Academics and politicians continued to express mixed reactions yesterday to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) “recognition” of the Republic of China (ROC) last weekend, with some members of the pan-green camp voicing strong disapproval.
While most people, including the DPP’s rival in the January presidential elections the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), welcomed the statement, some DPP members expressed displeasure over Tsai’s statement, with DPP Legislator Twu Shiing-jer (涂醒哲) saying that Taiwan is not the ROC and that its status remains undecided.
Tsai, the DPP’s presidential candidate, repeated her call for members of the pan-green camp to support her willingness to recognize the ROC on Monday night in a campaign stop in Chiayi City.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
Taiwanese were able to “absorb the ROC in” 60 years, she said, so that the KMT should be more closely identified with Taiwan by now.
She also said that Taiwan was more than a geographical term or a “homeland,” as President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in his national day speech on Monday, but a place with a “meaning of sovereignty.”
Media quoted analysts as saying that Tsai’s statement was “not surprising” and was in line with the DPP’s resolution on Taiwan’s future in 1999, which stated that Taiwan is an independent and sovereign country currently using the name ROC.
Tsai’s interpretation of the ROC differs from Ma’s, which still defines the ROC as the country -established by Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) in 1912 and which consists of 35 provinces, including modern-day Mongolia, former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) told a forum organized by the Taiwan Brain Trust.
The ROC that Tsai recognized is a country with the territories of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, a country that remade itself after being expelled from the UN in 1971, Wu said.
Most Taiwanese would be able to relate to Tsai’s interpretation of the ROC better than that of Ma’s, which holds the view that the ROC — and only the ROC — holds sovereignty and Taiwan is and has always been only part of the ROC, he said.
Meanwhile, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), a DPP ally, expressed its disagreement with Tsai, saying that “Taiwan is not the ROC and the ROC is not Taiwan.”
“Taiwan is Taiwan. It is a de facto independent country. The TSU always maintains that what Taiwan really needs is name rectification and a new constitution,” TSU Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) told reporters at a separate press conference.
Taiwan was not an ROC territory when the ROC was founded in 1912, nor did Taiwan send representatives to the ROC Constitutional meeting in 1936, which was why former president and TSU spiritual leader Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) characterized it as “the ROC in Taiwan,” Huang said.
Lee referred to the current situation as “the ROC in Taiwan” because dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his KMT troops brought “the ROC system” to Taiwan after their defeat in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 without first securing the consent of Taiwanese, Huang said.
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