James Soong's (
Compare it to the policies of his rivals. Lien Chan (
Soong's formula looks different, however. Both of his rivals stress Taiwan's statehood as a given -- whether you call it the Republic of China or not. Lee's use of "special" was not intended to downgrade this relationship to something less than that between two sovereign states. It was to acknowledge that the cross-strait relationship is culturally, historically and linguistically closer than that of, say, Taiwan and the Philippines. China is another country but it is not an entirely foreign country.
Soong's use of "quasi" (
So is Soong advocating "one country, two systems" for Taiwan? Almost certainly, he would protest at this suggestion. But his position on Taiwan's status leads naturally in this direction. "Quasi" means less than full, less than complete. Why should Taiwan, a sovereign state, have anything less than complete international relations with another sovereign state? Only if you do not recognize the sovereignty of one side or another. Assuming Soong is not Quixotic enough to try to argue the old KMT line that the mainland is a renegade part of the ROC, then what he is getting at must be that Taiwan is less than sovereign.
If this is the basis on which Soong thinks that Taiwan can enter into negotiations with China, then we should all be glad that the current financial scandal surrounding him might make jail, rather than the Presidential Office, his next home. Both the Chinese communists and the US State Department have been eager to find anyone in Taiwan politics who is ready to sacrifice Taiwan's sovereignty in return for China not pointing its missiles across the Strait. Soong's talk of a "mutual non-aggression treaty" smacks too much of the idea of US foreign policy mavens such as Stanley Roth at the State Department and Kenneth Lieberthal, senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council, and their pernicious idea of "interim agreements."
Should, God forbid, Soong be elected, we are cur-ious as to whether he will call himself a quasi-president. Perhaps he prefers the sound of "Chief Executive" like Hong Kong's Tung Chee-hwa.
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