Thu, Oct 16, 2003 page8

• Editorial: Beijing has forgotten its history

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  During a recent meeting with foreign guests, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) said that there are precedents in many countries for holding referendums without prior referendum legislation, and therefore referendums do not necessarily need a legal basis.

  Chen also said the referendums are a universal value, a basic human right and a God-given right that cannot be deprived or restricted.

  Chen's argument is not empty talk. After all, as early as 1895 China wanted to stop Japan from taking over Taiwan when Li Hongzhang (李鴻章), then viceroy of the Qing dynasty was signing the Shimonoseki Treaty with Japan.

  China was in fact the first country to come up with the idea of following the precedent set by Western countries and holding a referendum in Taiwan without any legal basis in order to resist the invading Japanese regime. If China could do it back then, why is it now trying to stop a referendum in Taiwan by way of threats?

  Japan was successful in its Meiji reformation program and became an Eastern power, and it also gained tacit support from some powerful nations for its intent to annex Taiwan. China lost the Sino-Japanese war in 1895 and Li was unable to resist Japanese pressure. This eventually led to the Shimonoseki Treaty. The Qing court was shocked by the news.

  According to a book on Taiwan's history by Chi Chia-lin (戚嘉林), Wang Zhichun (王之春) -- a confidante of Zhang Zhidong (張之洞), the Qing minister in charge of southern China -- went to Russia to attend the coronation of Czar Nicholas II. Wang stopped over in Paris on his way back. He sent a telegram to Zhang from Paris describing the plebiscites held in Alsace and Lorraine after the Franco-Prussian War (1870 to 1871). Prussia wanted to take back the two regions from France, which lost the war. France rejected the idea, saying the people in those regions had voted in plebiscites against the idea of joining Prussia.

  Zhang immediately issued an order to Taiwan's governer Tang Jingsong (唐景崧) saying that China could follow the precedent and listen to the people of Taiwan. Later, the Taiwanese elite tried to seek international support by asserting -- in a paper written with blood -- the international law concept that local residents must be consulted before ceding a region to another country.

  However, because China and Japan already exchanged treaty documents in Shandong Province, China's ceding Taiwan to Japan was irreversible. The idea of a referendum in Taiwan died before it was born. After gaining an understanding with the Chinese government, the authorities in Taiwan started to seek independence and established the short-lived Taiwan Republic.

  China wanted to use a referendum to give voice to the Taiwanese people's objection to Japanese rule, thereby seeking international sympathy and garnering the power of international justice. Unfortunately, international justice was no match for the international law of the jungle. Japan still took over Taiwan by force.

  Today, the people of Taiwan want to hold referendums and yet they have come under vicious accusations and unreasonable suppression from Beijing. What inspiration can people gain from the past?
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