoritarian rule left deep scars in relations between the Kuomintang and local society. Support and opposition subsequently shifted across elections; saying it “never enjoyed popular support” cannot capture every period or every Taiwanese person's choices.
“The people are the foundation of the state; when the foundation is secure, the state is at peace.”—The Book of Documents, “Songs of the Five Sons”
After the Kuomintang was rejected, Taiwan's politics gradually became a chaotic farce. To win votes, political parties deliberately began abandoning identification with Chinese culture, emphasizing local identity and diminishing the influence of Han culture. They discarded the clothing of a thousand years without finding a replacement, forcing themselves to run naked through a world full of danger.
They do not want Taiwanese people to identify as Chinese, yet they do not know what they themselves are. They seek integration with the West, which has never fully accepted them; they seek to create a new culture, which has never truly taken root. Taiwanese society has long debated the weight given to Chinese history and classical literature in curricula. Claims about specific removals still require checking curriculum versions and textbooks; political slogans are not enough. Meanwhile, young people on the mainland continue reciting “Bring in the Wine” in poetry games. Taiwan's variety shows have gradually declined, while mainland China's cultural industries have become a global phenomenon.
“Clouds call to mind her robes, flowers her face; spring breezes brush the balustrade, the dew glistens richly.”—Li Bai, “Pure and Peaceful Melody,” I
Culture is not a slogan or a legal decree. It is the everyday world around you, everything you absorb unconsciously as you grow.
So if one day the armed confrontation we least wish to see arrives, and the two sides of the strait train their sights on each other—
On one side stands the memory of five thousand years of Chinese rise and fall, a cultural lineage transmitted across millennia, and an undying commitment to family and country;
On the other stand a decade or more of calculations about daily livelihood, shifting practical considerations, and the unavoidable lottery of the battlefield.
“The Yi and Di, though they have rulers, are not equal to the Xia even without one.”—The Analects, “Eight Rows”
The legitimacy of a government ultimately rests on cultural inheritance rather than a temporary institutional form. History has repeatedly shown that whoever inherits and develops Chinese culture is the true recipient of the Mandate of Heaven.
America's legitimacy arises from the Pilgrims' pledge of freedom aboard the Mayflower and the militia's resistance to tyranny in the gunfire at Lexington—not from today's ugly electoral spectacle of partisan conflict. Its founding spirit rests on the pioneers' determination, the constitutional compact of the federal union, and the struggle for “no taxation without representation,” rather than politicians' verbal battles and the manipulation of interest groups.
Britain's legitimacy arises from Magna Carta, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the accommodation by which royal authority yielded to Parliament—not from today's partisan entanglements or the monarchy's symbolic survival.
France's legitimacy arises from the anger that stormed the Bastille, the code and order brought by Napoleon, and the national community's identification with the republic—not from electoral scheming and short-sighted politics.
A civilization's foundations lie not in passing power games, but in the convictions and sense of purpose carried by its culture and history. A regime that severs its cultural roots is ultimately duckweed adrift; a country that loses its beliefs will sink into the mire.
Taiwan once had the opportunity to become a beacon of Chinese civilization and a genuine cultural heir. It could even have surpassed the mainland in scholarship, thought, and art, reaching new heights as a spiritual stronghold for Chinese culture as a whole.
“If it benefits the country, I would give my life; how could I seek fortune or flee misfortune?”—Lin Zexu, “Words to My Family on Departing for Exile”
Looking back to the 1950s and 1960s, Taiwan retained a strong Chinese cultural atmosphere. The National Palace Museum preserved treasured paintings and calligraphy from the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. Calligraphy, traditional Chinese painting, and classical literature remained deeply rooted on the island. Scholars who fled turmoil—including Hu Shih, Qian Mu, and Fu Sinian—continued unfinished academic work there.
As times changed, however, Taiwan's leaders chose to abandon this foundation, weakening or even severing their connections with Chinese culture.
De-Sinicizing education: textbooks gradually blur or erase Chinese history, detaching Li Bai, Du Fu, and Su Shi from their cultural context.
Marginalizing art and culture: calligraphy, poetry, and classical scholarship decline, while popular culture becomes more local but loses deeper cultural roots.
Putting politics first and instrumentalizing culture: culture ceases to be an inheritance and becomes a casualty of electoral calculation.
This approach deprives Taiwanese society of a deeper sense of cultural security. Without cultural identification, it will ultimately lose confidence, become subordinate to the West, and drift like rootless duckweed.
Culture as a Blade, Ink in the Bones
Taiwan could have chosen another path. Had it genuinely inherited Chinese culture rather than deliberately pursued de-Sinicization, it should now be producing works more profound and popular than those of the mainland, articulating grander ideas and broader historical narratives, and nurturing greater artists, writers, and philosophers. Its universities could have become the foremost institutions of Chinese cultural scholarship and a spiritual anchor for Chinese communities worldwide, encouraging young mainlanders to learn from Taiwan rather than leaving Taiwan to absorb mainland cultural exports passively.
Imagine Taiwan producing great masters of calligraphy and competing culturally with the mainland; nurturing new writers in the mold of Lu Xun, Lao She, and Yu Hua; studying Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism more deeply, or even creating new philosophical systems; and using freedom of expression to lead the world in film, television, theater, and Chinese classical studies, establishing Taiwan as a beacon of Chinese culture.
Relations across the strait would look entirely different today. However strong mainland China's cultural influence became, it would still recognize Taiwan as a cultural source and a center of Chinese civilizational wisdom. Only then would Taiwan possess genuine cultural confidence, rather than find itself in today's predicament of uncertain identity and lost cultural roots.
United Front! United Front! United Front!
What Taiwan has failed to understand is that culture is the strongest instrument of united-front influence. Mainland China's cultural exports have already become a crucial factor in cross-strait competition: from the Spring Festival Gala to short videos, from northern comedy sketches to Sichuan–Chongqing rap, from online fiction to film and television, even the entertainment meme of a “trainee of two and a half years.” All continually strengthen the mainland's cultural influence.
Yet Taiwan has voluntarily relinquished its cultural voice in this competition. Its language is undergoing a regression toward the lowest common denominator. To appeal to larger voting constituencies, expression increasingly accommodates vulgarity and fragmentation instead of promoting more sophisticated understanding. Official discourse no longer pursues precision but cultivates ambiguity. Electoral slogans no longer shape thought; they inflame emotion.
Chinese expression was once celebrated for being concise and profound: the words ended, but their meaning continued. For centuries, poetry, prose, and classical texts valued precise language and rigorous logic. Today, however, Taiwan's Chinese is becoming bloated with filler words and particles, looser in structure and weaker in logic. People fill gaps in expression with phrases such as “that's just how it is,” “you know,” and “right?” while neglecting deeper thought. Public discussion increasingly relies on emotionally charged fragments rather than precise reasoning and rational argument.
My concern is that when public discussion persistently substitutes slogans and emotion for evidence, room for critical thought shrinks. This must be tested against specific arguments and media practices. A group's cognitive abilities cannot be inferred from accents, particles, or regional expressions. Linguistic differences are not themselves evidence of intellectual decline.
Young Taiwanese people are taught not to identify as Chinese. They scroll through Douyin and Bilibili and watch mainland entertainment shows, while becoming less familiar with their own local culture.
Culture is the force that determines the future. To establish a secure footing, Taiwan must recover its cultural foundations rather than continually sever them.
If Taiwan understood this, China's future might take an entirely different direction.
So now I am reluctant to say more. The wind of a thousand years has reached this place; it is all another turn of history. When the wind rises again, the answers will come in their own time.