I would agree with you. I think it is fascinating how the figure of Koxinga has been deployed in Taiwan, China, and Japan. There are temples assigned to him in, I believe, both Taiwan and Japan. In literature, he is appears often in stories, novels, and teleplays in China and was also the subject of Chikamatasu Monzaemon’s play (bunraku, was it?) “The Battle of Koxinga.” (国姓爺合戦) As for Koxinga’s lineage, don’t you think that it’s sometimes more interesting to track the (often competing) claims on a particular historical figure over time than it is to try to peg down the actual birthblace or nationality? Columbus was a nice comparison. Thanks.

As Sun Bin suggests, the principle of self determination seems a stronger argument here. What do the people in those places really want? Is there any way to accurately measure support for independence or change in status?

In the end, the issues of territorial integrity suggest (after Kuhn’s Soulstealers) a dark forboding in prosperous times for the current regime. If the Qianlong Emperor’s boogie man was Manchu ethnicity then surely for the CCP one important question is its own legitimacy as the heirs of an Empire.

I agree with scholars such as Peking University’s Pan Wei 潘维 (admittedly controversial) who have suggested that China needs to develop the confidence to admit that their claims to these territories are based solely on Qing conquest but that what’s done is done and it’s all a part of China now. This would stop the silly charade of Chinese History textbooks in the PRC spending pages tracing the depths of the friendship between Han and Central Asian down to the days of the Han Dynasty and whatnot.

Final note, I would modify Sun Bin’s claim by saying that Zheng Chenggong/Koxinga 鄭成功/國姓爺 had more than just “some Japanese gene in his blood,” his mother was fully Japanese and some sources claim that he was actually born in Nagasaki Prefecture in Japan.