Both Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
With both Lien and Soong representing their own parties in an attempt to reconcile with China, they focused on what they saw as their own best interests. But it is not, however, a simple issue of individual interests, as it involves Taiwan's strategic situation and changes to the international system in East Asia. And they have far-reaching effects on Taiwan's political situation.
If reconciliation between the KMT and the PFP on the one hand and China on the other merely meant the development of exchanges, it would not have much of an effect. If, however, it introduces China's influence into Taiwan's party politics, then the effects can no longer be ignored. This situation could be likened to opening Pandora's box, making it difficult to forecast the effect of the escaping spirit or demon.
A study of evolving East Asian relations provides new perspectives to help deal with the power struggle that Taiwan is becoming embroiled in.
Going back to the 16th century, Western nations began to arrive in the East to look for trading opportunities and to expand their power, but they were rejected by China. Seeing itself as the major Asian power, China had built a stable buffer of tributary states along its borders, and it relied on diplomatic means to control the trade of these tributary states and even their diplomatic relations.
China treated these distant Western European nations in the same way as it treated these tributary states and ordered them to pay tribute to be allowed to engage in trade.
This had a strong effect on the economic interests of Portugal, Holland, England and Spain. They began to occupy areas peripheral to China in Southeast Asia and Taiwan, and forced China to open up trading ports and markets. As far as we know, Southeast Asia was occupied by Portugal, Spain, Holland, England and France, in that order. Just as with Southeast Asia, Taiwan was also invaded, by Holland, Spain and then France.
From the perspective of power relationships, because the Western powers failed to develop the desired trade ties with China, they established contacts with China through their occupied lands. Beginning in the 16th century, the Western powers became a force to be reckoned with along China's eastern seaboard. This situation has continued to this day, with the US having taken the place of Holland, Spain and the other European nations.
After World War II, the US and Japan formed an alliance in East Asia to oppose China. The areas caught between the two sides -- the Korean Peninsula, the Taiwan Strait, Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia -- in the end experienced internal divisions as leading elites sided with either China or the US. North and South Korea, the KMT in Taiwan and the Chinese Communist Party in China, North and South Vietnam, the Lon Nol government and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Jakarta government and the revolutionary government in Padang in Indonesia, were all divided into two political forces and governments. A few are worth some extra attention.
First, it has not been easy to solve these divisive issues even in cases where massive military power was used, as on the Korean Peninsula and in the Taiwan Strait.
Second, it was easier for Indonesia -- given its greater distance from China -- to solve this issue. In 1958, for example, Indonesia resolved its problems with the revolutionary government in Padang, and in 1965, it resolved the problem with its Communist insurgency, although both took a bloody toll. It was also this bipolar situation that led Indonesia to annex East Timor, and only after a long period of bloody opposition did the UN support a referendum aimed at resolving the issue of East Timor's future in 1999.
Third, North and South Vietnam present another extremely cruel example. North Vietnam turned against the international power relationships in East Asia in an attempt to change them. It paid a heavy price in the sacrifice of millions of lives when it used military force to solve the problem. Today, Vietnam has entered ASEAN and opened up relations with Western nations, proving that the road it had taken earlier and the solutions applied by North Vietnam were problematic.
The crucial factor leading to the domestic clashes and wars in these East Asian nations was that they were all pawns of the Americans and the Chinese. They fought a proxy war for these big nations that damaged the lives and property of their own populations.
This conflict lives on in only two places: the Taiwan Strait and on the Korean Peninsula. It did not begin with post-World War II competition between the US on the one hand and Russia and China on the other. Rather, it began to take shape in the 19th century. At that time, Japan began to develop, and pro-China and pro-Japanese factions began appearing among the elite in Korea.
This dragged China into war with Japan which was expanding its influence on the Korean Peninsula, and it is the reason Korean unification will be difficult so long as anti-Chinese forces -- US and Japanese -- remain in Northeast Asia.
Since the war, only a pro-US force has existed in Taiwan, together with a domestic ideology bent on unification, and this is what allowed a stable transition to democracy.
For a long time, the anti-KMT forces in Taiwan, from the tangwai to the Democratic Progressive Party, also took a pro-US stance. Although the many elections have brought competition and clashes, that is what kept the political movement on track.
Although the different political parties have remained pro-American, none has been backed by the US, and Washington has always been very positive toward democratic competition. What's more, the political parties have not relied on US support as a way to win voter support.
The cross-strait relationship is unique because of the ethnic ties between people on each side of the Taiwan Strait, and the emotional attachment to China held by those who moved to Taiwan after 1949.
This is why the situation will change once a pro-China stance appears among political parties in Taiwan. This is because the parties will be influenced by Beijing's policies on Taiwan. China's policies affecting Taiwan will polarize local political opinion, intensifying confrontation.
One foreseeable negative impact will be that new pro-Western and pro-China positions will appear among Taiwan's political parties.
Is Taiwan's democracy mature enough to withstand such a challenge? History shows that unification-independence issues involving ideological positions aren't easily resolved through democratic means. It will not be difficult to imagine the serious consequences of political parties introducing Chinese forces into Taiwan's political arena.
We must face up to one thing: Taiwan remains a link in the structure of the US-Japanese security alliance. The recent reiteration by the two countries that the Strait falls within the scope of their security concerns clearly explains Taiwan's strategic situation. I don't think this situation will change in the short term, and attempts to change it will have tragic consequences for Taiwan.
We will see changes to Taiwan's party politics in the foreseeable future. If pro-China parties were to gain voter support, would that change the current pro-US direction, or even lead to a serious clash? Are the government and voters prepared for this?
Chen Hurng-yu is a professor in the department of history at National Cheng-chi University.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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