Last week’s vote at the UN General Assembly to make Palestine a “non-member observer state” was a rare bit of good news from a region that often provides more than its share of misery. Besides breathing new life into the possibility of a two-state solution, the decision could also create a precedent for another seemingly intractable conflict of equal duration, that of Taiwan’s status vis-a-vis China.
Palestine’s journey from “non-member observer entity” to “non-member observer state” was not easy, nor was it uncontroversial. Furthermore, this new status, which is now equal to that of the Vatican, does not resolve a number of substantive issues, such as Israeli settlements or Hamas’ refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Nevertheless, the development shows that even with staunch opposition within the UN system — including from the US, a permanent Security Council member, and Israel — weaker polities can make progress toward having their voices heard at the international level.
The question, then, is if Palestine can score such a victory, why can’t Taiwan? Tempting though it might be to draw parallels, one should approach the question with the knowledge that there is no such thing as a perfect analogy. The conflict pitting Palestine against Israel does have an indisputable David-versus-Goliath element reminiscent of that between Taiwan and China. In addition to the asymmetry of power between the opponents, the stronger entity also tends to rely on historical (and in Israel’s case, religious) “right” to claim parts or the entirety of another people’s territory.
That said, there are also substantial differences, including the decision by Taiwanese not to resort to force or terrorism against the stronger opponent, as well as the tremendous influence that China has over UN members — something that cannot be said of Israel, with its much smaller economy. More significantly, while some Israeli politicians like former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who is angling for a comeback in next year’s election, have stated their support for Palestine’s new status at the UN and a two-state solution, the latter outcome is exactly what Beijing does not want to see.
Part of the reason why 138 UN members voted in favor of granting Palestine status as a non-member observer state is the realization that anything short of a two-state solution will only yield one thing: more violence, which threatens not only the belligerents themselves, but stability within the entire region, while having the side effect of providing a “rationale” for global terrorism.
In that respect, Taiwan’s situation is more similar to that of Palestine than it might appear. Despite the rapprochement that has occurred between Taipei and Beijing since the election of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in 2008, the chasm that exists between the peoples on both sides of the Taiwan Strait remains as wide as ever, if not more so as China becomes more nationalistic and its leadership more paranoid. Growing trade and investment figures across the Taiwan Strait notwithstanding, the fact remains that the political conflict is far from resolved.
Absence of war does not mean absence of conflict, and the closer Taiwan gets to when Beijing starts applying pressure to enter negotiations on Taiwan’s status, the more evident the tectonic pressures of identity will become. Unless we experience a sudden and unlikely shift in decades-old trends in Taiwanese self-identification, those tensions will remain and will become more serious. As such, barring an invasion by China, peaceful unification will remain a very distant possibility.
Finding alternative ways to avoid armed conflict and to address the resulting tensions will not only be the responsibility of Taiwanese and Chinese themselves, but that of the international community as well. What better forum than the UN to seek out such solutions?
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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