As the name of the nation that exists on Taiwan, the “Republic of China” (ROC) has too many conflicts with reality. Since 1949, the ROC has only existed as a remnant, a figment of the imagination.
In relation to Taiwan, it is an alien presence because the Constitution and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) party-state system both embody a China-centric ideology. Furthermore, the remnant of the ROC lost its membership in the UN in 1971 and most of the world no longer recognizes its existence.
Around the world, people only know the state that governs Taiwan as “Taiwan.” While Taiwanese argue about their national identity, it is hard for foreigners to know exactly what Taiwan is.
Most people in Taiwan regard it as a nation in itself. Even those who prefer to call it the ROC do not think that it belongs to the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
However, the nation’s collective identity is not yet fully formed. The political reform process that has taken place over the 20 years since the 1996 presidential election has still not unraveled the tangled knot of conflicting national identities. Meanwhile, some factions in the KMT have been flirting with the Chinese Communist Party and this prevents the conditions for Taiwan’s existence as a nation from being consolidated.
Taiwan now has a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) president — Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) — and the DPP also has a majority of seats in the legislature. Although this is not the first time that government power has passed from one party to another, this dual power offers the best-ever conditions for Taiwan’s political and national reform.
When the electorate chose Tsai and put power in the hands of the DPP and newly emerging democratic parties, they did so in the hope that the new government would right the accumulated wrongs of the KMT’s long years in government.
The DPP government must live up to the public’s expectations by letting the nation of Taiwan be called by its own name. It should unite all the people who have expectations of this new nation to announce to the world an end to all the disputes and confusion over Taiwan’s identity.
The Chinese established a new state — the PRC — in 1949, but the ROC, which occupies Taiwan, vainly insists on keeping the terms of the Constitution that include the PRC’s territory. This creates the false impression that the two nations on either side of the Taiwan Strait encompass one another — a falsehood that definitely needs to be corrected.
The ROC, which has attached itself to Taiwan, should shed its features of an imaginary, remnant and alien state. Instead, it should be integrated into Taiwan and become an element of a new Taiwanese nation. As for the KMT, as well as divesting itself of its ill-gotten party assets, it should shed its Chinese characteristics and transform itself into an emergent Taiwanese party.
From its anti-communist policies during the Martial Law era to its present-day communist-friendly and communist-aligned attitudes, the KMT has gone from using Taiwan as a base for revival to acting as a symbol of China in Taiwan. All along, it has only pursued its own interests as an alien party, while failing to achieve its aims for more than half a century.
Taiwan should be reconstituted as a real nation consisting of the people who live in it. Hopefull,y the two nations on either side of the Taiwan Strait can offer each other an olive branch and stop wasting resources competing in military strength. The time has arrived for the two sides to commence a new age of peace.
Lee Min-yung is a poet.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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