‘1992 consensus’ irrelevant
There is much debate about the so-called “1992 consensus.” This “consensus” has nothing to do with Taiwan. It is only relevant to China and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) quest to unite with China.
The fictional “1992 consensus” concerns the existence of “one China” and the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may or may not have come to some understanding, each without respect or reference to the people either of Taiwan or China, but this “understanding” does not bind anyone except the two political parties.
Whether or not these two entities believe there is “one China” does not require the 23 million Taiwanese to agree that Taiwan is somehow China. Even the KMT has repeated over and over (whether its leadership believes it or not) that the future of Taiwan will be left to its people, not the KMT or China, to decide.
Nor does the so-called “1992 consensus” involve the issue of whether Taiwan is part of China. The reason for this is the KMT’s convenient usage of the term Republic of China (ROC). That term has nothing to do with Taiwan’s sovereignty. It was coined long before the KMT came to Taiwan, when the latter was still a colony of Japan.
The KMT’s obsession with the consensus is proof that it does not consider Taiwan’s interests as important compared with China’s. The consensus does not involve Taiwan’s sovereignty at all and the two interpretations mentioned in the consensus only concern who rules China. The fact that it is ignored by the CCP and the KMT is because there exists an obvious and very real third “interpretation”: that Taiwan belongs to Taiwan.
It is not surprising that the KMT and the CCP ignore this, because to confront it would reveal an inconvenient truth — that both the KMT and CCP lay claim to the same land, which is now the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Taiwan’s sovereignty issue is merely a tool the two sides use to distract everyone in China and Taiwan while they talk about how to divvy up the spoils.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) considers himself the president of China, with Taiwan being a tiny part of what he considers his domain. He may play here and there in Taiwan, but he does not consider himself the president of the Taiwanese people. He is just temporarily in Taiwan until his party can make arrangements for its triumphant return to the “Mainland.”
And what happens to Taiwan then? Casinos, betel nut beauties, red-light districts, tourism and not much else. It will be a new Macau.
The “1992 consensus” cannot involve the sovereignty of Taiwan, because it does not allow for the possibility that Taiwan is independent, admittedly an issue yet to be resolved. Therefore, for the “1992 consensus” to govern relations across the Taiwan Strait necessarily involves the surrender by the KMT of Taiwan’s sovereignty (never mind the ROC, which does not exist except in the minds of the KMT) because under either interpretation, Taiwan cannot be sovereign.
For the KMT to argue that this so-called consensus is therefore somehow the only possible result is disingenuous because it contradicts the KMT’s own proclamation that the people of Taiwan must be allowed to determine their own future and because it means the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese cannot achieve what poll after poll shows they believe — that is that they are citizens of an already free and independent Taiwan.
The KMT is playing fast and loose with the people of Taiwan and Ma needs to come clean about this. There is no Taiwanese sovereignty in the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), none in the 15 agreements signed between the KMT and the CCP, none in the “1992 consensus” and none in the KMT’s future.
The KMT cannot give up Taiwan’s sovereignty issue now, because then the KMT will have nowhere to go. That is why the KMT clings to Taiwan and will cling to it until it can negotiate its way back onto the “Mainland.”
The people of Taiwan need to remember that fact when they vote in 2012.
LEE LONG-HWA
New York
US president-elect Donald Trump continues to make nominations for his Cabinet and US agencies, with most of his picks being staunchly against Beijing. For US ambassador to China, Trump has tapped former US senator David Perdue. This appointment makes it crystal clear that Trump has no intention of letting China continue to steal from the US while infiltrating it in a surreptitious quasi-war, harming world peace and stability. Originally earning a name for himself in the business world, Perdue made his start with Chinese supply chains as a manager for several US firms. He later served as the CEO of Reebok and
US$18.278 billion is a simple dollar figure; one that’s illustrative of the first Trump administration’s defense commitment to Taiwan. But what does Donald Trump care for money? During President Trump’s first term, the US defense department approved gross sales of “defense articles and services” to Taiwan of over US$18 billion. In September, the US-Taiwan Business Council compared Trump’s figure to the other four presidential administrations since 1993: President Clinton approved a total of US$8.702 billion from 1993 through 2000. President George W. Bush approved US$15.614 billion in eight years. This total would have been significantly greater had Taiwan’s Kuomintang-controlled Legislative Yuan been cooperative. During
US president-elect Donald Trump in an interview with NBC News on Monday said he would “never say” if the US is committed to defending Taiwan against China. Trump said he would “prefer” that China does not attempt to invade Taiwan, and that he has a “very good relationship” with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Before committing US troops to defending Taiwan he would “have to negotiate things,” he said. This is a departure from the stance of incumbent US President Joe Biden, who on several occasions expressed resolutely that he would commit US troops in the event of a conflict in
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in recent days was the focus of the media due to his role in arranging a Chinese “student” group to visit Taiwan. While his team defends the visit as friendly, civilized and apolitical, the general impression is that it was a political stunt orchestrated as part of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda, as its members were mainly young communists or university graduates who speak of a future of a unified country. While Ma lived in Taiwan almost his entire life — except during his early childhood in Hong Kong and student years in the US —
RSS