At a recent seminar hosted by the New Party’s New Chinese Children’s Association, former premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) once again managed to put his foot in his mouth as well as resurrect the question of how many members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) still live in the make-believe world of the governing party.
That Hau was chosen as the best available speaker for this seminar does not reflect much on the choices the New Party had available, nor does it say much about how new these “new Chinese children” profess to be.
Image-wise, the New Party remains stuck in the fossilized time warp of the historical KMT, which cannot face up to the fact that it lost the Chinese Civil War and became a diaspora in Taiwan.
Regardless, these “new Chinese children” gathered at the seminar to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. Fair enough, that is something that did happen and it might help ease the KMT’s pain of having later lost China. However, since all the other countries that fought Japan have moved on after the war, one cannot help but wonder and even shudder as to what other selective points of history might be available for the KMT and the “new Chinese children” to celebrate.
For example, would they mark a day to celebrate the KMT being driven from China and call it the “official” losing of the Second Chinese Civil War to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)?
If so, Dec. 7, 1949, might make a good day, as that was the day Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) proclaimed that Taipei — not Beijing, Nanjing or any other city on the continent — would be the capital of the Republic of China (ROC).
Or would they choose to reclassify history? Then, Feb. 28, 1947, could be marked as the day when the KMT decided to deny Taiwanese the ideals proposed in ROC founding father Sun Yat-sen’s (孫逸仙) Three Principles of the People and chose to celebrate nearly 40 years of upcoming KMT martial law.
Despite such anomalies, the 95-year-old Hau was on a roll. He insisted that the KMT and the ROC’s real history were being lost. In this, he felt the need to insist that Taiwan — a mid-sized country with a population greater than two-thirds of the countries in the UN and ranked No. 17 in economic freedom by the Heritage Foundation — could not practically control its own destiny.
He wants the nation’s destiny to be decided by people on the other side of the Taiwan Strait.
In one sense, Hau could claim a point: No nation, great or small, totally controls its own destiny, nor is it the complete master of its fate.
However, outsiders do not make the final decision on its fate either.
Perhaps Hau was ruminating on how his party, the KMT, had never been masters of their fate. One could ask: Was it fate or corruption that caused it to lose China?
Thus, as Hau rattled on, one sensed that in the past, he believed that the KMT — by imposing its one-party state and either killing off or imprisoning many of the nation’s educated elite — had brought Taiwan out of the dark ages.
Come again?
Totally lost on Hau and those celebrating Japan’s surrender was that the KMT has never fully understood or put into practice the “three principles.”
Ironically, in the post-World War II world, the alleged Japanese “militarist bandits” that Hau was denouncing had managed to implement democracy and the three principles decades before Taiwan did.
Furthermore, Taiwan achieved democracy after Japan only when its people arose and forced the KMT diaspora to relinquish its one-party state.
This is what it is like in the make-believe world of the KMT.
Its adherents miss the point that the very root of the three principles is self-government, which spells democracy, and democracy is what independence is all about.
However, Hau choked at having to even consider such nefarious thoughts.
Instead, Hau retreated to the cyclic fantasy of Zhonghua minzu (中華民族), the outdated Constitution and the so-called “1992 consensus” — where allegedly in party-to-party discussions, the KMT and the CCP agreed to allow each other’s fantasy of what “one China” means.
One would have thought that Hau in his recent trip to Beijing would have begun to recognize the growing reality of the CCP’s interpretation of the war, victory over Japan and history.
However, Hau totally missed that wake-up call, as well as the point that his presence in Beijing was being tolerated simply because he was a loser in the Chinese Civil War and therefore he and the Constitution were no threat.
As for the “1992 consensus” — which the KMT admitted to fabricating — it can be translated as saying to the CCP: You won the civil war, but at least let us believe we won it, and then we can both live in our own fantasies of what “one China” really means.
The ironies of Hau’s talk continued to compound.
He even attempted to raise the old “inevitability” argument, an argument that is more dangerous to Taiwan than a two-edged sword.
For example, Hong Kongers — who are already are bound up in the CCP’s version of “one China” — continue to demand that the CCP grant them a denied promise of government of the people, by the people and for the people.
Hong Kongers have no belief in the “inevitability” of the CCP’s one-party state, yet Hau, in his fantasies, does.
Hau’s plea is in effect the cry of a loser who hopes to somehow lay claim to at least a part of something historically significant.
And although pictures of Sun abound in Taiwan as well as in China, reality shows that neither the KMT nor the CCP have ever had any real belief in, or understanding of, the three principles. The ROC’s founding father remains a foil to justify those in power keeping all others in tutelage.
Hau is a man way past his prime, and his dated beliefs pose no immediate threat to the nation by themselves.
Instead, the danger to the nation is not from Hau, but from how many KMT members and their followers still live in his fantasy world.
For example, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) — depending on his audience — will at times utter words that are similar to Hau’s.
Taiwanese need to be aware of the distorted reality and twisted view of histroy that these people adhere to, especially as important elections are on the horizon.
Jerome Keating is a writer based in Taipei.
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