On Monday, Katsuhisa Uchida, the Taipei office chief of the Interchange Association -- Japan's de facto embassy in Taiwan -- conveyed a message to Presidential Office Secretary-General Chiou I-jen (邱義仁), saying Japan does not want to see Taiwan hold a defensive referendum. The EU has also sent a letter expressing concern. After announcing his plan for a defensive referendum, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) seems to have fallen into diplomatic isolation, with the US, Japan and the EU all expressing concern.
The Chinese government has applied pressure on Taiwan via those countries over the defensive referendum. But this does not mean that the US and Japanese governments agree that Beijing's demands are reasonable.
Referendums represent a major democratic change. Of course they will have an impact on Taiwan's politics. A defensive referendum is highly controversial, but there are more domestic election factors than international considerations at play here. The referendum is set to be an expression of the public's will to stand up to aggression and will not involve the sovereignty issue. Given that the content of the referendum question has not yet been finalized, the US, Japan and the EU should not merely listen to China's one-sided opinions and rush to judgment, thereby suppressing the development of democracy in Taiwan.
Chen Chien-jen (
As for Japan, former prime minister Yoshiro Mori said during a recent meeting with Chen that he hoped Taiwan would give "discreet consideration" to the referendum issue. More recently, Uchida told Chiou that Japan hopes Taiwan will be able to "discreetly handle" the tensions brought about by the referendum issue. Japan is on the side of "peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the region" and does not want to see Taiwan holding a referendum. In a way, Uchida was making a goodwill gesture to China.
US and Japanese pressure on Taiwan will affect the public's perceptions of the two countries, regardless of whether they are acting at Beijing's request. When the three Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania were seeking independence in 1989, then US president George Bush ignored the Soviet Union's misgivings and suggested that the issue be resolved through referendums. Bush supported the right of these peoples to self-determination. Now his son, US President George W. Bush, wants to restrict the rights of the de facto independent Taiwanese.
George W. Bush has many times praised Taiwan's democratic achievements. We hope he will understand the truth about Taiwan's referendum issue and show some spine in support of Taiwan's democracy in the same way as his father supported referendums in the Baltic countries.
As for Japan, a democratic Taiwan is even more important for its strategic interests in light of the close historic, trade and economic relations between the two countries. Japan should think twice about pressuring Taiwan on behalf of China. Such pressure may improve Sino-Japanese relations in the short term, but will be detrimental to Japan's long-term interests.
The defensive referendum planned for March 20 does not involve the sovereignty issue, nor is it aimed at changing the status quo. Rather, it is aimed at ensuring the status quo by way of direct democracy. The US, Japan and the EU have all been Taiwan's democratic allies and trading partners. How could they act like China's hired guns?
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,
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