Forty years ago, Peng Ming-min (彭明敏), now senior advisor to the president, drafted A Declaration of Formosan Self-salvation with his students Hsieh Tsung-min (
Peng and his allies were secretly arrested before the document was made public. Most people first read it (in summarized form) in Peng's memoir, A Taste of Freedom, which he wrote during his exile. Despite this, the significance and influence of the declaration was not in the least diminished. Reading it today, it still shows penetrating insights.
The declaration pointed out eight main issues, among which are: the fact of one China and one Taiwan has to be legally recognized; it is impossible to retake the mainland; attempts to retake the mainland only serve as an excuse to perpetuate the KMT regime and the KMT government represents neither China nor Taiwan.
The declaration also set three basic objectives: to establish a new state with a new government, create a new constitution and join the UN as a new member. After 40 years, some of the assertions, which were unacceptable to the alien ruler, have become shared beliefs of the Taiwanese people and guidelines that we continue to strive toward. From this, we can see how farsighted and high-aiming the declaration was.
Before drafting it, Peng, at the time director of the Department of Political Science at National Taiwan University, had been appointed consultant to the UN delegation. The political reality at the UN strengthened Peng in his conviction that there is one China and one Taiwan. The KMT government had been worried about its UN representation since 1950.
The Chiang administration claimed to be the only legitimate government in China while more and more countries accepted the effective rule of China by the People's Republic of China (PRC). That was why a draft resolution was proposed at the UN to replace the Republic of China with the PRC. Even the US, which had been a strong supporter of the KMT government, was preparing to set up official diplomatic ties with the PRC.
It is worth noting that although the US normalized relations with Beijing, it also proposed a compromise resolution to include both the PRC and ROC in the UN. In Washington's view, the ROC could become an ordinary UN member while the PRC took its seat in the Security Council. US delegates at the time officially stated that the US supported the PRC's becoming a UN member and a permanent member of the Security Council, while opposing the expulsion of the ROC from the UN.
Unfortunately, the KMT government insisted there could be "no reconciliation with the bandits" and said it strongly opposed PRC entry into the UN or any proposal that implied "two Chinas" or "one China, one Taiwan." This head-in-the-sand mentality ended in the cancelation of our representation. The UN not only recognized the PRC as the sole legitimate representative of China but also made it a permanent member of the Security Council. The ROC lost the right to represent China to the PRC.
In light of the process leading to the ROC's exit from the UN, it was not very strange that the declaration was politically suppres-
sed. As the international community turned to the dual-membership solution in the UN, and the US attempted to normalize its relationship with Beijing, the KMT regime did not care about how to safeguard the sovereign status of Taiwan, but rather how to sustain its dictatorship.
This serious historic blunder resulted in Taiwan's sovereignty being constantly undermined, and has made its bid to return to the UN an extremely difficult task. President Chen Shui-bian (
Fortunately, the Declaration of Formosan Self-salvation has survived. The "one China, one Taiwan" discourse highlighted therein has become a common belief over the past 10 years, as well as a firm conviction of our leaders. Both the two-state theory and the "one country on each side of the Taiwan Strait" discourse, proposed respectively by former president Lee Teng-hui (
The necessity of calling Taiwan "Taiwan" and discarding the pro-Chinese national title ROC has also gradually made its way into mainstream public opinion. Interestingly, when the ROC was driven out of the UN, the KMT government rebuked those countries which suggested a "one China and one Taiwan" formulation.
The self-salvation movement initiated under the rule of an alien power 40 years ago was likened to an unforgivable crime. Now the alien power has been overthrown by the vote of the people. Faced with Beijing's intention to annex us, our concern has transformed from passive self-salvation to active self-determination.
Self-determination means that one's life is determined by oneself. In Taiwan's case, it means that Taiwan's future should be determined by its 23 million people. It is an irrefutable fact that Taiwan is a sovereign state and thereby Taiwanese people have the right to decide their own national title and write their own constitution.
Some people who always side with Beijing's intimidations say that any move to declare sovereignty will bring war on Taiwan. These people forget that the most important thing that the Taiwanese people need in order to create their own state and safeguard it is to cement national will.
As long as we have a strong, unwavering national will, the international community will naturally respect us, and other factors will become secondary.
In contrast, a lack of national will or a confused national identity will jeopardize the country's existence and create problems for it in the international community.
Therefore, we should adopt the perspective of self-determination when interpreting the Declaration of Formosan Self-salvation and absorb from it the drive to push history forward.
Translated by Jennie Shih
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