Once, wrote Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮) in his memoir, founder of Formosa Plastics Group Wang Yung-ching (王永慶) confided in him that the company was quite happy to speak in terms of “one China” if that’s what the Chinese government wanted to hear.
Formosa Plastics was, after all, making a lot of money from them. The logic of this sounds quite normal — quite harmless.
“So long as there’s money in it, it’s alright by me,” is something one could imagine a businessperson saying.
There are some tunes we can hum for China. When Will You Come Again is a good one, for example, and humming it would be harmless. However, humming the words “one China” isn’t in any way a tune that is pleasing to someone in Taiwan; it will only lead to misery further down the road for the nation.
Accepting the “one China” principle as laid out by Beijing is a death sentence for the very future of Taiwan or the Republic of China (ROC) as a sovereign state. The actual moment the ax falls would then depend only on the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
The Treaty of San Francisco did give Taiwan a way out, for sovereignty over the island as well as Penghu (the Pescadores) was simply renounced by Tokyo and never transferred to either the PRC or the ROC. If Taipei were to reject this fact, it would effectively be blocking this way out for itself. It would be a fatal move.
Businesspeople will say almost anything if there’s money in it. However, for Wang, or indeed any Taiwanese businessperson, to speak of “one China” is tantamount to forgetting their roots. For President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), the elected head of state, to accept the “one China” principle is to commit treason against Taiwan and the government he leads.
Ma thinks he’s doing a great job and indeed his policy of selling out to China is really working out well. Singapore has, after all, agreed to discuss an economic cooperation agreement. Ma loves to rant and rail until he’s blue in the face about how the opposition DPP is harming the country.
However, Ma is pointing the finger in the wrong direction, since the DPP is desperately trying to wrest away the razor his administration has poised at Taiwan’s throat. It is trying to save Taiwan, not harm it. It’s Ma’s own policies — the ones that he is so proud of — that are going to draw Taiwan into the jaws of the waiting dragon.
The Ma administration is enthusiastically nodding to the judge handing down the ROC’s death sentence, the very nation it is supposed to represent. That is just fine with Beijing. China is going to want to speed things up; to step in and tighten the noose.
It will offer a “Taiwan law” and remove the missiles pointed at Taiwan in the spirit of the “one China” principle and set up a military mutual trust mechanism in order to bring the whole thing to fruition that much sooner. The next step will be to demand that Taiwan doesn’t purchase US weapons, in addition to demanding that Washington not sell them to Taipei.
Ma is looking to a bright future, what he likes to call a “Golden Decade,” just as he is ruining Taiwan’s hopes of having any future at all. Is this really the same person who used to rant against the Chinese Communists, shouting: “Long Live the ROC”?
He isn’t ranting for the Taiwanese, he isn’t doing this for the ROC and he’s not doing it for the future of Taiwan as a nation, either. In fact, it’s really not all that clear which side he is cheering for anymore.
James Wang is a media commentator.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of