President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) National Day address yesterday contained no surprises regarding her China policy, as she maintained the stance she set in her May 20 inaugural address that “the pledges we made remain unchanged, our goodwill is unchanged, but we will not succumb to pressure from China, and we will not revert to the old path of conflict and confrontation.”
Beijing was most probably “disappointed,” as it had described Tsai’s inaugural address as an “incomplete test” because it did not recognize the so-called “1992 consensus.” It was probably hoping that Tsai might “complete the test” by providing an “answer” it deemed satisfactory.
Beijing has been pressuring Tsai’s administration into accepting the “1992 consensus” since she took office. Insisting that the “1992 consensus” is the political foundation for cross-strait dialogue and development, China has more than once pointed at the Tsai government’s rejection to recognize the “1992 consensus” as the reason cross-strait communications have been “suspended.”
However, if Beijing has been observing Taiwan as closely as it claims, it should have seen that expecting the Tsai administration to recognize the “1992 consensus” is completely unrealistic.
Taiwan is a robust democracy where the president, who is voted into office, has to respect public opinion.
As Tsai said in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, “no administration in Taiwan can make a decision that runs counter to public opinion.”
In an interview with the Japanese Yomiuri Shimbun, Tsai said that “the young people in Taiwan grew up in a free and democratic environment, and have independent thinking and judgement, so they accept values that they can identify with, rather than being indoctrinated” like older generations of Taiwanese.
Whether to accept the “1992 consensus” is a matter that Tsai cannot, and should not, decide alone.
In a poll conducted by the Taiwan Brain Trust in April, 76.2 percent of the respondents said they were unaware of the contents of the “1992 consensus” and only 18.2 percent said they had a clear understanding of its contents. When asked whether they supported letting the “1992 consensus” be the foundation of cross-strait interactions, the poll showed that 52.3 percent of the respondents opposed the idea, compared with 33.3 percent who supported it.
In addition, 62.1 percent said they cannot accept Beijing’s repeated attempts to pressure the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government into accepting the “1992 consensus” and make it a prerequisite for cross-strait exchanges.
The poll shows that — despite former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) clamoring during his eight years in office that the “1992 consensus” refers to a tacit understanding between the KMT and Beijing that both sides acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means — most Taiwanese do not know what it is, nor do they accept it.
Chinese officials have said that they hope for peaceful cross-strait development. If they truly mean it, then they should engage in dialogue with the DPP government and forge a new understanding for cross-strait relations, rather than holding on to a fictional “consensus” that is neither supported nor recognized by Taiwanese and their government.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
RSS