On Saturday President Chen Shui-bian (
For a start Taiwan is simply not in a state of "imminent threat." Taiwanese realize the danger that China poses, but they do not think this is a danger that is likely to turn very ugly very quickly. What might turn it ugly, in fact, is Chen's call for a sovereignty vote. Taiwanese are likely to interpret Chen's call as a semantic trick which could put them in very real danger. They will not like this. And the US will conclude that everything it has heard about Chen being irresponsible in provoking China if he can thereby gain some election advantage is, in fact, true. How smart is that?
It is true that Taiwanese will back their leader in a crisis with China, as they did in 1996. But that crisis was brought about by Lee Teng-hui (
The main point of the referendum law, and one which almost nobody has commented on so far, is that the old model for unification which China has long cherished is now impossible. Beijing has thought reunification was possible as an agreement between two ruling cabals -- it has thought party-to-party negotiations sufficient. It has of course been buttressed in this misapprehension by reaching agreements about the return of Hong Kong and Macau with their colonial overlords without even the hint of an attempt to seek the views of the luckless inhabitants of those territories concerning their future.
Now Taiwanese people have been given the right to vote directly on issues of national importance. It is simply absurd for the pan-greens moaning about the "birdcage" referendum law to think that the Taiwanese people will be denied a say on the greatest question of all, however restricted the current law might be.
This means that China has to change its policy. If it really wants unification as much as it claims, it has to persuade Taiwanese that it would be good for them. After 50 years of wielding the stick it now has to try using the carrot. It is quite possible that this hasn't really sunk in in Beijing yet. And given the glacial way policy change occurs there it will be at least two years before we see any evidence that Beijing has mapped out the geography of the new playing field. During this time Taiwan should refrain from doing anything to interfere with this process. It should hold referendums on sensible topics to establish the process in voters' minds. It should leave sovereignty issues well alone.
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
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