Senior Taiwan independence advocate Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏) yesterday unveiled his proposal for a “nations of brotherhood” (兄弟之邦) framework to solve cross-strait relations and establish peace and stability.
The 87-year-old former presidential adviser explained his initiative with a full-page advertisement in the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) yesterday.
The initiative is the first concrete proposal to emerge since former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) submitted his “constitutions with different interpretations” (憲法各表) proposal during his landmark visit to China earlier this month.
Koo said he came up with his initiative about seven years ago after drawing inspiration from a poem by Chinese poet Cao Zhi (曹植) and has been playing with the idea ever since.
However, he did not try to establish a framework to deal with cross-strait interaction until recently.
Koo’s initiative is based on the spirit of brotherhood, in which Taiwan and China, as brothers, help each other.
China could claim the title of the “big brother” due to its rising power.
If Beijing accepted the framework by recognizing Taiwan as a country and helping Taiwan secure UN membership, Koo proposed that Taiwan could “return four favors” to China by not joining anti-China alliances or organizations, abstaining from UN voting if it went against China’s policy, offering China US$50 billion in financial aid for its inland development and returning all antique collections at the National Palace Museum to China.
In terms of a cross-strait framework, the initiative could be Taiwan’s bottom line of negotiation, rather than Beijing’s bottom line of “one country, two systems,” Koo said.
The initiative would be more “practical” than Ma’s mantra of “no unification, no independence and no use of force,” which he described as meaningless.
“Most Taiwanese agree that Taiwan is an independent country and less than 10 percent support unification,” he said.
“Taiwan is not capable of declaring war against China,” he added.
Koo believes the concept would be easy for the international community to understand and accept because it would promote relations similar to those between the UK, the US and Canada or the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
China would also find it difficult to reject the proposal because it “needs cross-strait peace more than Taiwan does” and even if it took Taiwan by force, it would not be able to manage the widespread anti-China sentiment.
However, Koo acknowledged that it is just a proposal at present and he has not discussed it with the DPP, which is still looking to come up with a party consensus on China policy after suffering defeat in January’s presidential election.
Koo hopes that his proposal, like Hsieh’s, would catalyze the DPP’s brainstorming and encourage people to be more creative with proposals for the future of cross-strait development.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS