Free China’s president, Lai Ching-te, is giving the mandarins at Beijing the fantods by stressing Taiwan’s independence ahead of his country’s National Day on Thursday. Mr. Lai, as head of state of the Republic of China, is a successor to the founder of Chinese democracy, Sun Yat-sen, a New York Sun correspondent, who toppled the Manchus in 1912. Mr. Lai’s republic, he reminds Xi Jinping, predates the Communist regime Mao proclaimed in 1949. 

It is nonsensical, Mr. Lai observes, for Beijing to call Taiwan a renegade province that will need to be reclaimed to achieve the “reunification of the motherland,” as Mr. Xi puts it. That’s “absolutely impossible,” Mr. Lai observes, because the Republic of China is already a “sovereign and independent country.” While Mr. Xi just marked the 75th anniversary of his nation’s formation, Mr. Lai says, “the Republic of China will celebrate its 113th birthday.”

It’s a useful corrective to Beijing’s distortions. “If anyone in Taiwan wants to say happy birthday to the People’s Republic of China,” Mr. Lai explains, “please do not call it the motherland.” Mr. Lai leads the only government that has ever respected the Chinese enough to hold free elections. That is Sun’s legacy. His republic, he said, was formed on the ideals of Lincoln — “government by the people, of the people and for the people.” 

Sun added: “I believe in this since I believe in the Chinese people.” Mr. Xi, meanwhile, channels the totalitarian spirit of Mao as he stifles dissent and grasps for global power. He calls the capture of Taiwan “an irreversible trend, a cause of righteousness and the common aspiration of the people.” How would he know to what his people aspire? It’s no wonder Beijing belittles Mr. Lai as a “regional leader” and condemns him as a “dangerous separatist.”

While Mr. Xi burbles of inevitability, his minions menace. Dast any advocates of “independence” on Taiwan “make risky moves, we will take all necessary measures to crush their attempts decisively,” a spokesman for Beijing, Chen Binhua, threatens. Taiwanese officials expect the mainland to launch new military drills on Thursday, using Mr. Lai’s remarks “as a pretext to pressure the island to accept its sovereignty claims,” Reuters reports.

As 2024 began, Mr. Xi used his new year speech “to sound a warning to Taiwan’s voters,” the Financial Times reported, that the 75th anniversary of Mao’s victory would be the year “China will surely be reunified.” Was that saber-rattling? A cautionary note was recently sounded by the Economist when it reported that Beijing has been secretly stockpiling commodities — “vast new holdings of grain, natural gas and oil” — in a possible sign of trouble ahead.

“Policymakers in Beijing seem to be worried about new geopolitical threats,” the Economist noted. Mainland China imports some 40 percent of the natural gas and 70 percent of the crude oil it uses. Less than two-thirds of its food is produced at home, and 85 percent of the soybeans used to feed China’s pigs are imported. “The supplies China is after are those it would need to survive a conflict,” the Economist adds, “perhaps as it blockades Taiwan.” 

All the more reason for America to be clear about its intentions to defend China’s only democracy in the event of an aggressive move by Beijing. America’s lack of clarity on that head, these columns have observed, could give Communist China the impression that it could attack Taiwan with impunity. Before Prime Minister Abe of Japan died, he had warned that this ambiguity was “encouraging China to underestimate American resolve.”

“No one can stop the march of history,” Mr. Xi mutters in regard to Taiwan. The citizens of the original Republic of China, though, have no desire to march back to the prison camp that the mainland became in 1949. That is why the Republic of China, in a free  multi-party election, chose Mr. Lai as president. Taiwan’s self-determination reminds that communist rule is illegitimate. The real march of history, Sun Yat-sen knew, is toward freedom.