Much has been said and written about the Nov. 27 elections for the mayors and councils of the five special municipalities. While on the surface things stayed the same, the outcome signifies a comeback for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and a leveling of the playing field for the 2012 presidential race.
In other words, Taiwan’s democracy is here to stay.
This is the good news. The bad news is that all too often the news media and analysts immediately try to interpret the election outcome in terms of how it would affect ties with China.
I would argue that we need to do a better job of looking at Taiwan in its own right. Of course, we have to keep the big picture in mind and see how changes in one location affect perceptions in another, but our perceptions of what is happening in and around Taiwan are too often colored by what we think the Chinese reaction might be — before anyone from China has made any statement.
A case in point is the Christian Science Monitor, which had an otherwise sound article headlined: “Gains of Taiwan’s anti-unification DPP could rattle relations with China.”
News editors and headline writers need to get away from the knee-jerk reaction that a political shift in Taiwan would “increase tension” or “raise the ire” of the leaders in Beijing. The problem with such writing is that it creates the impression that the political shift is the cause of the tension.
As we all know, Chinese leaders use “tension” and “ire” as instruments to gain advantage over the other side, whether it is Japan which experiences China’s ire over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), or the US, which was at the receiving end of China’s ire over arms sales to Taiwan and US President Barack Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama.
So we need to look at Taiwan in its own right and understand where the people are coming from and where they want to go with their future.
Former deputy US assistant secretary Randy Schriver succinctly summarized it in a recent seminar at the Heritage Foundation, when he said that the US should do a better job of understanding the motivations and core interests of the DPP and be careful not to repeat the mistakes the US made in the past.
During the past 20 years, Taiwanese have accomplished a momentous transition to democracy. We in the US know well that democracy brings with it expectations of a better life, not just personally, but as a country and a nation.
For Taiwanese this means that there should be progress in terms of their participation and presence in the international community. This means an end to the political isolation imposed on the nation and its people.
The US needs to keep these aspirations in mind when crafting new policies toward democratic Taiwan. While our “one China” policy has contributed to stability in the Taiwan Strait, at the same time it has perpetuated Taiwan’s international isolation. The US needs to be much more creative in helping to find a way forward for Taiwan to find its rightful place in the international community as a free and democratic nation.
Nat Bellocchi is a former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan and a special adviser to the Liberty Times Group. The views expressed in this article are his own.
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
RSS