I am the real China

At the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the communist leader Mao Zedong had declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. The losing Republic of China under the nationalist Chang Kai Shek retreated to the island of Taiwan. The two countries have had a rivalry that started from that civil war and the rivalry has had political and diplomatic repercussions on both a national and global level. In the United Nations we can see that the Republic of China was replaced by the People’s Republic of China. The R.O.C., was called Taiwan from then on and was denied any representation in the U.N. This U.N. resolution, ratified in 1971, meant that only the P.R.C. could be called China and was the legitimate representative of the Chinese peoples and her territory. In 1992 both China and Taiwan adopted the ‘One China’ policy, which meant that both countries agreed that there could only be one China. The result was that China or Taiwan would cut off all diplomatic relations with any country that recognized both China and Taiwan or conducted official governmental business with both. This rivalry continues to this day and affects other countries as well. For example, Haiti recognizes Taiwan as legitimate, and China donated the relatively small amount of $1 million for relief efforts after the earthquake of 2010. After the Pakistan floods disaster in 2010, China donated at least $250 million (Xinhua News, 2010). Pakistan recognizes China as legitimate. A harsher example is when China vetoed a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Macedonia and only allowed it when Macedonia switched their recognition from Taiwan to China, in 2001 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the P.R.C., 2001).