The unspoken reality that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members face is that they represent a diaspora which lost the Chinese Civil War in 1949.

That this loss has been an unspoken reality for more than half a century does not diminish its reality. Instead, it presents a quandary to KMT members preparing for an upcoming meeting with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Nanjing, China.

Some KMT members traveling to Nanjing might be presidential hopefuls; others might be seeking profit, privilege or influence. Regardless of who they are and what they seek, they all face the same quandary: How to acknowledge that the KMT lost the war and became a diaspora, but at the same time pretend that the KMT did not lose the war?

There is some background to this dilemma. It lies in past claims to Taiwan. Japan was the first nation to control the whole of Taiwan. The Manchus’ Qing Dynasty at one time controlled parts of the nation, as the Spanish and the Dutch did, and even Ming Dynasty loyalists before them. The Manchus even fought against Aborigines in an attempt to control eastern Taiwan.

However, when the Manchus lost the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and ceded Taiwan to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, the Manchus did not have sovereignty over the east; the Aborigines did.

The Japanese were the first to conquer them.

The date the Chinese Civil War began can be disputed, but it was certainly after the Qing Empire started to dissolve in 1911.

That war ended in 1949 with the victory of the CCP over the KMT, who became a diaspora. As for Taiwan, Japan surrendered control of the nation in 1952 in the Treaty of San Francisco, but the treaty did not say to whom it should be given.

Speculation could even be as broad as to say that Japan might have intended to return the nation to the Aborigines whom the Japanese subdued in their 50-year colonial rule. That part of the treaty has never been expressed and remains undecided.

This sets the scene for the quandary faced by KMT as they prepare for the Nanjing forum. The KMT could pretend that the Chinese Civil War is not over, but the CCP would not accept that. For them it ended in 1949 when they took control of China.

Another option is that the KMT could admit that they are part of a diaspora which lost the war, but then under what grounds would they claim the right to have a forum with the CCP? Could they make this claim as the right of a “prodigal son” who might be allowed to return home bringing the gift of Taiwan?

Some KMT members, like former premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村), could try to pretend that the war was just a family spat between brothers and that China’s real war was against Japanese aggression.

However, even if such people went to China and sang old war songs with the CCP, that would not erase from memory the millions who died in the battles and would not solve the Taiwan question.

Other KMT members might be tempted to admit that like a prodigal son they are returning to China, and to justify themselves, they might offer Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) Taiwan as a gift to allow them to return.

However, while they might want to make such an offer, and while the CCP would be happy to receive Taiwan from them, the nation is not the KMT’s to give away.

The KMT’s quandary remains. It lost the war and fled to Taiwan, and Japan, under the Treaty of San Francisco, never said to whom the nation was given.