In the past few days, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁, A-bian) pulled out the big guns firing at Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰), People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) and former president Lee Tung-hui (李登輝). All polls and anecdotal evidence said that his approval rating is at an all time low and that he now has no friends except his core supporters.
A major reason that led to his current aberration is the attempt to pump up voter enthusiasm for last Saturday's election to deal with the out-dated Constitution.
But recall that he said recently that a new constitution and the name change are nothing but lying and self-delusion. How is he going to convince people the situation has changed? More importantly, we should ask two questions:
One, how did he get into this mess to begin with? Two, is there a possibility that he can fight his way out?
The answer to question two is yes, but that answer rests on a careful analysis of the following:
Prior to Lien's trip to China, A-bian was very harsh and indeed threatened to investigate the China trip by one of the KMT's vice-chairmen, with possible charge for being a traitor to national interest. But A-bian changed his position to endorse Lien's trip and the flip-flop enraged independence fundamentalists. Then A-bian flip-flopped again to criticize Lien and Soong and in doing so blasted Lee to show that he is the president and that he is on top of the national matters.
The double flip-flop will cost him credibility. But why did he change his position to endorse Lien's trip in the first place?
The answer is simple: US President George W. Bush endorsed Lien's trip and wanted direct communication between A-bian and Chinese President Hu Jintao (
A-bian is under tremendous pressure from the Bush administration which claims that Taiwan is part of China and denounced the new constitution/name-change idea during last year's legislative elections. This was why A-bian said the idea of a new constitution/name-change are nothing but lying and self-cheating one month after promoting the idea with full force during last year's elections. What else can he say when the Bush administration claims that Taiwan is part of China and that Taiwan is not a sovereign country?
Poor A-bian, who has been bent by the pressure and is now totally out of shape. Poor A-bian who has a rope on his throat, which the Bush administration is holding and manipulating.
This is my answer to question one. This answer paves the way to deal with question two. In short, what A-bian has to do is to re-gain the fighting spirit he had when he was mayor of Taipei. At that time, he was firm on his beliefs and on his principles. He was under tremendous pressure from all kinds of special-interest groups but he insisted on doing the right thing. He gained the people's respect and political capital. This was crucial to his first presidential victory.
A-bian has faltered and flip-flopped under pressure from the US. But he still has three years to reclaim his position in history. What he has to do is:
One, stand firm on Taiwan's sovereignty. Two, stand firm on domestic reforms including banking, finance, agriculture and others that he promised. Three, if pan-blue legislators boycott his reforms, he has the constitutional authority to disband the legislature. Given the current mess, he really has nothing to lose but to do the right thing.
Standing firm on Taiwan's sovereignty, is harder to do, given that the Bush administration claims that Taiwan is not a sovereign country and that Taiwan is part of China. But these are old claims.
More than 75 percent of Americans now believe that Taiwanese have the right to declare independence, according to a poll by Zogby International published on April 6.
About 52 percent of US Congressional staffers support the idea of the US defending Taiwan (only 19 percent reject it) when asked if the US should intervene if a declaration of independence by Taiwan led to hostilities with China (the same Zogby poll).
Again, the threat from the Bush administration that the US does not have an obligation to protect Taiwan is a minority position in Congress.
Bush himself said very clearly that it is the policy of the US to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture (Bush Freedom Speech, http://www.whitehouse.gov/inaugural/index.html).
Most importantly, 85 percent of people in Taiwan reject any form of unification with China (World Daily, March 25, 2005; Overseas DPP Newsletter, April 2005, p age 50).
In short, the fate of Taiwan rests on the will of its people. Nobody else has the right to determine their future. Not the Bush administration, and certainly not China.
When George Washington was leading the war of independence, the majority of the people (60 to 70 percent) were not enthusiastic about the war, and only 10 percent really wanted to fight. The situation in Taiwan is a lot better. With 85 percent of people rejecting China and 30 percent of the people hard-core independence deep-green supporters, A-bian should be able to lead Taiwan to become a truly sovereign country.
Chamont Wang
New Jersey
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