Picture shows the area around the Houtong railway station in Ruifang District, New Taipei City, southeast China's Taiwan, October 5, 2017./ CFP

Editor's note: In light of the so-called "10 lectures on unity" by Taiwan leader Lai Ching-te, CGTN presents a 10-episode commentary series "resurfacing old dregs of 'Taiwan Independence' rhetoric: a rebuttal to Lai Ching-te's lectures." This is the third piece in the series.

Taiwan leader Lai Ching-te appears to live in an alternate reality, where history is rewritten at will, inconvenient facts are erased and political theater replaces constitutional truth.

In his third speech of a so-called 10 talks on unity campaign on Sunday, Lai claimed that Taiwan had no representatives at the 1946 constitutional convention held in Nanjing, where the Constitution of the Republic of China was adopted.

This assertion is not only historically inaccurate, but also a calculated distortion that reveals a deliberate attempt to sever the island from its legal and historical roots from the mainland.

Let's set the record straight: Taiwan did send 18 representatives, drawn from various sectors of society, to the 1946 National Constituent Assembly.

This is not an isolated incident. Lai has repeatedly twisted historical narratives to fit a separatist agenda. In his first speech, for instance, he invoked Taiwan's Austronesian roots in a misleading analogy, as scholars point out that this heritage reflects centuries of migration and exchange across the Taiwan Straits, underscoring Taiwan's deep-rooted connection with, rather than separation from, the Chinese mainland.

Lai said in Sunday's speech that Sun Yat-sen, the great pioneer of China's revolution, drafted the constitution. And on that point, he wasn't wrong. Sun proposed the constitutional principle of the "Five-Power Constitution," in which the powers of legislation, administration, judiciary, examination, and control were to be exercised independently by five distinct branches of government.

However, Lai conveniently omits one of Sun's most well-known declarations: "Unification is the hope of all Chinese nationals. If China can be unified, all Chinese will enjoy a happy life; if it cannot, all will suffer."

The realization of national reunification and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation were the heartfelt aspirations of Sun and his fellow revolutionaries in the 1911 Revolution, a movement that overthrew the Qing Dynasty. It was a mission they did not live to see fulfilled.

If Sun could hear Lai's speech today - pushing a "Taiwan independence" agenda and pursuing the division of China - he would be deeply dismayed by such a betrayal of his lifelong mission for national unity.

Charles Wong, Sun Yat-sen's great-grandson, pays tribute to his ancestor at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei, southeast China's Taiwan, March 12, 2025./ Xinhua

Rewriting the past, dividing the present

By all appearances, Lai Ching-te isn't just misremembering history - he's actively weaponizing it to serve a divisive political agenda.

His distortion of history is not about unity, but about division. His so-called unity talks are, in reality, a thinly veiled campaign to deepen societal rifts, marginalize dissent and consolidate power under the guise of democracy.

The timing of Lai's lecture series is no coincidence. He launched the campaign on June 22, just two days after Taiwan's election commission confirmed a recall vote, scheduled for July 26, targeting more than 20 legislators of the Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) party during a politically charged period.

His now infamous "impurities" remark, a veiled reference to political opponents, particularly the KMT legislators facing the mass recall vote, slag that must be hammered out, evokes the language of authoritarian purges, not democratic discourse.

Lai's 10 talks have just reached their third installment, yet they have already unleashed a storm of backlash across Taiwan, prompting many to dub them the "10 talks on division."

At this rate, it is no longer a question of whether his remaining speeches will stir controversy, but how much deeper into distortion and delusion they will descend.

However, what Lai urgently needs now is not another speech, but a serious history lesson. Before he can preach unity again, he must first stop sowing divisions and fueling cross-Strait tensions with a version of the past that serves only his own political agenda.

(Chen Guifang is a commentator with CGTN. If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at [email protected]. Follow @thouse_opinionson Twitter to discover the latest commentaries in the CGTN Opinion Section.)

Source: CGTN