by WorldTribune Staff, December 11, 2025 Real World News

In 1955, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill rejected communist propaganda that Taiwan was somehow a domestic matter for China. He insisted instead that Taiwan’s status was, by legal fact and geopolitical reality, an international issue.

Churchill, one of the architects of the 1943 Cairo Declaration outlining Japan’s defeat in World War II, stated:

“The Cairo Declaration of 1st December, 1943 … contained merely a statement of common purpose. Since it was made, a lot of things have happened. … The situation has changed. The problem of Formosa (Taiwan) has become an international problem in which a number of other nations are closely concerned. The question of future sovereignty of Formosa was left undetermined by the Japanese Peace Treaty (the San Francisco Treaty).”

“Seventy years later, the truth of Churchill’s position has not faded,” Miles Yu, director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute, wrote in a Dec. 8 analysis for The Washington Times. “It has been reaffirmed, not least by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s recent comments underscoring Japan’s profound stake in Taiwan’s security. Beijing’s outrage at Tokyo’s entirely predictable position is performative; China is ‘shocked’ only by what has always been obvious to the world: Taiwan’s future affects everyone.”

China’s continued claim that Taiwan is a “core interest” and inseparable part of its territory “rings with the same hollow logic invoked by aggressors throughout history,” Yu wrote. “North Korea once claimed legitimacy over South Korea, Nazi Germany declared sovereignty over the Sudetenland, and Russia today asserts the right to ‘reclaim’ Ukraine. Cloaking expansionism in the language of ‘internal affairs,’ historical destiny or ethnic kinship does not make it legitimate. It merely reveals the timeless grammar of aggression, a playbook the Chinese Communist Party has studied well.”

U.S. President Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy, released last month, reaffirms that Taiwan’s security is integral to U.S. strategy.

“American policy has rested on one principle: Neither side may use force to change the status quo. As Beijing accelerates military preparations, American leaders across administrations have repeatedly affirmed that the United States would oppose a CCP invasion,” Yu noted. “The credibility of U.S. alliances and deterrence in Asia hinges on Taipei’s survival.”

Taiwan, Yu added, “is indispensable. It dominates global semiconductor production and sits astride vital maritime routes connecting the Western Pacific to the rest of the world. If Beijing seized Taiwan, it would effectively control commercial traffic through the South China Sea, East China Sea, and Strait of Malacca — channels through which much of global trade flows.”

Yu continued: “Taiwan can play a crucial role in changing communist China. For 76 years, the CCP has regarded Taiwan as a stubborn obstacle to its narrative of communist liberation, now disguised as national reunification. However, in the same decades, Taiwan has transformed itself from an authoritarian rule into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. This success is not merely symbolic; it demonstrates that Chinese-speaking societies can uphold modern democratic values, a reality the CCP finds existentially threatening. Taiwan’s freedom is a rebuke to Beijing’s claim that democracy is incompatible with Chinese culture.

Churchill saw in 1955 “what remains painfully true: Taiwan’s status is an international matter because its future will shape the world’s,” Yu wrote. “Beijing’s insistence that this is a ‘domestic issue’ is not a statement of sovereignty but a strategy of aggression. The world must not mistake the CCP’s language of national reunification for the logic of conquest.

“Defending Taiwan is not only about preserving one island’s freedom. It is also about defending the principle that free societies, large or small, cannot be sacrificed at the altar of authoritarian ambition. In standing with Taiwan, the world stands for its own security, prosperity and ideals.”

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  Analysis: No, Taiwan is not China’s internal affair, WorldTribune.com