Many local politicians like to claim that "maintaining the status quo" is a majority consensus of the nation's people.
The presentation of the various opinion poll results show that among the three options for Taiwan's future -- unification, independence, and maintaining the status quo -- a majority of respondents usually choose to maintain the status quo. Then comes independence, while unification often receives the lowest support. Nevertheless, when being asked to choose between unification and independence if it's impossible to maintain the status quo, those who choose independence still outnumber those who choose unification.
This is an interesting phenomenon, rather like peeling an onion. First, the option of maintaining the status quo provides a comfortable choice for opinion poll respondents, as they are able to avoid the sensitive unification and independence issues, and do not need to think about future uncertainties. This option offers an exit for respondents' mental anxiety as a result of the questionnaire's design. Therefore, the so-called consensus of maintaining the status quo may be a myth created by the wording of poll questions, not the sacred "public opinion" politicians claim.
In comparison with opinion polls that do not offer the option of maintaining the status quo, one finds that the percentage of respondents taking the initiative to mention this issue decreases, as more of them are willing to choose between unification and independence. Of course, those who choose independence are more numerous than those who choose unification.
Thus the question of unification or independence as a measure of people's "national choice" has been negatively influenced by opinion polls. This reflects the changeability of political arguments as well as the survey design problem.
The nation's future has been a focus of debate both before and since the presidential election. Major issues include the traditional division of unification and independence, "one country on each side" of the Taiwan Strait versus the "one China" principle, and the idea of renaming the nation "Taiwan Republic of China" recently proposed by Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮). These issues reflect the political wrestling over the nation's position.
This has a significant impact on the future political situation. First, for the party system division, the political spectrum of unification and independence will turn into a spectrum of localization and non-localization. Parties will even be distinguished by their degrees of localization. This means that the past unification-independence issue has been replaced by "one country on each side," as actively promoted by President Chen Shui-bian (
In the framework of unification and independence in the past, there was an ambiguous option, the status quo. When most Taiwanese people chose to maintain the status quo, cognitive conflicts often occurred in their minds. Therefore when Chen proposed the "one country on each side" dictum, this negated maintaining the status quo.
Through this move, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) succeeded in gaining a majority of the votes. Hence, when the blue camp gave up the so-called "one China under one roof" policy, it also declared that the election battle was leaning toward the pivot of national identification. If both Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
The major impact of the March 20 election on this triangular relationship lies in the three sides' definitions of the status quo. Maintaining the status quo was always the consensus in the past, and the core value of the "five noes" Chen promised in his inaugural speech in 2000. However, since the three now have different definitions of the status quo, they have different ideas about the status quo's future direction. Since the status quo is a dynamic process of changes, any side's effort to maintain the status quo may seem like an attempt to change it in the eyes of other sides. The controversial referendum issue fermented before the election and further affected Taiwan-US relations exactly due to such cognitive conflicts.
Therefore, both the competition over the right to define the status quo and the direction of future changes will be focuses in the next phase. In this struggle, as a concrete democratic force, the future direction of public opinion will attract much attention from all sides. It will become the focus of the opposing camps' political discourses on the next stage, and receive much international attention, as everyone focuses on the question of how to eliminate or consolidate the myth of a consensus for maintaining the status quo.
Hsu Yung-ming is an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
RSS