After years of rapprochement, agreements and high-level talks, one could hardly blame the Chinese public for thinking that the efforts initiated by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and then-Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) would eventually lead to a final, political resolution to the conflict in the Taiwan Strait.
On the Chinese side, there were hopes during the early days of Ma’s first term in office that once the relatively easy negotiations on trade issues were done with, the two sides would quickly initiate political dialogue on Taiwan’s status and perhaps sign a peace accord of some sort. The more optimistic even hoped that the first steps could be taken while Hu was still chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and failing that, still in the office of the president.
That time came and went, and Hu went home empty-handed. Ma was re-elected last year on a platform that promised more of the same — and more of the same is exactly what the Chinese got. Negotiations continued, but remained focused on economics, investment, trade, tourism and education.
Now Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is in office and chairman of the CCP, and it would be reasonable to expect that he hopes to surpass the achievements of his predecessor on the Taiwan “question.” In fact, the rising nationalist sentiment in China will make it difficult for Xi to ignore issues such as “reunification” and the restoration of China’s “honor.”
However, Xi is in for a bit of trouble. As former American Institute in Taiwan chairman Richard Bush said in Taipei yesterday, there are serious “conceptual differences” between Taiwanese and Chinese on the issue of political talks. Among other things, those “conceptual differences” include a democratic system, freedom of expression, a vibrant civil society and an irrepressible desire to maintain one’s way of life — not to mention rising Taiwanese identification and support for de jure independence.
There is more bad news for Xi. Unlike the CCP, Ma’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) must compete in elections if it wants to remain in power. And with the next presidential election less than three years hence, Ma will be unable to dramatically alter the course of his engagement with China. Even though the Constitution bars Ma from running for a third consecutive term, his successor — and perhaps even his replacement as KMT chairman, should his low popularity and a string of corruption scandals result in his ouster — would undoubtedly apply tremendous pressure on Ma not to sabotage their chances of being elected in 2016 by acting against the wishes of the majority.
What this means is that even if Ma intended to “sell out” Taiwan, his own party would rebel against him, knowing full well that such a betrayal of public trust would be political suicide for the party.
Under the tyranny of those “conceptual differences,” engaging in political talks with Beijing would be the ultimate example of acting against the wishes of the majority. Unless it decides to send tanks into the streets and uproot Taiwan’s hard-won democratic system, the KMT will not be able to go much beyond what public preferences dictate and will instead be compelled to reflect the safest common denominator within the Taiwanese polity. And that is the so-called “status quo.”
In the name of the nation’s 23 million people, we therefore apologize to Xi, who will have to look elsewhere if he wants to outdo the successes of his predecessor.
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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