How Beijing frames the Taiwan issue in a statue and its descriptive plaque

Inside the Taiwan Hall, one of the many cavernous meeting rooms at the Great Hall of the People named after provinces and regions in China, there is a statue that embodies what is tricky about the Taiwan issue.

- Yew Lun Tian

BEIJING — Inside the Taiwan Hall, one of the many cavernous meeting rooms at the Great Hall of the People named after provinces and regions in China, there is a statue that embodies what is tricky about the Taiwan issue.

The white statue, which caught my attention at a meeting on March 9 during China's annual parliamentary session, depicts Ming Dynasty navy general Zheng Chenggong, or Koxinga as he is known internationally, wearing a robe with a dragon emblem on his chest and a sword at his waist.

A bronze plaque at his feet describes him as a "minzu yingxiong", or national hero, who "reclaimed Taiwan, the sacred territory of the motherland" in 1662.

Unlike other Asian national heroes like Jose Rizal or Mahatma Gandhi, who helped liberate the Philippines and India, respectively, from Western colonial powers, the case of Koxinga is more complex.

While it is unquestionable that he had captured Taiwan from the Dutch about 3 1/2 centuries ago, it is a lot more contentious what the "motherland" is that he fought for.

The Communist Party of China (CPC), which founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 — more than 250 years after Koxinga's heroic feat — and built the Great Hall that now houses his statue, says the motherland is the PRC and that Taiwan is but one of its provinces.