My argument in this piece is simple: Beijing is pressing foreign leaders to describe Taiwan in China’s language, while also keeping Taiwan’s own leaders from being heard on the world stage. The result is a dangerous distortion: Taiwan’s desire to preserve its democratic way of life is treated as a provocation, while China’s military and diplomatic coercion is treated as normal. But peace cannot be built on a narrative that blames the threatened for the threat.
To be precise, the KMT-CCP civil war never involved Taiwan. The KMT took effective control over Taiwan from Japan as part of a finished war - WWII. Upon defeat in China proper, the KMT fled beyond the CCP’s reach as the civil war did finish with PRC establishment.