Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) brought a team to Shanghai to attend the Taipei-Shanghai forum. Ko, a political novice and doctor by profession, was running all over Shanghai with an identification card flapping around his neck. He even wore a pair of sports shoes while attending formal banquets: In short, the Taipei mayor appeared rather undignified.
Ko also pandered to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), loudly proclaiming that both sides of the Taiwan Strait are “one close family.” It is enough to make one’s skin crawl.
When Xi used the word “family,” it was code for a “shared” Han Chinese ethnicity and for “state” or “country” and it implies the swallowing of Taiwan by China.
If by using the word “family,” Ko means normal familial relations — and he was simply going through the motions with his host — then the phrase “one close family” is an eloquent ruse.
Of course, there are numerous examples of family feuds which end in legal tussles over property and instances of domestic violence and divorce. These kinds of incidents are not uncommon within the families of the rich and powerful.
Xi grew up during the era of the Cultural Revolution, when young Red Guards fell under the spell of then-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chairman Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) slogans to “struggle against your parents,” “smash sentimentalism,” and “smash the family.” In that era, there was certainly no concept of “one close family.”
If “one close family” was a universal law of nature, then the saying in Chinese that “a harmonious family breeds prosperity” would not exist.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has traditionally employed the word “family” as a metaphor for their party. The generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) was the head of the family, but each of his “family members” with their own axes to grind, were — and still are — constantly squabbling while simultaneously calling for “harmony.”
If Ko cared about the dignity of Taiwan — and if he had been more creative — he would have responded to Xi by saying that “There are two families, one on each side of the Taiwan Strait.”
Taiwan and China are, of course, already two separate families, each having established their respective courts on either side of the Taiwan Strait. If the two sides are able to conduct cordial relations governed by mutual respect — then they might achieve something far more precious than “one close family.”
Perhaps Ko did in fact mean “two families,” since when he reaffirmed that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are “one close family,” Ko emphasized that there should be “mutual recognition, understanding, respect and cooperation [between the two sides].” This is obviously not the language of someone who sees the two sides as “one close family.”
China has a battery of missiles aimed at Taiwan and it uses Taiwanese buildings as targets during its military war games. When Ko talks of “one close family,” it is the greatest of ironies.
However, Ko’s bigger crime was the declaration that cross-strait relations should be promoted on the basis of “the existing political foundation.” Ko has adopted Beijing’s code — and in doing so he has fallen into the trap of the so-called “1992 consensus.”
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Edward Jones
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