Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) has been championing a proposal to end Taiwan’s “hostile relationship” with China by signing a peace agreement; she might even conclude that espionage and mutual — or to be more exact, one-sided — blocking would be unnecessary with such an agreement, but the people she needs to persuade are more likely to be Republic of China (ROC) loyalists than ordinary Taiwanese.
Hung’s statement presupposes that the Chinese Civil War is still ongoing, and until an armistice or peace treaty is signed between the warring parties — the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — that hostilities will not cease.
However, there is also the view that the Chinese Civil War ended when the KMT regime in 1991, four years after the lifting of martial law, announced the abrogation of the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist Rebellion (動員勘亂時期臨時條款) instituted in 1948, which amounted to the KMT-led ROC no longer regarding the CCP a “rebel group.”
There are also questions over whether the war, fought between and started by the KMT and the CCP in China, should trouble Taiwanese that have instituted democracy in a new land.
ROC defenders might argue that the ROC is still the face of Taiwan, but they might have to choose between agreeing that the ROC is coterminous with Taiwan and its outlying islands, or ditching the idea of the continuation of the ROC altogether and “China” to be “intact” again.
Some KMT members choose to live in limbo or under the illusion that the ROC can be retained and represent China, but they face their political stance gradually being incorporated by Beijing and their existence assimilated in the eyes of Taiwanese, as the call for recognition of the so-called “1992 consensus” as a prerequisite for participation the World Health Assembly, issued in unison by the KMT and the CCP, has shown.
Hung has apparently chosen to ditch the idea of the ROC. Ending hostilities with the CCP is, for the KMT, no less than admitting that the Chinese Civil War is over and the KMT lost, and with that the legitimacy of the ROC has ended.
Hung in this sense at least should be praised for her honesty and being truthful to the KMT’s canonical goal of unification, as opposed to her comrades who wish to have it both ways — upholding the illusory, China-including ROC and also conforming to a Taiwan-centered outlook.
For ordinary Taiwanese, the “need” to end hostilities is a nonstarter, as Taiwan is not the one making hostile moves and a scene on the international stage. Taiwan is on the defensive, facing the ostensible ambition of annexation, blatantly flaunted by a foreign authoritarian regime.
A “peace agreement” signed in this context would be none other than surrender of sovereignty and “imposed peace” would ensue, as the peace agreement signed between the CCP and Tibet in 1951 showed.
Hung said that if she retains the KMT chairperson in this month’s election, formal Taiwanese independence would never be the party’s choice. However, she failed to answer how she would lead the party in a society where Taiwanese identity has naturally developed in an environment that allows free and independent thinking.
She might have been rightly sharp when urging an election rival, former vice president Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), to clarify where he stands on the identity spectrum, but that does not make her a better candidate for the presidency than other major KMT competitors, who are also struggling to remain relevant in today’s political landscape.
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS