It is commonly said in Taipei that the road to Beijing passes through Washington, and authorities in Taiwan are making an effort to ensure that Taiwan's handling of China's proposed anti-secession bill is no exception.
While little more than the title of the bill has been disclosed, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), the government agency that oversees the nation's China policy, is doing all that it can to shape international reaction in Taiwan's favor.
One case in point is the MAC's insistence that the bill be called the "anti-separation law" instead of the much more commonly used "anti-secession law." The council's English-language press releases and official rhetoric have stuck to this alternative title, despite the fact that China's state-run news service, Xinhua News Agency, consistently translates it as the "anti-secession law."
The discrepancy results from the translation of the bill's title from Chinese to English, but like most translations, the wording is approximate and inevitably brings in an element of interpretation. To no one's surprise, the Taiwanese and the Chinese government have different interpretations, even on details as seemingly insignificant as how to translate the bill's title.
MAC Vice Chairman David Huang (
"The use of `secession' leads people to think of the US' Civil War," Huang said, explaining the political-historical connotations of the term. He said that the term `secession' assumed the existence of a federalist state as was the case in the US.
Since the Standing Committee of Beijing's National People's Congress approved the bill for further deliberation in December, the council has made a point of stressing the various premises and assumptions that the bill is built on. Given the lack of any information about the text of the bill, it is appropriate to note that much of the analysis of the bill is centered on assumptions made in regard to its title.
In the council's official position paper on the bill, released earlier this month, the council states "as the name of the law clearly entails, China wishes to declare the current status quo in the Taiwan Strait as `unified' and not `separate.'"
"China authorizes itself to interpret the status quo in the Taiwan Strait," the position paper says.
"While using `separation' does not get out of these assumptions, at least it does not put the situation in a particular [historical] context," Huang said.
Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉), an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica's Institute of Political Science expressed similar sentiments, saying that the situation was "unparalleled."
Hsu said that while he was visiting the US, several of the political analysts that he had met with felt that there was resonance between Taiwan's situation regarding Beijing's secession legislation and the US Civil War.
Hsu had accompanied MAC Chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) and Academia Sinica President Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) on a trip to the US last month to attend US President George Bush's inaugural festivities and met with various think tanks and Congressional representatives.
However, it is a fallacy to draw a parallel between the two, he told the Taipei Times.
Those who ask "what's in a name?" might note that prior to December, the bill had previously been touted as the "unification law." The Council had been quick to point out that the shift in the bill's name was of political significance, saying that the new title was intended to suggest that Taiwan and China were part of a unified state.
It is clear that the deliberate efforts at naming the bill is, to some extent, for the benefit of the international community. Whether the bill is referred to as the anti-secession bill or the anti-separatism bill delineates a subtle but significant struggle to define the status quo by advancing a particular interpretation of the matter at hand.
The small battle to name the bill speaks of the important influence that international scrutiny has on the bill's text and implementation.
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