President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) recent elaborations on the issue of Taiwan’s statehood, given the complex nature of the legal status of the Republic of China (ROC), was likely “international legal suicide” and a deception of the people of Taiwan, academics said in a forum last week.
Ma appears to have been self-conflicting and inconsistent in his interpretation of the cross-strait framework, Brad Roth, a professor of political science and law at Wayne State University in Michigan, told a forum organized by Taiwan Thinktank.
The president said that the relationship between Taiwan and China “is not one between states, but a special relationship for which the model of recognition under conventional international law is not applicable,” but sought to promote his initiative of “mutual non-recognition of sovereignty and mutual non-denial of authority to govern” under the “one China” framework.
“However, if cross-strait relations are not subject to international law, they could only be internal affairs of the People’s Republic of China’s [PRC],” Roth said.
He added that the Taipei government might be recognized either as representing an undivided China or as representing Taiwan, but there is no third option.
According to Roth, the PRC’s interpretation of “one China” is that Taiwan lacks any international legal protection, and that threats and use of force across the Taiwan Strait represents matters “essentially within the domestic jurisdiction.”
While Ma’s policies has relaxed bilateral tensions, his insistence on the “one China” framework could come at a price — a signal to the international community that Taiwan is no longer in need of its protection against potential PRC predation, he said.
“To return to the idea that Taipei is a contestant government of an undivided China is to commit a kind of international legal suicide,” he said.
Bold moves, such as constitutional reforms that overtly assert Taiwan independence, are not likely to affect the determinants of Taiwan’s legal status, Roth said, adding that it would better suit Taiwan to build on international legal consciousness of its non-subjugation to the PRC.
On Taiwan’s normalization as a state, academics debated on Australian academic James Crawford’s opinion that Taiwan is not a state because it “still has not unequivocally assert its separation from China and is not recognized as a state distinct from China.”
Taiwan New Century Foundation chairman Chen Lung-chu (陳隆志) said he aligned himself with the declaratory theory on the creation of states and added that Taiwan could be an exception because it had evolved through the years.
It was what Chen called an evolution theory, which explained how Taiwan had transformed itself from the Martial Law era to the present as a sovereign and democratic, yet “abnormal” country.
The people of Taiwan’s collective effort as a nation has been a compelling case and a strong testimony to the international community, he said, adding that the bid for UN membership under the name Taiwan in 2007 was a formal declaration of self-determination, a universal right protected by the UN Charter.
Former deputy foreign minister Michael Kau (高英茂) said there are legal and political aspects to Taiwan’s status and statehood, but he felt that eventually political intervention would be needed to settle the matter, citing the cases of Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor.
Taiwan’s independence or its normalization as a country is pure political aspiration, which has presented a dilemma while Taiwan has been very careful about not crossing China’s “red line,” Kau said.
The irony is that China is so powerful that the international community might be hesitant to offer Taiwan any support, he said.
TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT: A US Air Force KC-135 tanker came less than 1,000 feet of an EVA plane and was warned off by a Taipei air traffic controller, a report said A US aerial refueling aircraft came very close to an EVA Airways jet in the airspace over southern Taiwan, a military aviation news Web site said. A report published by Alert 5 on Tuesday said that automatic dependent surveillance–broadcast (ADS-B) data captured by planfinder.net on Wednesday last week showed a US Air Force KC-135 tanker “coming less than 1,000 feet [305m] vertically with EVA Air flight BR225 as both aircraft crossed path south of Taiwan” that morning. The report included an audio recording of a female controller from the Taipei air traffic control center telling the unidentified aircraft that it was
A series of discussions on the legacy of martial law and authoritarianism are to be held at the Taipei International Book Exhibition this month, featuring findings and analysis by the Transitional Justice Commission. The commission and publisher Book Republic organized the series, entitled “Escaping the Nation’s Labyrinth of Memory: What Authoritarian Symbols and Records Can Tell Us,” to help people navigate narratives through textual analysis and comparisons with other nations. The four-day series is to begin on Thursday next week with a discussion between commission Chairwoman Yang Tsui (楊翠), Polish-language translator Lin Wei-yun (林蔚昀), and Polish author and artist Pawel Gorecki comparing
MOVING OUT: A former professor said that rent and early education costs in Taipei are the nation’s highest, which makes it difficult for young people to start families The population of Taipei last year fell to the lowest in 23 years due to high rent, more transportation options and the expansion of northern cities into a single metropolis, academics and city officials said on Monday. Data released this month by the Ministry of the Interior showed that the capital was home to 2,602,418 people last year, down 42,623 from 2019. The decline is second only to 1993, when the population fell by 42,828 people, while Taipei’s population was the lowest it has been since 1997. Taipei saw the biggest drop among the six special municipalities, while Taoyuan led the group in
A US aircraft carrier group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt has entered the South China Sea to promote “freedom of the seas,” the US military said yesterday, as tensions between China and Taiwan raise concerns in Washington. US Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement that the strike group entered the South China Sea on Saturday, the same day Taiwan reported a large incursion of Chinese bombers and fighter jets into its air defense identification zone near the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島). The US military said the carrier strike group was in the South China Sea, a large part of which
RSS