Last night the Oxford Union voted against the motion “This House Believes that Taiwan’s Future Lies in Reunification with China”, with 190 members voting in favour and 239 members voting against.
Prior to the debate, members in the chamber were heard discussing in Mandarin that, because the voting procedure was likely filmed, they must vote “aye” when they leave the debate.
Opening for the Proposition was Director of Sponsorship Nuzaina Khan who argued that reunification is inevitable, but it can be a strategic choice rather than a submission. She said: “A future cannot lie in something that is inherently unstable – cannot lie in war, isolation, and empty Western promises… Be cautious, stories about underdogs are only inspiring if they lead to victory.”
The Opposition began with Secretary’s Committee member Yeji Kim, who makes a passionate appeal to the values Taiwan embodies. “Taiwan’s future is up to its people, who have time and time again chosen democracy, rule of law, and freedom,” she said to a round of applause. Kim continued: “If the logic is that the same people should be in the same country, then different people should be in different countries. By that logic, China should set East Turkistan free.”
Next up in Proposition was Professor Daniel Bell, Chair of Political Theory with the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. He poked fun at how the Union term card listed a different Daniel Bell who sadly passed away 2011. His speech was a truly cryptic one, for he supposedly asked ChatGPT to predict Taipei-Beijing relations between 2025-2050. Bell described to the chamber a whirlwind of developments including “President Musk”’s decision to make friends with China and its subsequent reforms. The good news, finally, was that Taiwan reunited with the mainland in 2043 because they were so happy with the mainland’s progress, despite how “the men’s national football team continued to underperform” – the chamber roared with laughter at this.
Second in Opposition was the self-proclaimed “Minister of Propaganda” Leo Buckley. Buckley painted a picture of a “small island standing against a malicious and expansionist empire” and revealed that he was discussing Britain in the early World War II. He evoked Churchill’s speech “We shall fight on the beaches”, delivered at the very dispatch boxes Buckley spoke at, and listed China’s expansion projects in Xinjiang, Tibet, and South China Sea to draw a parallel. Buckley continued: “[The CCP] even suppressed comparisons of Xi to Winnie-the-Pooh, while here at the Union we relish in comparing our presidents to panda bears” – to chuckles from said president.
When Buckley urged people to try asking DeepSeek AI about Tiananmen Square or China’s human rights, an audience member tried it and showed the result to another audience member, who gasped.
Then Dr Kerry Brown, Historian and former First Secretary of the UK Embassy in Beijing, spoke for a vote of abstention, as he supports neither Proposition nor Opposition. Brown advocates for maintaining the status quo: “The current situation is very ambiguous but has avoided outright conflict – in this one crucial respect, the One-China Policy has worked”. In response to a point of information on how sustainable the One-China Policy is, he said “forever”.
Speaking third in Proposition was Dr Jason Hsu, former legislator-at-large in Taiwan’s parliament. After an appeal to democratic values, citing studies that less than 10% of the Taiwanese people support reunification, Hsu delved into rational cost-benefit analysis. He argued conquest is difficult and would leave Taiwan in ruins with an “ungovernable resistance”. “What good would it do for China to absorb Taiwan?”, he asked, “Nothing.”
Next was the strongest Proposition speaker, vice-president of the Centre for China and Globalisation who opened with “I’m Victor Gao from Beijing, and I’m very happy to be with you”. He described his former role translating for President Deng Xiaoping as the first highlight of his life – to much applause – and that speaking at the Union was the second highlight. His tone then turned stern as he objected to Kim’s previous wording: “There’s no East Turkistan in this world, it is an illegitimate term. This is not a pub, you must be careful with terms. I would hope Oxford-educated people can figure that out.” This was met with both applause and booing in the audience.
Gao took a historical approach to argue that China has never been destroyed or interrupted for 5000 years of its history. When questioned on Mongols and Manchus in points of information, he responded that Mongols never imposed their culture, and Manchu emperors became champions of Chinese culture. Drawing on his Yale Law School background, Gao argued that the matter of Taiwanese secession must include mainland voices, just as a hypothetical California secession would need three-fourth of all states. He ended by proclaiming that the audience – and Nancy Pelosi – will live to see reunification.
The fourth Opposition speaker was Nathan Law, a Hong Kong democracy activist with a HK$1m (£100,581) bounty for his arrest. He accused Gao of spreading CCP propaganda, and recalled a joke on social media platform Weibo: “You have freedom of speech in China, but you only have it once.” He was immediately met with heckling from the audience, and the president had to remind people of decorum.
Law said that tonight he had heard “big-boy politics” and “bully always wins”, but “sovereignty should always be a human-centred discussion, so where is the Taiwanese people in the Proposition’s argument?” He argued that “forced annexation” will be a repeat of Hong Kong, where “I saw my friends go into jail, I saw the newspaper I read getting disbanded.” Law closed with an appeal for the international community to support Taiwan.
