President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) National Day address yesterday contained no surprises regarding her China policy, as she maintained the stance she set in her May 20 inaugural address that “the pledges we made remain unchanged, our goodwill is unchanged, but we will not succumb to pressure from China, and we will not revert to the old path of conflict and confrontation.”
Beijing was most probably “disappointed,” as it had described Tsai’s inaugural address as an “incomplete test” because it did not recognize the so-called “1992 consensus.” It was probably hoping that Tsai might “complete the test” by providing an “answer” it deemed satisfactory.
Beijing has been pressuring Tsai’s administration into accepting the “1992 consensus” since she took office. Insisting that the “1992 consensus” is the political foundation for cross-strait dialogue and development, China has more than once pointed at the Tsai government’s rejection to recognize the “1992 consensus” as the reason cross-strait communications have been “suspended.”
However, if Beijing has been observing Taiwan as closely as it claims, it should have seen that expecting the Tsai administration to recognize the “1992 consensus” is completely unrealistic.
Taiwan is a robust democracy where the president, who is voted into office, has to respect public opinion.
As Tsai said in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, “no administration in Taiwan can make a decision that runs counter to public opinion.”
In an interview with the Japanese Yomiuri Shimbun, Tsai said that “the young people in Taiwan grew up in a free and democratic environment, and have independent thinking and judgement, so they accept values that they can identify with, rather than being indoctrinated” like older generations of Taiwanese.
Whether to accept the “1992 consensus” is a matter that Tsai cannot, and should not, decide alone.
In a poll conducted by the Taiwan Brain Trust in April, 76.2 percent of the respondents said they were unaware of the contents of the “1992 consensus” and only 18.2 percent said they had a clear understanding of its contents. When asked whether they supported letting the “1992 consensus” be the foundation of cross-strait interactions, the poll showed that 52.3 percent of the respondents opposed the idea, compared with 33.3 percent who supported it.
In addition, 62.1 percent said they cannot accept Beijing’s repeated attempts to pressure the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government into accepting the “1992 consensus” and make it a prerequisite for cross-strait exchanges.
The poll shows that — despite former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) clamoring during his eight years in office that the “1992 consensus” refers to a tacit understanding between the KMT and Beijing that both sides acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means — most Taiwanese do not know what it is, nor do they accept it.
Chinese officials have said that they hope for peaceful cross-strait development. If they truly mean it, then they should engage in dialogue with the DPP government and forge a new understanding for cross-strait relations, rather than holding on to a fictional “consensus” that is neither supported nor recognized by Taiwanese and their government.
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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