President Chen Shui-bian (
Interestingly, in a discussion regarding the US' hope that Chinese President Hu Jintao (
So, Chen is clear then that an ideal is one thing and reality is another, and that cross-strait relations are going nowhere in a hurry.
Lien's visit to China and meeting with Hu resulted in a joint communique, issued on April 29. One of the main clauses in that communique mentioned that the two parties would set up a platform for regular meetings between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the KMT. The clause also states that the first meeting will be held in Taipei before Lien steps down as chairman next month. A delegation of top KMT leaders and legislators is currently in Beijing to discuss the details of the meeting.
Chen -- who, full of wishful thinking, has been offering Beijing many goodwill gestures -- is finally waking up and is tasting the bitter fruit of his efforts. But it is surprising to see that the opposition leaders still cannot see the error of their ways. They remain full of hope that the CCP-KMT show will help improve their political prestige.
But it is just as Chen has pointed out. After Lien's, Soong's and New Party Chairman Yok Mu-ming's (郁慕明) visits to China, they are full of ideas for peaceful cross-strait development, but this simply does not meet the test of the current reality. Beijing continues to isolate Taiwan within the international community, and even in the few months since the opposition leaders visited China, it has not made the slightest concession in continuing to pursue this policy.
Because of China's pressure, Chen will not be able to attend the APEC meeting in South Korea at the end of the year. The US Congress on July 20 even passed a proposal to allow high-ranking Taiwanese officials to visit the US, and called on the US government to engage in direct talks with Taiwan's elected officials. This has also been met with violent opposition from the Chinese.
China continues to treat Taiwan as the enemy and, in pursuing its cross-strait policy, has sought every means to destroy it. Given this situation, any talks in Taipei between the KMT and the CCP are not likely to yield any result beyond a mass of propaganda applauding their achievements.
We hope that the KMT will realize its naivety in trying to "bargain with a tiger for its skin." As Chen pointed out at the videoconference, if China's "peaceful rising" is not accompanied by "discovering peace" and "developing democracy," then it is unlikely to ever have a government that loves peace.
Meanwhile, the "platform for communication" that the KMT thinks it has established with the CCP will simply become a stage on which China can perform, striving to divide Taiwan. It will certainly not forward the cause of cross-strait peace. How is it that the KMT cannot see something that is so blatantly obvious?
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