Former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) once called former US president Richard Nixon a “clown.” Chiang’s son and successor, Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), called former US secretary of state and national security adviser Henry Kissinger a “traitor.” In contrast, Chinese leaders from former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chairman Mao Zedong (毛澤東) to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近) have called Nixon and Kissinger “old friends of China.” In the zero-sum game played by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the CCP, the two parties have sharply contrasting love-hate attitudes toward Kissinger because he sold out the KMT and embraced the CCP.
The unworthy successors of the Chiangs now praise Kissinger, who died on Wednesday last week, for his contributions to “peace in the Indo-Pacific region.” They forget how the “blood letter from Nanhai,” which was fabricated by the KMT, said that Kissinger’s actions in negotiating the Paris Peace Accords caused South Vietnam to fall into the hands of the communists and countless “boat people” to flee across the seas as refugees.
Kissinger was a pragmatist who had no regard for the rights of small and weak nations. He disregarded the “legitimate right to govern China” concocted by the KMT. Although Kissinger was not the person to establish diplomatic relations between the US and China, it likely would have happened around the middle of a second presidential term had Nixon not been impeached.
FICTITIOUS
Chiang Kai-shek’s regime, which lost the Chinese Civil War to the CCP and fled in exile to Taiwan, claimed the fictitious “legitimate right to govern China.” Relying on US support, it continued to occupy China’s seat in the UN until Kissinger accepted the idea of “one China,” which led to the right to represent China in the UN being “restored” to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This turn of events was a mortal blow to the KMT.
It made no sense for the KMT government to represent China, so it kept losing support. In 1971, the US changed its tune, proposing a “dual representation” formula in response to a UN motion to oust the ROC from China’s seat, but Kissinger visited Beijing just as the issue was being debated in the UN General Assembly. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, many countries altered their positions and the “representatives of Chiang Kai-shek” were driven out of the UN.
The KMT got away with its fictitious “legitimate right” and played a zero-sum game for 20 years until the US acknowledged “one China” in the 1972 Shanghai Communique, eventually changing its diplomatic recognition of China to the PRC. The KMT brought all this on itself. When make-believe collides with reality, the fantasy is doomed to lose.
Kissinger sold out the KMT, but he did not sell out Taiwan. Former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai (周恩來) knew that Taiwan’s status in the Treaty of San Francisco had been left undetermined, so he asked the US to declare that Taiwan had been given back to China after World War II. Kissinger refused, so in the Shanghai Communique, the US only “acknowledged” that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China.”
As Taiwan’s democratic evolution proceeds, the majority of people in Taiwan identify as Taiwanese, and believe that the Republic of China is sovereign and independent and that it and the PRC are not subordinate to each another. Only the traitors and clowns of the KMT, who would be scolded by the Chiangs, echo the fictitious “1992 consensus” and “one China.”
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Julian Clegg
As Taiwan’s domestic political crisis deepens, the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) have proposed gutting the country’s national spending, with steep cuts to the critical foreign and defense ministries. While the blue-white coalition alleges that it is merely responding to voters’ concerns about corruption and mismanagement, of which there certainly has been plenty under Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and KMT-led governments, the rationales for their proposed spending cuts lay bare the incoherent foreign policy of the KMT-led coalition. Introduced on the eve of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the KMT’s proposed budget is a terrible opening
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,
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
RSS