Preparations for next year’s presidential election have placed a media spotlight on the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) cross-strait policy. For almost three years, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has made it his policy to follow where China leads in exchange for cross-strait detente and Beijing forgoing benefits in Taiwan’s favor. As a result, Taiwan has lost the strategic advantage offered by its democracy and freedoms and further intensified domestic division and polarization.
The international community now also places less importance on the strategic value of Taiwan’s position, depriving the nation of a further bargaining chip in its dealings with China. The DPP should propose a new cross-strait discourse that both builds on the party’s governing experience and avoids the blind spots of the Ma administration’s policies.
After 62 years of ethnic integration, Taiwan has developed into a community with a shared destiny. Following the amendments to the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution in the 1990s, that document now practically represents the general will of the Taiwanese people. At the same time, the elections were introduced for the president and lawmakers, to implement the constitutional powers bestowed upon them by the public. In other words, the state apparatus of the ROC was the state apparatus of Taiwan.
In light of this shared historical background, the Taiwanese public has become increasingly aware of certain common understandings, despite electoral polarization and passion.
First, Taiwan is a sovereign and independent state and its national title is the Republic of China: Taiwan is the ROC and the ROC is Taiwan.
Second, Taiwanese want to maintain a “status quo” under which Taiwan is sovereign and independent and they do not want to initiate either cross-strait unification or a change in the name of the nation at this stage.
Third, the future of cross-strait relations is open, but Taiwan’s future should be decided by its 23 million people.
Cross-strait relations should be defined as a special relationship under the ROC Constitution. That divides the nation into a “free area” and “mainland area,” and regulates contacts between people in these two areas through the Act Governing Relations Between Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例). As a result, the “mainland area” and the “free area” in the Constitution and other laws serve to describe the extent of ROC territory, with the “free area” falling within the political control of the ROC. What the Constitution does not do, however, is regulate how the ROC government should interact with the government that exists in the “mainland area,” which is recognized as a sovereign state by the international community.
Because the territorial claims made by the ROC and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) overlap, but are completely separate in terms of political power, the cross-strait relationship is a special relationship. It is not domestic in nature, because another country really does exist on the mainland, and cross-strait exchanges take place on ROC territory but under two different constitutions. However, the citizenry of the ROC does not include the 1.3 billion people living on the “mainland,” neither of the entities on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait has jurisdiction over the other, and neither represents the people on the other side.
Taiwan’s government should adjust its policy to strike a balance between the US and China in order to respond to the challenge posed by China’s growing power and changes in the international situation. Democracy and opening up are particularly important in this respect. Democracy supersedes the common -understanding on the unification-independence issue and ultimately is the only way to resolve such a polarizing problem.
The development of cross-strait relations is open, unification and independence are not two polar opposites, and reliance on a democratic process is the only thing that is acceptable to the people of Taiwan.
Lastly, due to historical and emotional factors, the cross-strait relationship is not entirely rational. To be able to build bridges between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait with the help of cross-strait exchanges, people on both sides need to begin thinking of themselves as ethnically Chinese and being part of Chinese society. That would explain the complex historical, cultural, blood, linguistic and emotional connections across the Taiwan Strait and could help promote comprehensive cooperation and mutually beneficial exchanges. By predicating cross-strait exchange on a Taiwan consensus, it should be possible to separate history, culture and blood ties from national identity. It should also be possible for emotional exchanges to exist side by side with a more rational choice of nationality.
Tung Chen-yuan is a professor at National Chengchi University’s Graduate Institute of Development Studies.
TRANSLATED BY PERRY SVENSSON
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