Last week, former premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) went to Washington. It would have been big news if he had met with officials of the US administration or members of Congress, but instead he gave a talk at the inaugural session of the Institute for Taiwan-America Studies (ITAS), a new pro-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) think tank in Washington.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with having diverse views represented in Washington. The problem with Jiang’s remarks was that he played into Beijing’s hands.
He started out by saying that this year is important because the US will elect a new president, and Taiwan just elected its first female president. He then gave a detailed outline of the evolution of president-elect Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) position on cross-strait relations over the past decade and a half.
He also outlined four opportunities and four challenges for Taiwan. So far so good.
The problems began when Jiang started to describe Beijing’s position — its insistence on the so-called “1992 consensus” and the “one China” principle — which he described as “resolute,” “firm” and “principled.”
Jiang’s view is one held by so many analysts attempting to “decode” what Beijing wants and whose basic assumption is — presumably because Taiwan is small and China is big — that Beijing’s position is immovable, that we cannot expect it to change and that therefore the onus is on Taiwan to be accommodating.
While it is obvious that increasing tensions across the Taiwan Strait is possible, we need to be crystal clear about the root cause of this tension.
Beijing’s insistence on an outdated “one China” framework is premised on the eventual incorporation of Taiwan. This premise is simply not tenable anymore — if it ever was — as Taiwan has evolved into a free and vibrant democracy that does not want to be subdued by a communist regime.
Jiang aggravated his error by painting three possible scenarios: first, a “continuing stability” scenario in which Tsai accepts the “one China” and “1992 consensus” formulations.
The second scenario would be “escalating tension.” If Tsai does not accept the “one China” principle in her inauguration speech, she would concede after “punitive action” taken by Beijing.
Jiang’s third scenario is one of major conflict if Tsai declines to acknowledge the “one China” and “1992 consensus” policies.
The fundamental problem with this type of reasoning is that it does present Beijing’s response as an acceptable and/or understandable reaction to something Taiwan might do. This is simply not the case.
It is essential that the burden is put on Beijing to behave in a reasonable and rational way. Taiwan is not threatening China — unlike the Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) regime from the 1950s to the mid 1970s that preached “recovery of the mainland [China].”
Taiwan in its current configuration wants to live in peace with all its neighbors, including China. It would therefore be helpful if Beijing accepts Taiwan as a friendly neighbor and moves toward normalization of relations.
Clinging to concepts of the past, such as the “one China” or “1992 consensus” concepts — by either Beijing or by the few remaining pro-unification supporters in Taiwan — would lead to increasing tension with a democratic Taiwan, that has achieved its freedom and is ready to contribute to the international community.
Jiang should have made it clear that the ball is in Beijing’s court and that the People’s Republic of China needs to act like a responsible stakeholder if it wants to contribute to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.
Gerrit van der Wees was the editor of Taiwan Communique, a publication in Washington.
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,
RSS