Fri, May 21, 2004 page8

• Editorial: A missed opportunity

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  Prior to President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) inauguration there was considerable speculation as to what he might say in his speech. There needn't have been. Yesterday's speech, reprinted on these pages, was almost entirely predictable, given the pressure on Chen from internal forces, the Americans and China. These demands amounted to gestures toward reconciliation across the political and ethnic groupings sundered by the election, reassurance as to the substance and the method of future constitutional change and some kind of overture concerning peace in the Taiwan Strait. The demands and the exigencies of the current political situation put Chen in a straightjacket in which grand gestures were simply not possible.

  That does not mean there weren't things worth noting. For example, in the area that has worried the US the most, that of constitutional reform, Chen presented a laundry list of anodyne issues that few except constitutional scholars could make conversation about. Once again what was noticeable was what was excluded. Chen specifically said that since there was no consensus on issues relating to national sovereignty, territory and independence/unification, these issues would not be part of the constitutional re-engineering, thus making the US happy and disappointing the most hardline elements of the pan-green camp.

  It is also worth noticing that Chen said that the constitutional revision process would proceed according to the system laid down in the Constitution. That may hardly seem remarkable, but there was talk of throwing out the set process for revision and having a new constitution endorsed by referendum. We have criticized such maneuvering before as far too closely resembling a Latin-American-style populist coup. That Chen has abandoned the reform-through-referendum plan should reassure those who fear what, after the last election campaign, he might do with the Referendum Law.

  But what people were really looking for in Chen's speech was some indication of his attitude to China and here we think a chance was missed. Chen did not repeat his "five noes" pledge made at his last inauguration. The "five noes," in which Chen volunteered not to implement a number of measures to which China objected, were designed to keep Taiwan's international status in the limbo from which China has benefited so much. That Chen did not reiterate the "five noes" is good. What is not so good is the evidence that the kind of thinking that motivated the pledge, that China would respond to "goodwill gestures" -- and we remind our readers that it never has -- is still in play. We would caution the president that his first term showed that goodwill gestures toward China are invariably interpreted as gestures of weakness by Beijing.

  The low point of Chen's speech came two-thirds of the way through when he said that "we can understand why the government on the other side of the Taiwan Strait ... cannot relinquish insistence on the `one China principle.'" Actually, no we can't. To say such a thing is to suggest that Beijing's territorial demands have justification -- which, under any interpretation of international law, they don't.

  What should have been said about the "one China" principal was not that Taiwan understands it, but that Taiwan would like to enter into talks if only Beijing would drop such an unreasonable demand, thereby throwing the blame for the impasse in cross-strait relations where it belongs -- on China's absurd preconditions.

  Chen did make the customary remarks about the aspirations of Taiwan's 23 million people, but then Beijing talks at length about what the 1.3 billion Chinese will and will not put up with. Chen talked about being just the servant of the people. And he also said that any solution to the China-Taiwan impasse needed the endorsement of the Taiwanese. But we think a serious opportunity was lost here, an opportunity to present a compelling case for Taiwan's current stance, an opportunity to impress upon the world that the Taiwanese people's endorsement is not a rhetorical figure of speech but refers to a very practical process: Taiwanese saying "yes" or "no" to any proposed settlement via the ballot box.

  It is true that all the elements of just such a message were in his speech. It is regrettable therefore that they were not presented in a cogent and compelling argument that would make leaders in China, Washington and elsewhere sit up and think. Taiwan will resist to the utmost the shotgun wedding that is the only relationship Beijing has on offer. If Beijing wants Taiwan, it has to woo it to win it, and the voters of Taiwan are the only arbiters of whether it has succeeded in its attempt. It is not provocative to say this, though it might force a number of people on both sides of the Pacific currently in denial to confront reality. Foreign powers that want to see better cross-strait relations need to take note of this and put pressure on China to change its ways, not on Taiwan to zip its lip. Chen could have pointed this out with far more force yesterday. What a shame he didn't.
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