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Editorial: Once more into the breach

Yesterday the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that 12 diplomatic allies had submitted a proposal asking the UN to consider Taiwan's membership of the world body. What is actually sought is that the UN General Committee, which draws up the General Assembly's agenda, should consent to include on that agenda a motion to reconsider Resolution 2758 -- the resolution which replaced Chiang Kai-shek's (蔣介石) government with Mao Zedong's (毛澤東) in China's UN seat.

Taiwan's argument is that the resolution did not adequately solve the problem of China's representation. It might have resulted in more Chinese being represented, but as long as Taiwan's and China's representation is seen as a zero-sum game for a single seat, somebody is excluded. It is time then for a rethink of the whole question.

It is a fair and logical argument but, of course, fairness and logic have little to do with international relations. What will happen is that the General Committee, the majority of whose members support Beijing's "one China" policy, will decide that a reappraisal of Resolution 2758 is either untimely or unnecessary and that will be that -- Taiwan's bid will fail again, as it has each year since 1993.

If failure is inevitable, where might the interest in this annual event lie?

Mainly in that it is the first such bid by the new government. There has been some surprise that a bid has actually gone ahead, given the new administration's stress on making goodwill gestures toward China. Then again, the government has made so many of these gestures -- too many, in the view of this newspaper -- that it could hardly abandon the UN bid without coming under a hail of criticism.

Given the change of government, it is worth examining the wording of the draft resolution to see whether there is any significant difference between this year's request and past versions. There is.

In the past, such draft resolutions said how Taiwan's membership in the UN would not be a hindrance to the democratic and peaceful unification of a divided China. This time around there is no mention of eventual unification, just the wish that differences between the two side of the Strait can be settled peacefully.

How significant is this? It is not yet clear. But it can hardly shock anyone that a DPP-led government should drop pablum about eventual unification, something that even large swathes of the KMT -- though not perhaps its chairman -- can't talk about, except ironically.

But to look at the minutiae of the UN bid is perhaps missing the point. What we have here is an interesting metaphor for the new government. Just as this year's bid resembles the previous ones so closely that only the exegetical fervor of a Talmudic scholar could find significant differences, so the government under Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) seems so like that of his KMT predecessor that many of Chen's keenest supporters echo with some bitterness Alphonse Karr's words that: "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

But the new administration is, of course, constrained by the mechanisms and policies that have been put in place in the past. This will not, of course, be an excuse that it can use for ever, but impatient as we are to see change, we must give it time to find its feet.

In this situation, seeing it following its predecessor so closely has to be viewed against the learning curve that it faces and the depth of the problems ahead of it if there is ever to be real change. But, at least for now, the differences remain, like those in the UN bid, in the small print.
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