The "Anti-Secession" Law enacted by China in 2005 has had an impact on the US' Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), although in ways not necessarily envisioned by Beijing.
A case can even be made that the TRA is now privately welcomed by both the pragmatic and the hawkish wings in Beijing's leadership. For the former, the TRA provides a sufficient restraint on the hot heads in Beijing. For the latter, the TRA has become one of the handiest excuses to step up military acquisitions, immensely enriching the People's Liberation Army's top brass.
These dynamics alone would not render the complaints of some US-based political commentators and politicians regarding the US' obligations as mandated in the TRA moot points, but the addition of the US multinationals' interests into the mix would. In fact, the US global commerce and its natural extension -- Washington -- lean on the TRA even more on account of the law.
In other words, the existence of the Law actually makes watering down the TRA an aspect unwelcome to all parties -- including Taipei, Tokyo, Washington and Beijing. Thus, two years after promulgation, the law produced the unintended consequence of leaving wide open the definition of what constitutes an "enforceable" violation of the law.
That's where President Chen Shui-bian's (
While being accused of breaking his pledge of "four noes and one without," Chen is pushing the envelope and looks to eventually define a red line, something China never attempted to do in its law lest it fail to have this definition enforced in fear of the TRA.
Chen is framing his drive for constitutional reform as an act of codifying what Taiwan's democratization has accomplished in the last 20 years. Foremost, Taiwan has held three presidential elections. The Taiwanese people elected a president of a nation -- not the head of a province or a special zone. And, the elections were held among people residing in a defined territory.
Putting these experiences together, Chen wishes to engineer a constitution to at least reflect the defined territory of a nation, seemingly placing the red line where the nation's name -- as well as the nation's flag -- is. That sounds fine save for the fact that there is no red line in his recent moves.
This paradox is entirely logical once people realize that Chen's latest pronouncement was intended for the masses. In other words, Taiwanese can and should aspire to those lofty aims he prescribes, while, for the sake of the nation's security, the Taiwanese government needs to heed a red line, thus completing a template for the next Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration.
Still, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack publicly chastised Chen's latest move as "unhelpful," a language seemingly mild until people were reminded of the fact that Foggy Bottom had used the same description to refer to Beijing's enactment of its "Anti-Secession" Law.
It was further suggested that Chen's timing was all wrong; his announcement came amid a highly sensitive round of North Korean negotiations on the nuclear issue where the US counted heavily on Beijing to make the meeting fruitful.
But if the issue du jour were not North Korea, there would be others, including anti-terrorism and the Iraq War. In fact, US Senator John Warner did raise this latter point recently in a congressional hearing.
Taiwanese might have become desensitized by the State Department's constant laments about timing and started to tune out Washington's criticism of Chen. Taiwanese might also have discovered that the only timing that counts is how soon the vast majority of Taiwanese wake up to the notion that they -- not Washington, not Beijing and certainly not the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) -- are the master of their destiny.
Next year's presidential election might shape up to be a momentous occasion to witness true Taiwanese identity. Come election time, voter distribution will most likely mimic the society's polarization regarding its future and candidates in both camps will be pushed to position their campaigns accordingly.
This guarantees that the eventual platform on which the DPP candidate would run should have as its backbone something resembling Chen's recent initiatives.
The same is true for former KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) platform, whose goal it is to unify Taiwan with China.
Thus, not dissimilar to free people everywhere, Taiwanese will invariably find a way to hold a referendum on the future status of their nation regardless of the degree of external intimidation -- be they friends or foes.
Huang Jei-hsuan
California
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