"Today, China uses history to recast its invasion and occupation of Tibet as not anything of the sort. In the view of the Chinese government, it simply reasserted its historical rights, which had been established over the centuries. Taiwan, at least to the Chinese, presents a similar case. As Zhou Enlai said to Henry Kissinger in 1972, “History also proves that Taiwan has belonged to 'China for more than a thousand years—a longer period than Long Island has been part of the U.S.” In fact, history proves no such thing. In the case of Tibet, it is true that Dalai Lamas from time to time recognized the mandate of heaven of the emperor in far-off China, but for most of the time, the remote mountain land was left to its own devices. Taiwan has even looser ties with China. It was too far across the sea for most Chinese dynasties to bother with. Only the last dynasty, the Qing, tried to assert some control, partly because the island had become a refuge for pirates and rebels."