The Chinese are good at political calculations, and they are particularly adept at division and subtraction. When the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) started to rule Taiwan, the party first divided the Taiwanese into two groups, luring one group to help it defend its regime. Today, Beijing has taken care of the KMT, and is now planning to cause division within the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Since the DPP is unable to stop China from playing its tricks, the party’s only choice is to respond in kind and to avoid the Chinese trap. However, some politicians are incapable of keeping their mouths shut, and they love to make stupid comments that they believe to be clever, thus falling into the trap.
On April 8, former DPP premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) said that the party should review its failed China policies of the past and he also asked rhetorically how the public’s interests would be protected if the DPP were unable to regain power. His remarks may have been appealing and moving, but they are seriously flawed when applied to the debate over China policy.
First of all, Hsieh’s statement that “our past policies have failed” was ambiguous, because it was unclear whether he was implying that the policies were ineffective, or that they were the reason that the DPP failed to win the presidential elections in 2008 and last year.
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) never accepted Beijing’s “one China” policy and former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) never accepted the so-called “1992 consensus.” Despite that, they were able to develop cross-strait exchanges while maintaining that Taiwan was an independent and sovereign state. Such a China policy cannot be said to be a failure.
If Hsieh thinks that the DPP’s China policy is a failure because the party was defeated in the presidential elections, he has oversimplified people’s voting behavior. In addition, if the DPP’s China policy has failed, that means that the KMT’s China policy, which entails selling out Taiwan’s sovereignty, has succeeded. Does using this as a standard for determining whether the DPP’s China policy has been successful not imply that the DPP must work even harder than the KMT at selling out Taiwan for its China policy to be successful?
Without question, if the DPP wants to remain viable, it must not violate its core values by following a defeatist line. The DPP regaining power would help protect Taiwanese sovereignty, but there is no reason for the party to sacrifice national sovereignty to regain power.
More than half of Taiwanese refuse to accept Chinese annexation, and this is what provides the strongest support for rejecting a surrender to China. Late president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) told former US ambassador Walter McConaughy that any government trying to hold peace talks with the Chinese Communist Party would create social turmoil, and that such a government was doomed to fail.
If the DPP really wants to protect the public’s interests, even though it is not currently the ruling party, it should focus on mobilizing a majority of the public to restrain the pro-unification camp. If it must sacrifice the public’s interests to regain power, it will lose its raison d’etre.
James Wang is a political commentator.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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
RSS