Taiwan needs to resolve the issue of its divided national identity to become a full-fledged democracy, and that requires civic awareness and engagement from the public, as well as a humble national leader who is strongly committed to democracy, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) said yesterday.
Lee made the remarks in a speech at a forum hosted by the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, the first of a series of lectures to celebrate a 10th anniversary of the government-affiliated organization headed by Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平).
Dubbed “Mr Democracy” by Newsweek magazine in 1996, Lee said he followed two paths to political reform when he served as vice president in the late 1980s under then-president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國).
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Lee said that Chiang said on two separate occasions that “I am Taiwanese” and that “the president of the Republic of China is not required to be a member of the Chiang family,” which struck Lee as important because that was a marked departure from China’s 5,000-year history of imperial rule.
“Though I did not say anything at the time, I was of exactly the same mind as [Chiang] and that put me on the course of political reform” during his 12-year presidency, Lee said.
As influential political scientist Samuel Huntington wrote regarding challenges to democratic consolidation in third-wave democracies, Taiwan was involved in the “dissolution and reconstruction of national identity,” he said.
On the road to building a full-fledged democracy, the problem of a divided national identity that continues to haunt Taiwan needs to be resolved thoroughly, Lee said.
Lee said the idea of “new-era Taiwanese” that he put forward in 2005, when political infighting followed Taiwan’s first handover of power in 2000 and China began to use a united front strategy to divide Taiwanese, aimed to boost national identification with Taiwan.
“There was no distinction between ‘new’ Taiwanese or ‘old’ Taiwanese. Regardless of ethnicity, all 23 million people in Taiwan are ‘new-era Taiwanese,’” he said.
Many people in Taiwan who had considered themselves Chinese because that was how they were educated have now come to the realization that this was “a fictitious notion inconsistent with history and reality,” Lee said.
“Over 400 years of Taiwan’s history, Taiwan was ruled by [China’s] Qing Dynasty, Japan, the Netherlands and Spain. If China’s claim that Taiwan is part of its territory made sense, why couldn’t the other regimes make the same claim? British people would never say that the US is part of the UK,” he said.
Taiwan is a society of immigrants, and people in such a society have the right to establish their own government and country, Lee said.
Taiwanese need to develop civic awareness and exert their free will to break out of ethnic boxes, to get rid of the “fictitious notion” that they are Chinese and break away from imperial mindsets so that they can build up identification with Taiwan to ward off anti-democracy elements and Chinese authoritarianism, he said.
Lee said the future of democratic consolidation in Taiwan would also be closely related to whether the country has a capable leader.
Taiwan needs a leader who insists on defending Taiwanese, who has strong convictions about democracy and who is impartial and not concerned with the interests of any particular individual, party or minority, Lee said.
A national leader must also listen to the opinions of opponents and the needs of people with a humble and calm attitude to resolve problems in people’s lives, Lee said.
“They don’t resolve people’s problems by engaging in political infighting every day,” he said.
BAIL APPEALS: The former vice premier was ordered to be held incommunicado despite twice being granted bail and paying a total of NT$12 million in bond The Taoyuan District Court yesterday ordered the detention of former vice premier Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦), who is being investigated for alleged corruption while serving as Taoyuan mayor from December 2014 to December 2022, and that he be held incommunicado. The court made the ruling during a bail hearing after prosecutors appealed its bail ruling twice. Cheng on Saturday was released after posting bail of NT$5 million (US$153,818). However, after prosecutors lodged an appeal, the High Court on Monday revoked the original ruling and ordered the Taoyuan District Court to hold another bail hearing. On Tuesday, the district court granted bail to Cheng a second
The Thai government on Friday announced that Taiwanese would be allowed to stay in the country for up to 60 days per entry, under the Southeast Asian country’s visa-free program starting from today. Taiwan is among 93 countries included in the Thai visa-waiver program, which has been expanded from 57 countries, with the visa-exempt entry extended from 30 to 60 days. After taking office last year, Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin has vowed to grant more visa waivers to foreign travelers as part of efforts to stimulate tourism. The expanded visa-waiver program was on Friday signed by Thai Minister of the Interior Anutin
PEACE AND SECURITY: China’s military ambitions present ‘the greatest strategic challenge to Japan and the world, Japan’s annual defense white paper said yesterday Japan yesterday warned that China risked escalating tensions with Taiwan with an increase in military exercises that appeared aimed in part at readying Beijing’s forces for a possible invasion. Japan’s annual assessment of security threats, including those posed by China, North Korea and Russia, comes as Taiwan closely monitors Chinese People’s Liberation Army air and sea exercises, including one with the Shandong aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean. The drills are the latest in a series including maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait last year that a senior US general said would be key to any invasion. “Because of that increase in military activity,
HAN KUANG: The exercises, which are to run from July 22 to 26, will feature unscripted war games and a decentralized command and control structure, military officers said The armed forces would for the first time test new rules of engagement (ROE) at this month’s annual Han Kuang exercises, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said yesterday. The exercises, which are to run from July 22 to 26, will feature unscripted war games, and a decentralized command and control structure, military officers told a news conference in Taipei. ROE cards would be issued to select combat troops to test their ability to function without tight control, they said. The most recent edition of the rules was published last year, they said. One of the cards’ two templates identifies enemy targets that soldiers