In China and Taiwan the major political parties — the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) — on Monday all celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Wuchang Uprising that sparked the Xinhai Revolution. Each of these parties approached the celebrations with different agendas. And, as this was the centenary, the celebrations were particularly politically charged.
The KMT and CCP were both keen to claim that they were the true successors to Sun Yat-sen’s (孫逸仙) legacy. China emphasized it was implementing Sun’s wishes, quoting him as saying unification was the hope of all Chinese people. There was not one mention of the Republic of China (ROC) during the entire celebration there.
In Taiwan the KMT emphasized its own claim to China, with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) saying Sun’s ideals were being carried out here. “The Republic of China,” he said, “is our nation, and Taiwan is our home.”
These two parties’ vying with each other — with claims of being the true heirs of the Xinhai Revolution and to the legitimate right to rule China — highlights that both are, originally at least, foreign powers, further alienating the Taiwanese public. The KMT is a government in exile, having fled in defeat to Taiwan. The greatest asset it has is the development of democracy, human rights and economic and technological success that this exiled regime has overseen in Taiwan. The fact that it was originally a foreign power doesn’t really come into it, as it has since gained democratic legitimacy. Now it can hold its head up high in the world. To compete with Beijing for the right to rule China is not only wildly unrealistic, it is also unnecessary.
The KMT had extended an invitation to DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to attend the main Double Ten National Day ceremony. It was a ruse, because for Tsai to attend would be to play along with the furnishings of the ROC as the name of the country, the ROC national flag and the ROC national anthem, but to not attend would be seen as unpatriotic. Tsai was shrewd, though. Just two days before the ceremony, she said “the ROC is Taiwan and Taiwan is the ROC,” and then she attended a flag-raising ceremony on Monday in Greater Tainan, singing a version of the ROC national anthem in which the words “the Three Principles of the People, on which our party is founded” were omitted. In so doing, she avoided having the DPP placed at a disadvantage and promoted her idea of the “Taiwan consensus.”
While the KMT was in power the first time, the pan-green camp boycotted the national day ceremony. For the eight years former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was in office, no one from the pan-blue camp’s old guard or leadership attended the annual Jan. 1 dawn flag-raising ceremony at the Presidential Office, as to do so would have been to endorse Chen. Now things have come full circle.
The KMT and DPP have radically divergent politics. In their own interests, the opposition party equates the current administration with the country itself and boycotts any event symbolic of the country. Taiwan is the ROC, something the Taiwanese public has been aware of for some time. All of a sudden, the KMT is attempting to make a distinction between Taiwan and the ROC, while accommodating Beijing over the issue of the so-called “1992 consensus,” and the public is at a loss as to why. If we cannot find some kind of consensus in this country on this issue, we will continue to repeat this same farce every Double Ten National Day.
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
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,
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
RSS