The latest opinion poll by the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission shows more people are heading toward supporting independence.
According to the opinion poll, there are more people who support independence (32.3 percent) than those who support unification (21.8 percent) or the status quo (19.7 percent).
Never before have so many people supported independence. Moreover, its percentage of support has grown from the 29.6 percent in the commission's survey in 2000, while the percentages of support for status quo and unification have declined -- from 21.5 percent and 26.6 percent, respectively.
It must be pointed out that the percentage of supporters for unification has undergone a significant decline -- more than 5 percent -- since 2000. This figure cannot be brushed aside, since it has exceeded the usual 3 percent margin of error. The question then becomes what is prompting this gradual shift.
One reason may be that, while Taiwan's democracy may be suffering from some troubling growing pains over the past years, democracy is nevertheless becoming increasingly indispensable to the people -- now that they have come to know the feeling of being one's own master.
It is becoming more and more unthinkable for them that, until democratization, they lived a life in which they remained silent under one-party autocracy, despite the fact that the nation had a robust economy at the time. For all the apparent opportunities to strike rich in the lucrative Chinese market these days, it is even more unimaginable that they would have to return to that kind of life under Chinese rule in the event of unification.
A no less important reason for this shift is perhaps China's high-handed tactics in dealing with Taiwan over the years. On Tuesday, China's ambassador to the US, Yang Jiechi (
What kind of national security concern can Taiwan possibly pose to China when Taipei is "allowed" only to purchase defensive arms and when it has its hands full trying to stay alive under Chinese threats?
Yang was quoted as saying "It is [Taiwan's] actions that are actually causing instability."
On Nov. 26, an official from China's Taiwan Affairs Office, Zhou Mingwei (
These are just two examples of the kind of abusive and demeaning language from China that people in Taiwan must put up with on a regular basis. How can they not feel resentful?
Also playing a role is perhaps the unprecedented friendliness of the US government toward Taiwan and international condemnation against Chinese missile threats.
Finally, perhaps more people are finally realizing that reality is closing in on them, and that it is simply naive to think that the status quo can be maintained indefinitely.
With China growing stronger everyday in terms of economic, military and political prowesses, today's status quo is already different from that of a few years ago. Under the circumstances, people must take a stance over the question of independence versus unification.
If the people are indeed opting for independence over unification, can the world and China respect the people's right to self-determination?
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS