March 14 marked the first anniversary of China's passing of its "Anti-Secession" Law. Looking back over the past year, Taiwan's unification-independence confrontation has become severely polarized. Seemingly encouraged by the passage of the Chinese law, pan-blue camp politicians, scholars and businesspeople have exposed the "greater China" mindset that they had previously kept hidden. This also presents a good chance for the Taiwanese people to distinguish right from wrong.
On March 26 last year, the eve of the pan-green camp's large rally against China's actions, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) announced that it was sending its vice chairman to China and began to employ its strategy of "uniting with China to suppress Taiwanese independence."
Then on April 26, then KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) visited China and People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) quickly followed. The pilgrimages of pan-blue leaders to Beijing were complete when New Party Chairman Yok Mu-ming (郁慕明) finished his China trip on July 13. These visits successfully boosted China's united-front strategy and divided Taiwan into two camps, effectively creating "one Taiwan, two systems."
Backed by China, the pan-blue camp has ignored the elected government and promoted the "one China" concept as if it was a government of its own. It even accepted China's three gifts -- pandas, cross-strait fruit imports and Chinese tourists.
The pan-blue camp's arrogance was Taiwan's crisis and this frustrated the pan-green camp. The government was still dreaming of "reconciliation and coexistence" as businesses continued to move into China. Taiwan continued to lean ever more toward China. The pan-green camp's momentum went from bad to worse, while the pan-blue camp's reached its apex when it won by a landslide in last December's polls.
In light of the electoral success, the pan-blue camp's leader, KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), shamelessly claimed that unification is the party's eventual goal.
Still, any crisis offers opportunity. And after thinking for a while, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) realized the impact of China's strategy of "using business to promote unification" and concluded that "reconciliation and coexistence" with China was impossible. He proposed the "active management, effective opening" policy in his New Year's speech. Then on Jan. 29, he broached the subject of ceasing the function of the National Unification Council and guidelines.
After wrestling with his opponents both inside and outside Taiwan, Chen announced the cessation of the council and the guidelines on Feb. 27. The reaction of the pan-blue camp, China and the US, however, implies that they remain a curse. Luckily, Taiwan was freed and by letting Taiwan's future be decided by the free will of the 23 million Taiwanese, those who question the "status quo" finally recaptured part of their right to speak out.
A loss sometimes turns out to be a gain. If China had not passed the law and destroyed the premise for Chen's inauguration pledges, Taiwan might not have had sufficient reason to cast off the curse of "eventual unification."
As the Chinese saying goes, "Reviewing the past helps one understand the present." On the first anniversary of the "Act Authorizing Aggression Against Taiwan," I once again tell the public: The most feasible way to maintain the "status quo" is to not humiliate ourselves in our responses. Taiwan finally took one small step forward with the cessation of the unification council and guidelines. The policy of "active management" of business investments in China is the beginning of a giant leap. It is also the key to whether Taiwan will be able to turn defeat into victory.
Huang Tien-lin is a national policy adviser to the president.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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