Some Taiwanese politicians have seemingly taken it upon themselves to work on behalf of Beijing by intimidating Taiwanese with talk of the consequences of rejecting the so-called “1992 consensus.”
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday urged President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to accept the “1992 consensus” “to steer cross-strait relations back on the right track,” adding that “disrespecting the 1992 consensus would make it hard for [other] matters later on; and future situations are hard to predict if we do not apply the brakes and swiftly accept the 1992 consensus.”
Ma said that Taiwan proposed the agreement in 1992 and that the “mainland has fully respected and accepted it” before trumpeting his modus vivendi and saying the Tsai administration’s refusal to accept the “1992 consensus” was the reason Panama switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing earlier this month.
If only such claims were true.
Ma never ceases to flabbergast the public with his brazenness by openly echoing China’s saber-rattling against Taiwan and the fear-mongering rhetoric of Beijing officials.
It is also amazing that Ma can tell bare-faced lies in public without embarrassment.
If China, as Ma said, fully respected and accepted the “1992 consensus,” which refers to an alleged understanding reached in 1992 between Taiwanese and Chinese representatives that both Taiwan and China acknowledge that there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means, then why did former Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits vice chairman and former Taiwan Affairs Office deputy director Tang Shubei (唐樹備) state publicly in 1998 that Taiwan’s claim that “there is ‘one China,’ with each side having its own interpretation of what ‘China’ means, does not fit reality”?
A US communication leaked in 2011 by WikiLeaks also clearly noted remarks by Chinese academic Zhou Zhihuai (周志懷), who said that Taiwan’s position of “each with its own interpretation” is intolerable to Beijing because it would be tantamount to the acceptance of two nations.
Despite this, Ma shamelessly touts the nonsensical “1992 consensus” as the backbone of solid cross-strait relations and threatens the government into accepting a nonexistent agreement.
Ma yesterday trumpeted his cross-strait policy, saying that his acceptance of the “1992 consensus” meant that during his term as president Taiwan lost no diplomatic allies and maintained a good rapport with Beijing, with less attempts to obstruct Taiwan’s participation in international organizations.
Regrettably, Ma fails to see how Taiwan under his administration veered toward China’s “one China” framework and that his so-called cross-strait achievements came at the expense of Taiwan’s sovereignty, with the international community regarding Taiwan as part of China.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) once said that Taiwan’s biggest problem is that there are too many people “telling bare-faced lies.”
The “1992 consensus” is clearly one of those lies, and Beijing has time and again proven Ma wrong. His nonsense talk about the fictitious consensus is best ignored.
A public opinion poll yesterday showed that Tsai’s approval rating has fallen to a record low in the wake of Panama severing diplomatic relations with Taiwan in favor of China.
While Ma might want to gain points from Tsai’s dipping approval rating and say that his successor is doing a worse job than he had, the truth is that whenever Ma talks of his support for the “1992 consensus,” people are glad that the nation is no longer under the leadership of a man who toes the Beijing line.
Why is Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not a “happy camper” these days regarding Taiwan? Taiwanese have not become more “CCP friendly” in response to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) use of spies and graft by the United Front Work Department, intimidation conducted by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Armed Police/Coast Guard, and endless subversive political warfare measures, including cyber-attacks, economic coercion, and diplomatic isolation. The percentage of Taiwanese that prefer the status quo or prefer moving towards independence continues to rise — 76 percent as of December last year. According to National Chengchi University (NCCU) polling, the Taiwanese
US President Donald Trump is systematically dismantling the network of multilateral institutions, organizations and agreements that have helped prevent a third world war for more than 70 years. Yet many governments are twisting themselves into knots trying to downplay his actions, insisting that things are not as they seem and that even if they are, confronting the menace in the White House simply is not an option. Disagreement must be carefully disguised to avoid provoking his wrath. For the British political establishment, the convenient excuse is the need to preserve the UK’s “special relationship” with the US. Following their White House
It would be absurd to claim to see a silver lining behind every US President Donald Trump cloud. Those clouds are too many, too dark and too dangerous. All the same, viewed from a domestic political perspective, there is a clear emerging UK upside to Trump’s efforts at crashing the post-Cold War order. It might even get a boost from Thursday’s Washington visit by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. In July last year, when Starmer became prime minister, the Labour Party was rigidly on the defensive about Europe. Brexit was seen as an electorally unstable issue for a party whose priority
After the coup in Burma in 2021, the country’s decades-long armed conflict escalated into a full-scale war. On one side was the Burmese army; large, well-equipped, and funded by China, supported with weapons, including airplanes and helicopters from China and Russia. On the other side were the pro-democracy forces, composed of countless small ethnic resistance armies. The military junta cut off electricity, phone and cell service, and the Internet in most of the country, leaving resistance forces isolated from the outside world and making it difficult for the various armies to coordinate with one another. Despite being severely outnumbered and
RSS