President Chen Shui-bian's (
In fact, those exerting internal and external pressure are like a pack of wolves howling at the moon because they cannot touch it.
The moon is the status quo.
"Changing the status quo" is the phrase that those exerting pressure care most about. But what is the status quo?
The US has made the maintenance of the status quo its top priority and opposed any unilateral attempt to change the status quo. The US demands that Taiwan avoid provoking China or making any move toward independence; it also demands that China not use military force against Taiwan.
If we look at this policy as a set of scales, we can see that the scales have never been level to begin with.
There is also the problem that balance is dynamic -- it never stays put for very long.
US policy is based on the three Sino-US communiques and the Taiwan Relations Act. But the scales have tipped gradually in China's favor in the long evolution of the communiques, highlighting the US' tendency toward imbalance in its cross-strait policy.
China has risen as a power in international politics. Using its political, diplomatic and economic power, China has become a leading force in Asia. For Taiwan, China's threat is very deep, as are its attempts to isolate Taiwan diplomatically.
On the military front, China has continued to build its military power and has aimed almost 500 ballistic missiles at Taiwan.
In economics, China has continued to suck away Taiwanese capital and vitality, causing Taiwan's economy to shrink.
The cross-strait center line has been squeezing in on Taiwan, on the political, military and economic fronts. Ignoring this shift and demanding the maintenance of the status quo is as impractical as marking the place on your ship's hull where your sword dropped into the sea, in the hope of retrieving the sword.
The US hopes the two sides will move toward dialogue, but Beijing has set the "one China" condition for any dialogue -- basically demanding Taiwan's surrender before sitting down at the negotiation table. This is not fair. The US demands that Chen keep his "five noes" promise but pays no heed to the premise of his promise -- that China must not threaten Taiwan militarily.
Now China is not only making such threats, but also views any referendum or rewriting of Taiwan's Constitution as provocative. Even a Taiwanese complaint about Chinese missiles has become provocative. This is even more unfair.
China has every reason to maintain a status quo that contains so many things that are absurd and unfair to Taiwan. Under this status quo, China can increase its missile deployments against Taiwan, block Taiwan's entry into international organizations and force other countries to accept Beijing's unilateral definition of provocation.
Taiwan's March 20 referendum is not going to change the status quo. It is merely a loud objection against what is unfair in the status quo so that people both at home and abroad may pay heed.
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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