Both the Apple Daily and the Liberty Times — the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper — have written editorials over the past week expressing concerns that Taiwan is becoming a Chinese dependency. Both said that the relative strength of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait is changing rapidly and that this is having a negative impact on Taiwan.
Over the past few years, China’s economic and military strength has grown to the point that it can match the US’, while the effectiveness of China’s attempts at achieving unification with Taiwan through economic means are increasingly obvious as political parties either lean toward China or abandon their opposition to it, all based on economic interests.
The danger of Taiwan being annexed by China is growing by the day, as are concerns that Taiwan will become another Hong Kong.
China already has the ability to manipulate Taiwan’s political environment from afar, forcing the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to bow to political realities. Important civic leaders are promoting a “broad one China framework,” which seems to be the only future cross-strait option, making it unlikely that Taiwan will be able to avoid eventual unification. All China has to do is offer greater international power and a high level of autonomy for Taiwan’s political parties and powerful politicians to increase the possibility that a unification referendum would pass.
Imagine what would happen if China were to levy trade and investment penalties on Taiwan; cancel the special industry status awarded to its financial, biotechnology, heavy, chemical and cutting-edge electronics industries; remove customs tax and business investment incentives; and shrink the markets open to the nation. The economy and stock market would collapse, businesses would fail and unemployment would skyrocket. Social instability would ensue and the nation would be forced to surrender. Why would it ever have to resort to military force?
However, Taiwanese society, which has been tempered in the democratization process, differs from that in Hong Kong. Taiwanese society will not recognize a leader who has not been elected by the public and will offer fierce resistance to Chinese rule, which might rise to the point where the Chinese Communist Party has to call in the People’s Liberation Army from fear that its very rule is in crisis. This is why people must not take the threat of China using military force lightly.
The power of a ruler comes from their public support and it is public agreement, support and cooperation that lends legitimacy to a ruler. If the public, faced with China’s undemocratic annexation and despotic rule, withdraws its support, stops cooperating and blocks the ruler’s exercise of power, thus rejecting the legitimacy of its rule, their authority will collapse.
“Non-cooperation” is the weapon that will bring victory through nonviolent protest. This is not an approach used only by social movements, it can also be used at the national level, as a “citizens’ defense.”
In 1990, the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania used this method to defeat the Soviet army and gain independence from the Soviet Union.
Such “nonviolent citizens’ defense” holds the high ground of morality and legitimacy, and it is fully possible to use this to gain the support of international public opinion and turn things around in a forceful change for the nation’s future.
If people make the protection of their free and democratic lifestyle the main target of the nonviolent citizens’ defense to reject authoritarian rule, China’s unification front will be far less likely to succeed.
Taiwan’s military strength is not sufficient to defend itself and the US will not go to war for Taiwan, so which other options are there? Developing a defense without military force consisting of a “nonviolent mass defense” may be the nation’s only option.
Time is running out and Taiwan must stop hesitating and instead hurry to build a social consensus and lobby the different political parties to set up a “civil defense system” — pessimism and concern are not helpful in fending off annexation.
Chien Hsi-chieh is executive director of the Peacetime Foundation of Taiwan.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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