There is a piece in today's Guardian by the Ambassador of the People's Republic of China to the Court of St. James. Long on how Taiwan has been an inalienable part of mainland China from time immemorial. Short on conveniently sized and placed chunks of people being allowed to choose their own government, their own rulers.
I was moved to prepare the summary above, which serves to illustrate a past more complicated than the Ambassador suggests. From which I associated to some of the bits and pieces, some still semi-detached, of the UK: the Isle of Man, the Isle of Wight, the Scilly Isles, the Channel Islands, the Orkney Islands and the Shetland Islands. These last two Norwegian colonies until they were absorbed by the Scottish Crown towards the end of the fifteenth century.
Depressing that such a large and powerful country feels the need to behave so aggressively on its periphery.
PS: not yet tracked down the fate of the aboriginals. Maybe there are still some of them left, up in the mountains.
References
Reference 1: http://gb.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/.
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