PRESIDENT CHEN SHUI-BIAN'S (
In October that year, then-US secretary of state Colin Powell visited Beijing and said in an interview with Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV that "Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation."
A month later, on Nov. 27 and Nov. 28, the Taiwan Advocates think tank met at the Grand Hotel for an international symposium on Taiwan's Constitution, where former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) clearly challenged the Constitution and proposed constitutional reforms.
Unfortunately, this cooperation between pan-green groups fell out of step during the 2005 National Assembly elections. I wrote several articles regarding the coalition between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) for constitutional amendment, but the situation was beyond the influence of a single person and the preposterous constitutional situation remained unchanged and only attracted attention after the recent legislative election.
Taiwan's international status is still in limbo. In addition to Powell's comment, Dennis Wilder, senior director for East Asian Affairs at the US National Security Council, reiterated in a White House briefing on Aug. 29 that "Taiwan, or the Republic of China, is not at this point a state in the international community," leading to many interpretations in Taiwan.
I saw Ministry of Foreign Affairs files from 1971 that stated that US Department of State spokesman Charles Bray had commented during a press conference that the sovereign status of Taiwan and the Penghu islands remained undetermined.
As a historian, it is not difficult to see that the source of the problem lies in the handling of the post-war Treaty of Peace with Japan. This theory of indetermination continues to have a proactive side in that it denies Beijing's staunch assertion that Taiwan is part of China's territory.
However, there is the added difficulty from within: For KMT individuals like former chairman Lien Chan (
In 2005, when Beijing passed its "Anti-Secession" Law, Lien and People First Party Chairman James Song (宋楚瑜) gladly visited China as though it were a long-lost friend, behavior that I strongly criticized.
Faced with a pan-blue majority legislature, Chen was unable to pass the special legislation needed to implement transitional justice as budget requirements were boycotted.
The so-called "green rule" produced some results, but on the whole, is exiting in the awkward position of a mock of a government.
Between 2004 and last year, I noted that as a limbo state with diametrically opposed political factions, the DPP can only be a mock simulation of a government, and that Chen abandoned the middle road due to personal crisis, thus losing the political high ground and leading the pro-localization camp down a narrow path of struggling for survival.
The former is due to political and historical factors, while the latter is the result of cultural and societal issues. To end this state of limbo and mock governance, the future president must discover apt solutions.
Chen Yi-shen is an associate research fellow at the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica.
TRANSLATED BY ANGELA HONG.
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past