Mon, Feb 20, 2006 page8

• 'Status quo' is the new battlefield

  • By Hsu Yung-ming 徐永明
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  In the past, when observers tried to understand the development of cross-strait relations, the "status quo" was an important option to consider, along with the choices of unification or independence. This was true despite the fact that definition of the status quo was often unclear.

  For example, although maintaining the status quo is the basis for stable US-China-Taiwan relations, each of the three countries interprets the status quo quite differently. As a result, whoever can define the status quo becomes the most powerful member of the three-way relationship. In addition to having the power to define the status quo, the question of how to change the status quo or influence the direction in which it changes becomes the goal of the competition for power.

  If, within the traditional unification-independence framework, advocating either of the two is an attempt to change the status quo, then opposing either could be seen as supporting the status quo. In other words, if promoting Taiwan independence is an attempt to unilaterally change the status quo, then opposing independence could be an attempt to maintain it.

  This interpretation has often been seen since Beijing passed its "Anti-Secession" Law. The law accepts that China and Taiwan are divided, because its emphasis is on preventing formal independence rather than on promoting unification. Looked at in this way, the law is an active attempt to maintain the status quo, and has indirectly come to define it.

  After the passage of the Anti-Secession Law, and after former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) visited China, Taiwan was pushed toward unification. As KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said during his visit last week to the UK, if he is elected president, the main goal will be to shape domestic conditions for unification and plant the unification idea deep in every sector of society in order to move from an anti-independence strategy toward a pro-unification push.

  This shift, which Ma had also given voice to earlier, so agitated President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) that it resulted in his Lunar New Year address, in which he said he would consider abolishing the National Unification Council and National Unification Guidelines as a prelude to ridding Taiwan of the unification idea.

  In the past, achieving the conditions to bring about independence were seen as the major force motivating a change to the status quo. This ignored the anti-independence character of the Anti-Secession Law as well as the changing nature of the conditions for a move toward unification that has followed on China's economic development.

  This is also why it is no longer just the independence movement that is trying to change the status quo, and why an even greater effort now comes from those who wish to alter the conditions by which unification could take place. This has put the Taiwan independence movement on the defensive and forced it to strive against unification.

  The unification-independence war also plays out over the right to define the status quo. Only if we can see beyond pro-unification and pro-independence efforts, and recognize the struggle to define the status quo can we understand Beijing's Anti-Secession Law and Taiwan's anti-unification stance.

  If our actions are only decided in response to who is changing the status quo, we will overlook the anti-independence and anti-unification struggle that is going on within the status quo framework, and it will become impossible to understand the character of the current political struggle going on across the Taiwan Strait.

  This means that relations between the US, China and Taiwan have moved on to a new battlefield, where the goal is to maintain the status quo but redefine the meaning of that status quo. It is very difficult to say whether anti-unification amounts to an attempt to change the status quo. It could even be seen as an attempt to maintain it.

  It is also difficult to say if the anti-independence effort is only an attempt to maintain the status quo, or whether it aims to eventually change it.

  The nation's domestic politics have entered a new stage in which the fight is between pro-unification and anti-unification forces. Ma's unification efforts are opposed to Chen's anti-unification efforts, which is becoming the focus of the next stage of politics in Taiwan.

  Hsu Yung-ming is an assistant research fellow of the Sun Yat-sen Institute for Social Sciences and Philosophy at Academia Sinica.
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