During a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) policy debate prior to its chairperson by-election in February, then-candidate Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said he felt that the “1992 consensus” was a little bit outdated and that young Taiwanese “do not necessarily identify with it.”
In July, having won the election, Chiang went further, saying that the “1992 consensus” had become “distorted” and the ideal time to sort it out had already passed.
It is abundantly clear that the party needs to find a way to divest itself of the burdensome “consensus,” he said.
Then, unexpectedly, at the KMT’s national congress on Sunday last week, a report was presented to attendees that contained the awkward phrase: The party would “continue cross-strait relations on the basis of the Republic of China [ROC] Constitution’s 1992 consensus.”
With just a few mangled phrases, Chiang undid all of his work to rebrand the party and awakened the ghost of the “1992 consensus.”
It is as if the “consensus” holds a mysterious spell over the KMT. Why is it incapable of jettisoning this shibboleth? Why does it appear intent on taking it to its grave?
The answer is in a series of articles on former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) that the Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun published, titled “Lee Teng-hui: A Secret Record.”
The articles quote Lee as saying that “there never was a 1992 consensus.”
Then-Straits Exchange Foundation chairman Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫), who headed Taiwan’s delegation to the cross-strait meeting in 1992, said in his memoirs that no consensus had been reached and that the two sides shared nothing in common.
Furthermore, in 2006, former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) admitted that he fabricated the “1992 consensus” in 2000.
Despite being nothing more than a mirage, the “1992 consensus” has trapped the KMT in its voodoo magic.
The KMT still hopes that it will hypnotize the public into believing in the magic of the “consensus” and its “one China, each side with its own interpretation” appendage.
During the meeting in 2015 between then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the two should at least have discussed these phrases in a few sentences. Did they?
Given that Ma did not even use his official title — president of the ROC — how could he discuss the “1992 consensus” and “one China, each side with its own interpretation”?
Taiwanese saw how Xi during the meeting refused to call Ma “president,” not to mention “President Ma of the Republic of China,” instead casually referring to “Mr Ma,” as if he were a man who had just walked in off the street.
Still, Ma just grinned into the cameras like a Cheshire cat without complaining. It became obvious that in China’s book, there is no such thing as the ROC, so how could there be any talk of “each side with its own interpretation”?
In a New Year’s speech on Jan. 2 last year, Xi went even further, unilaterally declaring that the “1992 consensus” simply meant “one China” and that there was no room anyone having their own interpretation, thus equating the “1992 consensus” to “one country, two systems.”
A little over a year since that speech, the situation in Hong Kong shows that “one country, two systems” actually means “one country, one system.”
Some consensus.
This rude slap was not enough to awaken the KMT from the spell of the “1992 consensus.”
Instead it increased the confusion in the party and tied itself in so many knots to convince voters and justify its dogged adherence that it no longer knows which way is up and which way is down.
In Xi’s eyes the ROC does not exist and the KMT is still going on about the ROC Constitution and the “1992 consensus” being based on it.
The KMT’s semantic contortions are complete gobbledygook and its magic charm no longer has any effect.
Chang Kuo-tsai is a retired associate professor at National Hsinchu University of Education.
Translated by Edward Jones
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