2001/11/14 WED　Jim Cheng（ North American Taiwanese Professors’ Association）
Taiwan is never a China land, nor has been occupied by PRC！

    Ever since the last glaciation that ended a little over 10,000 years ago, Taiwan has been
an isolated island in the Pacific Ocean inhabited by the very Austronesian Languages Speaking
People who should be rightly called "Austronesian Formosans." They nurtured and developed their
own culture for nearly all those 10,000 years. Likewise they nourished the unique Proto-Austronesia
languages, one of which left Formosa to disperse into the vast realm covering south to New Zealand, 
west to Madagascar, and east to Easter Island. These people should have rightfully owned that very 
island and the surrounding islets they have frequented. Geographically, Formosa is at the edge where 
the Eurasia Continental Shelf and the Philippine tectonic plate meet. Promulgation of Taiwan owned 
by the People of Republic of China (PRC) by an official from that country in a PBS program called 
"Dangerous Strait" aired at night on October 18 is totally unfounded, if not utterly absurd. It 
reminds me of !　the exultation expressed by Chinese chauvinists when reports came out to point 
out that Amerindians were yellow-skinned race having the origin in Asia. These Chinese were happy 
to brag that Americans were Chinese, or the descendant of a fictitious Yellow Emperor. By the same 
token, if the so-called China would insist their occupation of Taiwan in the past being a legitimate 
claim of the Island, that same China could belong to Outer Mongolia or Manchuria since these two 
peoples indeed conquered Han-China for a few centuries each in China’s history. Or even Japanese 
could claim the vast land they had occupied during the World War II!! 

    Is "quake like a duck, walk like a duck" a duck? Not necessarily! Taiwan was first peopled by 
the Austronesian language speaker over 40,000 years ago; was first discovered and placed in the 
world map by Portuguese under that beautiful name "Formosa" in 1544; and had the first government 
on the Island’s soil under Dutch in 1624. Ch’in (Manchuria) China is but one of many countries 
that occupied and ruled Formosa in her long history. Furthermore, PRC has never set a foot on Taiwan's 
soil before! Evidence from the recent DNA haplotypes studies have clearly indicated that the indigenous 
Formosan are neither South-, nor North-Han Chinese that Chinese and China always have a fun in that 
claiming in order to deceiving people of the world. The most recent studies on human leukocyte antigens 
(HLAs) further indicated that even those new immigrants who came to Formosa and changed the name into 
"Taiwan " have the ancestor in Vietnam aborigines. Thus both prehistoric and recent immigrants to Formosa 
appear to have the same origin in the Southeast Asia. Those so-called Han Taiwanese who speak 
(Holo and Hakka languages) and act (Han customs and culture) like China men are neither from Han-China 
nor the Han Chinese. How chilling it is to hear, again and again, these China officials who do not have 
the slightest knowledge in science and Taiwan’s history dare to claim Taiwan sovereignty and try 
shamelessly to mislead American as well as world's people?