As 2026 opens, Taiwan has moved beyond a regional flashpoint. Now it’s become arguably the definitive arena for potential China-U.S. hostile military action. Many believe that would constitute a threat to global stability.

China’s present-day ownership claim to Taiwan is at the heart of the matter.

According to China Daily, President Xi Jinping stated in his 2026 New Year address, “We Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait share a bond of blood and kinship. The reunification of our motherland, a trend of the times, is unstoppable!”

But two of his claims are counterfactual: First is his premise that “blood and kinship” provide a bond between China and Taiwan. Second is use of the term “reunification.”

A bond of blood and kinship? A blood or DNA connection is one thing. But a feeling of kinship is something else. A 2024 Pew Research study found that over two-thirds of Taiwan adults identify as primarily Taiwanese; three percent identify as Chinese. Less than half feel any emotional attachment to China, and even that is influenced greatly by views of the older generation. Indeed, the island’s original inhabitants were Austronesian peoples, predating later Han Chinese migration from the mainland.

Reunification? Logically reunification must follow a parted state of unification. The People’s Republic of China has never been united with Taiwan. Since the late 1800s Taiwan was subject to Japanese sovereignty and rule. It had been ceded to Japan in perpetuity in a mutual treaty by the Qing Dynasty. Later, during World War II, Taiwanese soldiers fought on the Japanese side against the Allies, including China.

Nonetheless, China’s reunification claim does have a historical association. But it is with a fraud, not a fact.

There is a largely unspoken story that explains that fraud. The setting is China, 1945, the end of World War II in the Pacific. A formal military surrender to the “Allied Powers” had been accepted aboard the USS........

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