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Resolution must reflect the current situation

During the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) presidential primary, party Chairman and candidate Yu Shyi-kun proposed a "normal country resolution" to replace the party's 1999 "resolution on Taiwan's future." Yu's poor showing against former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) cast doubt on whether this should be advanced following the election.

President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has talked about compromise and not needing to scrap the original resolution, just as the party didn't scrap its "Taiwan independence clause" when it wrote the "resolution on Taiwan's future" into the party's manifesto in 1999. He also said that, faced with the next year's presidential election, he could understand and support the DPP proposing an additional and stronger resolution for a new era. So what should the new resolution include?

We must first understand the nature of the 1999 resolution and look at its most recent interpretation by political commentator Cao Changqing (曹長青). Although the 1999 resolution emphasized Taiwanese sovereignty and independence, it did not reject the "Republic of China" national title and system. It therefore fell within the scope of the "two Chinas" framework.

Cao's reading is similar. However, he believes that opinion polls in recent years have shown that public opinion has changed, and that the DPP should adapt to a new reality.

This, however, is wishful thinking. Everyone knows that a person's belief in a Taiwanese identity, or absence thereof, is not the same thing as national recognition and whether or not one advocates independence. Similarly, approving of Taiwanese independence under peaceful conditions isn't the same as insisting on it under the threat of a Chinese attack.

The DPP's 1999 resolution said that the confrontation and division between the ruling and opposition parties on the issue of national identity must be softened, opening up a new opportunity for bipartisan foreign policy. This could well be a description of the atmosphere during the later part of former president Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) presidency, but today the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has abandoned that path.

In the past several years, KMT honorary chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) have visited China, and the bickering and lack of trust between the ruling and opposition camps has intensified. If the DPP intends to draft a new resolution, it must honestly face this state of affairs.

While the 1999 resolution may have helped Chen win the presidency in 2000, the DPP's subsequent proposal of a draft referendum law in the legislature prompted the DPP's New Tide faction to say that its rejection of Chai Trong-rong's (蔡同榮) version of the draft -- which stipulated that the national title could be changed through a referendum -- was in accordance with the 1999 resolution.

That was tantamount to making the resolution's description of the prevailing status of the Republic of China a desirable norm. In other words, how a resolution is written is one thing, but how the DPP understands and uses it is a more important matter.

Finally, cross-strait trade relations are a growing problem. Beijing is openly using this situation to "use businesspeople to besiege Taiwan's government" and "promote unification through economic means."

During the DPP's seven years in power, it has not done enough to alleviate the conflict between economic unification and political independence. The hope is that the DPP's new resolution will be an honest review of the current situation, and propose the best way to deal with it.

Chen Yi-shen is an associate researcher at Academia Sinica's Institute of Modern History.

Translated by Marc Langer
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