The survival of Taiwan as a de facto independent democratic nation is facing growing perils from all sides. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is steadily developing the capacity to overwhelm and subdue Taiwan with a combination of a multi-pronged blitzkrieg and internal subversion so swiftly that the US will have no time to react.
After five years of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government's policy of "active opening, effective management," Taiwan's economy is becoming increasingly marginalized as capital, technology and skilled manpower migrate westward to China. Ever since then Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) made their pilgrimages to Beijing to pledge allegiance to the People's Republic of China (PRC), the voice of the anti-democracy, anti-US and pro-unification minority has become very strident, while the pro-Taiwan and pro-democracy majority of the people are so disenchanted with the DPP's performance that Pres-ident Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) approval rating has recently hit a record low of 25 percent.
Both Beijing and the KMT/PFP opposition are already confidently counting on the defeat of the DPP candidate in the 2008 presidential election and the peaceful capit-ulation of Taiwan's sovereignty to the PRC soon thereafter. How did Taiwan come to this? Because the governing political leadership lacks a clear vision for Taiwan's future, a vision to commit the nation to the path of freedom.
When the DPP was formed in the late 1980s, the party had a clear vision. Its original party platform stated: "In accordance with the reality of Taiwan's sovereignty, an independent country should be established and a new constitution drawn up in order to make the legal system conform to the social reality in Taiwan and ... the scope of Taiwan's sovereignty over the land and the people should be redefined ... Based on the fundamental rights of the people, the establishment of a sovereign Taiwan Republic and a new constitution shall be determined by all citizens of Taiwan through a national ref-erendum."
This unambiguous goal of establishing a sovereign and independent Republic of Taiwan, however, was abandoned in the DPP's Resolution Regarding Taiwan's Future, passed by the National Party Congress on May 8, 1999. The Resolution stated: "Taiwan is a sovereign and in-dependent country. Any change in the independent status quo must be decided by all the residents of Taiwan by means of plebiscite ... Taiwan should promptly complete the task of incorporating pleb-iscite into law in order to realize the people's rights."
While the Resolution purported to "create a vision for the future," it merely stated: "The ultimate goal of the DPP's China policy is to establish a cross-strait relationship that is mutually beneficial ... peaceful ... and equal."
It was silent on how the goal would be achieved, merely asking the Chinese government to "respect the will of the Taiwanese people." Taiwan's future now rests on the goodwill of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
What caused this backtracking of the DPP in 1999? There was concern that overt moves toward independence might trigger PLA military aggression against Taiwan. There was electoral calculation that to win in the presidential election of 2000 it was necessary to reach out to the majority middle-of-the-road voters who wanted to defer the independence/unification issue and to maintain the status quo.
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