In an interview published by Reuters on Thursday, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said Taiwan is not ready to discuss unification with China because of the wide economic and social gaps between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, adding that such a discussion “is not very suitable.”
In the overly simplistic approach that international news outlets usually take when it comes to reporting on Taiwan-China relations, the agency said Ma’s comments showed how far Taiwan has moved from embracing China following the Sunflower movement protests last year and “the weakening” of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
The interview highlighted two major gaps — the disconnect between Ma, the KMT and the public, and between politics and society in Taiwan and how they are covered internationally.
The movement in Taiwan away “from embracing China” is not something that has developed over the past 18 months; it has been building for years, if not decades. It can be traced back to the lifting of martial law, the legalization of political parties other than the KMT, the establishment of the small three links and the growing recognition of the disconnect between the KMT’s vision of the Republic of China (ROC) and the reality of life in Taiwan.
The elaborate fictions that the KMT created to prop up its authoritarian rule over Taiwan from the 1950s onward crumbled with Taiwan’s democratic development, while the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has maintained its rule despite consistently shooting itself in the foot — not to mention killing its own people — with its ham-fisted efforts to uphold “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and, latterly, to promote “rule of law.”
The result has been an ever-expanding wariness in Taiwan of political rapprochement with China, despite the willingness to expand cross-strait economic ties. Having battled the KMT’s efforts to block democratic development in Taiwan — a fight that continues to this day — Taiwanese look at what the leaders of the CCP offer their people and say: “Hell, no.”
Beijing’s handling of Hong Kong, its increasing disregard for the promises it made before 1997 and for its vaunted “one country, two systems,” which many proclaimed could serve as a model for Taiwan’s integration with the People’s Republic of China, clearly show what the Taiwanese could expect from the CCP.
Taiwan’s democracy is a fledgling one and there is much in the nation’s political system and judiciary that remains to be improved, but the changes of the past 28 years have been dramatic. Unlike the Chinese, Taiwanese no longer face arbitrary detention, arrest and imprisonment for going against the governing orthodoxy. Why would they want to go back?
The only ones apparently unaware of this divide are the top echelons of the KMT and CCP, with their renewed veneration of China’s long history, talk about “descendants of the Yellow Emperor” and zhonghua minzu (中華民族), and their dedication to the patently fake so-called “1992 consensus.”
KMT presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) has shown she lacks even Ma’s limited pragmatism with her “one China, same interpretation” proposal, talk about “forcing” Beijing to recognize the ROC and how there could only be unification if it is initiated by the ROC.
Meanwhile, rumors that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) might be looking to pin the blame on stalled unification/cross-strait relations during Ma’s terms in office on Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), the former head of the Taiwan Affairs Office and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, and make him the latest former official to face a graft probe, show just how clueless Xi is as well.
The Taiwan Strait is only 180km wide, but the divide between the KMT and the CCP on the one hand and reality on the other appears limitless.
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