Replacing Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) is similar to disciplining a gang member through mob rules. Although the prevailing sentiment within the KMT is one of looming demise, the party has not given up on intimidating the public.
Unfortunately for the KMT, the decades-old tactic does not seem to be working. Like the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) intimidation campaigns, the tricks are likely to only help their rivals win more votes.
Before Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) visited Japan, Beijing notified the Japanese government of its opposition to the visit, but that did not prevent Tsai from having a good visit. The Japanese media even reported on an encounter between Tsai and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Tsai’s efforts to strengthen the Taiwan-Japan relationship are a slap in the face of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who has said he would go to war with Japan over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) and promoted remembrance of the “Eight-Year War of Resistance” against Japan during World War II.
If the KMT must replace Hung, it can by all means do so, without advertising the little scandal to everyone else.
Interestingly, Tai Po-te (戴伯特), director of the Huang Fu-hsing (黃復興) military veteran branch — a branch of the KMT consisting of military veterans and their relatives — made a conspicuous move by sending a message to party members, saying that if the KMT’s presidential candidate could not help its legislative candidates’ campaigns, and if the party secured fewer than 38 seats in the legislative elections, there would be a constitutional crisis, in which the “country name” and the “national entity” might undergo changes.
The message also said that the Jiashan Airbase in Hualien County, Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) in the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) and the Diaoyutais might all end up in the hands of the US and Japan.
Would the consequences really be so dire if Hung did not withdraw from the race?
Tai’s statement implies that he was confused about who the real enemy is.
Would it be better if they fell into the hands of China?
This kind of fallacy shows that when Ma, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) or Hung advocate views such as “both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one China,” “one China, different interpretations,” or “one China, same interpretation,” they are actually advocating eventual unification with China. They are only sugar-coating their message, not to mention that their idea of unification comprises Taiwan’s annexation by China.
That is the only explanation as to why it would be disastrous if the airbases and the islands end up in the US or Japan’s hands, while it would be okay if they were to fall into the hands of China.
Fundamentally, the KMT wants to remove Hung not because she has a different ideology from Ma and Chu, but because she has divulged the Chinese dream that Ma and Chu have tried very hard to conceal. Her disclosure makes it difficult to trick Taiwanese into voting for the KMT and it also goes against Ma’s strategy of winning votes by pretending to follow mainstream public opinion.
Further, when the director-general of the National Security Bureau (NSB) Yang Kuo-chiang (楊國強) answered questions in the legislature, he said that if cross-strait development is peaceful and stable, then the nation’s foreign relations would hardly be affected, whereas if something significant were to happen in the cross-strait relationship, more than 80 percent of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies would have problems maintaining their ties with Taipei.
His remark is a reflection of the Ma mentality — Ma has achieved nothing in foreign relations, has reduced Taiwan’s exposure in the global community as a sovereign nation and allowed Taiwan to become an observer that requires China’s consent to take part in UN organizations.
When Taiwan’s diplomatic allies sought ties with China and were rejected, Ma regarded it as an achievement of his “flexible diplomacy” and took great pride in it. That he sees himself as a district commissioner instead of the president is the reason why Ma keeps driving Taiwanese industry and capital to China, allowing the nation’s economy to slacken and people’s financial conditions to deteriorate.
If the government has to abide by Beijing’s refusal to open diplomatic ties with Taiwan’s allies just to maintain the “diplomatic truce” with China, does that not mean Ma has placed Chinese shackles on his successor?
On the other hand, who should be held responsible if the nation were to lose more than 80 percent of its diplomatic allies? The so-called “diplomatic allies of the Republic of China” (ROC) recognizes the ROC as the only legitimate government representing China. This is perhaps in line with Ma’s view that upholds the legitimacy of the ROC, but is completely out of line with reality.
Hence, if there are any changes to the nations with which Taiwan has diplomatic relations, the first to feel the impact would be the ROC, which only exists in history and in the minds of KMT officials such as Ma, Chu and Hung.
As for the real ROC, or the nation that 23 million people call home, it would be a golden opportunity to free itself of the shackles and become a normal nation.
In 1971, UN Security Council Resolution 2758 decided to “restore all its rights to the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and to recognize the representatives of its government as the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations, and to expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek [蔣介石] from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all the organizations related to it.”
This resolution, which ousted the ROC from China’s seat, settled the dispute over whether the KMT or the CCP represents China, but bears no relevance to Taiwan’s sovereign status.
Hence, the international consensus shows that Yang was bluffing. The only people who should fear such consequence are those living fossils who stubbornly uphold the ROC’s sovereignty, such as Ma, Chu and Hung.
Replacing Hung shows that the KMT leadership is nervous over the possibility of losing not only the presidential, but the legislative elections. Most Taiwanese not only do not care whether Hung stays or goes, they have high hopes for a change in government.
The recently reconsolidated security ties between the US and Japan, and their positive attitude toward the return to power of a Taiwan-centric political party show that Taiwan would be reincluded in their strategic framework of democratic allies and the unreserved, all-out pro-China attitude of the past seven years would come to an end.
The nine-in-one elections last year, as well as opinion polls, show that the majority of Taiwanese reject a political direction that distances the nation from the US and Japan, but embraces China. Hence, replacing Hung without getting rid of Ma’s political direction is bound to be nothing but a meaningless internal struggle within the KMT, which has nothing to do with what Taiwanese think.
Translated by Ethan Zhan
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs