President Chen Shui-bian (
Two odd aspects of this situation stand out.
First, Article 17 of the Referendum Law (
In light of this, defensive referendums are based on the premise of national sovereignty. It is strange that the US opposes a defensive referendum in the same way that it opposes independence. We can conclude that what the US opposes is not a defensive referendum, but the premise of such a referendum -- Taiwanese sovereignty.
Second, therefore, perhaps the threat to Taiwan's sovereignty is not only China's missiles, but also the US' verbal threats.
Taiwan should not just single-mindedly focus on China's threats, but also be conscious of the control exerted by the US' hegemony.
Isn't the US trying to deny Taiwan's sovereignty by threatening inaction -- not selling weapons to Taiwan? No wonder some say that if Taiwan became a state or a colony of the US, perhaps it would spend less money paying taxes to the federal government than it now spends buying weapons.
Chen's hasty proposal to hold a defensive referendum has plunged the pan-green camp's election campaign into a muddle. Though he knows that swing voters hold the key to the election, Chen has lurched to an extreme position.
Perhaps Chen should consider making the preamble of a new constitution the subject of the defensive referendum.
Putting the preamble of a new constitution to a referendum would not be amending the Constitution, nor would it be creating a new constitution. It would be a declaration to open up the political future of the people of Taiwan.
As long as the content of a proposed preamble is appropriate, the pan-blue camp would find it hard to oppose a referendum on the issue. Furthermore, China and the US -- the two big nations that threaten Taiwan's sovereignty -- would not be in a position to say anything against it.
But this move could also become a turning point for creating a new constitution or amending the current one on a large scale.
The preamble to a new constitution might include the following four points:
Taiwan has independent sovereignty and a free and democratic system;
Unification can be negotiated when one day China achieves a certain level of freedom and democratic and economic development;
Changes to Taiwan's status quo should be decided by the people through a referendum;
Taiwanese people need a new constitution to meet their development needs in the new century, and the current Constitution must be frozen.
Given Taiwan's fragmentary sovereignty, these four main points might be the best political plan to guard against threats from China and the US. An overhaul of the Constitution is of great urgency if we set aside electoral considerations and focus instead on Taiwan's future.
Yen Chueh-an is a law professor at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Jackie Lin
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs