Once, wrote Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮) in his memoir, founder of Formosa Plastics Group Wang Yung-ching (王永慶) confided in him that the company was quite happy to speak in terms of “one China” if that’s what the Chinese government wanted to hear.
Formosa Plastics was, after all, making a lot of money from them. The logic of this sounds quite normal — quite harmless.
“So long as there’s money in it, it’s alright by me,” is something one could imagine a businessperson saying.
There are some tunes we can hum for China. When Will You Come Again is a good one, for example, and humming it would be harmless. However, humming the words “one China” isn’t in any way a tune that is pleasing to someone in Taiwan; it will only lead to misery further down the road for the nation.
Accepting the “one China” principle as laid out by Beijing is a death sentence for the very future of Taiwan or the Republic of China (ROC) as a sovereign state. The actual moment the ax falls would then depend only on the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
The Treaty of San Francisco did give Taiwan a way out, for sovereignty over the island as well as Penghu (the Pescadores) was simply renounced by Tokyo and never transferred to either the PRC or the ROC. If Taipei were to reject this fact, it would effectively be blocking this way out for itself. It would be a fatal move.
Businesspeople will say almost anything if there’s money in it. However, for Wang, or indeed any Taiwanese businessperson, to speak of “one China” is tantamount to forgetting their roots. For President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), the elected head of state, to accept the “one China” principle is to commit treason against Taiwan and the government he leads.
Ma thinks he’s doing a great job and indeed his policy of selling out to China is really working out well. Singapore has, after all, agreed to discuss an economic cooperation agreement. Ma loves to rant and rail until he’s blue in the face about how the opposition DPP is harming the country.
However, Ma is pointing the finger in the wrong direction, since the DPP is desperately trying to wrest away the razor his administration has poised at Taiwan’s throat. It is trying to save Taiwan, not harm it. It’s Ma’s own policies — the ones that he is so proud of — that are going to draw Taiwan into the jaws of the waiting dragon.
The Ma administration is enthusiastically nodding to the judge handing down the ROC’s death sentence, the very nation it is supposed to represent. That is just fine with Beijing. China is going to want to speed things up; to step in and tighten the noose.
It will offer a “Taiwan law” and remove the missiles pointed at Taiwan in the spirit of the “one China” principle and set up a military mutual trust mechanism in order to bring the whole thing to fruition that much sooner. The next step will be to demand that Taiwan doesn’t purchase US weapons, in addition to demanding that Washington not sell them to Taipei.
Ma is looking to a bright future, what he likes to call a “Golden Decade,” just as he is ruining Taiwan’s hopes of having any future at all. Is this really the same person who used to rant against the Chinese Communists, shouting: “Long Live the ROC”?
He isn’t ranting for the Taiwanese, he isn’t doing this for the ROC and he’s not doing it for the future of Taiwan as a nation, either. In fact, it’s really not all that clear which side he is cheering for anymore.
James Wang is a media commentator.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
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