Today is a day of great significance for cross-strait relations. Taiwan's first charter flight for the Lunar New Year heads for China, the first non-stop flight after more than fifty years of political stalemate across the Strait. Although this policy is beneficial only to Taiwanese businessmen in China, the decision made by the government is still of great symbolic significance at this juncture when the cross-strait relationship is still strained.
Additionally, marking the tenth anniversary of "Jiang's Eight Points," proposed by former Chinese President Jiang Zemin (江澤民) in 1995, Jia Qinglin (賈慶林), chairman of China's People's Political Consultative Conference, adopted a carrot and stick approach. He reiterated China's policy on Taiwan and pointed out that China is willing to negotiate with the DPP if it abandons the cause of Taiwan independence. However, Jia harshly criticized the idea of Taiwan independence, pointing out that China will not balk at going to war to prevent a permanent split.
Jiang declared his eight points a decade ago. Despite being the foundation of China's Taiwan policy, they have had little effect on Taiwan itself. This is because they only see the situation from China's own perspective, and fail to take into account the incontrovertible fact that Taiwan already is an independent, sovereign nation. They require Taiwan to deny its own existence in favor of the "one China" concept and to trust the Chinese government to bestow upon it some degree of freedom and autonomy. But that would lead to Taiwan being downgraded to the same status as Hong Kong under the "one country, two systems" principle. This is unacceptable to most Taiwanese. Given this, Jiang's Eight Points are not overly appealing.
A few months ago, China adopted the two-pronged approach of hardening its stance on some issues while softening it on others. On the one hand, China is reaching out to some Taiwanese, for example by allowing direct cross-strait flights for the Lunar New Year, which enables Taiwanese businesspeople in China to spend the holidays with their families. On the other hand, they are preparing for the worst, stepping up military purchases and getting ready for hostilities. They also plan an anti-secession law designed to provide a legal basis for an attack on Taiwan.
Both the US government and US academics believe this law is unwise and will change the cross-strait status quo. Taiwan's response has been even stronger, with some people suggesting that the response to China's law should be a defensive referendum or an anti-annexation law. Both sides of the Strait are building up their defenses in preparation for armed conflict. They also have plans for legal warfare, and the international propaganda war is ongoing. These actions are not at all beneficial to maintaining the cross-strait status quo.
Rather than loudly promoting Jiang's Eight Points, China should promote the spirit that led to the Lunar New Year charter flights across the Strait. To get that deal, both sides displayed flexibility and creativity by first establishing mutual credibility and consensus on economic and practical issues.
Following his re-election, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has on several occasions extended goodwill to China. The next premier, Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), has also made some concrete conciliatory measures. If China would let Wang Daohan (汪道涵) properly address the death of Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫) and delay the passage of the anti-secession legislation, a resolution of the cross-strait issue would no longer seem impossible.
Giving up fixed opinions, building mutual trust and creating beneficial conditions are all necessary to improve the cross-strait relationship. Will a window of opportunity for such improvement be opened soon? That will depend on China's leaders.
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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