Poor old President Chen Shui-bian (
After being roundly panned over the years as the troublemakers who refused to accept and recognize the "1992 consensus" by the US, China and opposition parties, a ray of light finally broke through the mist on Tuesday when Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Su Chi (
Su said he coined the phrase in the hope that the cross-strait deadlock could be broken and that both sides of the Strait could retain a "basis for dialogue."
But who was Su to decide what was best for Taiwan? Granted, at that time he was the chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council, but it did not give him the right to just make something up, let alone make a decision on such a politically sensitive issue while keeping his boss -- then-president Lee Teng-hui (
Just because Su personally believed that the term was good for the people of Taiwan did not mean it was necessarily so.
The transfer of power in 2000 could have been a great opportunity for Taiwan to step up the pace in its bid for nationhood. Yet, since then, the road has been extremely bumpy both domestically and internationally because of the shackles placed on the nation by Su and his fabricated "consensus."
During the 1992 meeting held in Hong Kong, China insisted on sticking to its "one China" principle while the representative of the KMT government stuck to "one China with each side having its own interpretation." No consensus was ever reached nor was any document signed under these premises.
When Koo Chen-fu (
Su insists today that although he made up the term, it worked out well as both the US and China accepted the phrase.
The question that needs asking now is: Why should the DPP government have to shoulder the responsibility for Su's lies?
Take the recent controversy over Taiwan's national title as an example, where the Republic of China (ROC) was crossed out in a program distributed at a concert where Chinese performers were present.
If a consensus on "one China with each side having its own interpretation" existed, then surely an event held in Taiwan would have every right to display the title, the ROC, without any objections.
Moreover, during former KMT chairman Lien Chan's (連戰) meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) last May, Hu publicly stated that the meaning of "one China" in the "one China with each side having its own interpretation" was the People's Republic of China (PRC) -- with Lien standing dumbly beside him.
If the "1992 consensus" existed, why didn't Lien then stand up and rebuff Hu's comments?
If KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
Instead, Ma today stood up and insisted there was a "1992 consensus." It seems that Ma's contempt for the public knows no bounds these days.
For the past six years or so, the pro-localization government in Taiwan has been struggling to walk freely because of these "1992 consensus" chains. Now that the truth is finally out, the DPP government should break free from these ideological shackles and get back to building Taiwan's national consciousness.
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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