One of the striking points about this presidential election is the distinct regional cleavages between northern and southern Taiwan, or more precisely, between the South and the rest.
The South looks set to vote in a solid majority for Chen Shui-bian
Many different conclusions might be made from this, but one stands out: if Chen loses the presidency (and especially if Soong was to win it), the South should hold a referendum to secede and form its own country.
At a stroke, this would not only solve the current political crisis, it would also solve the issue of national identity and related issues such as the name of the country. For it is obvious that the rump of Taiwan would retain the name "Republic of China" while the new state would have to create a new name -- "Republic of Taiwan" seems an obvious choice.
Before immediately decrying this as nonsense, stop and consider: the sense of Taiwanese identity is much stronger in the South than in the North or Center. According to the latest official figures, 13.9 percent consider themselves as "Chinese," 45 percent as "Taiwanese" and 39.4 as "both Chinese and Taiwanese."
It is a safe assumption that these results are strongly skewed along regional lines: probably there is next to no one in the South saying they are "Chinese," whereas those who consider themselves purely "Taiwanese" are concentrated there. In other words, both of the states created from a breakup would have much more secure senses of national identity than the current unified Taiwan does today.
Furthermore, the South already contains a solid contiguous block of DPP governments -- Tainan County and City, Kaohsiung County and City and Ping-tung County -- that could easily form the core of the new state. After the declaration of seces-sion, bordering counties, such as Chiayi or Taitung, might wish to hold referenda to decide whether they wished to join the new state.
Big-state fetishists around the world are always muttering about the "viability" of small states, and no doubt they would be adamantly opposed to any breakup of Taiwan. However, even leaving out Chiayi, etc. for the time being, the new "Republic of Taiwan" would have a population of over 5.4 million, almost as high as Quebec.
As for the argument that an island is a natural geographic unit, the answer is that that states have never felt bound to abide by natural boundaries in the past. There are plenty of examples of islands that are divided into more than one state: Hispaniola, Ireland, Borneo, Timor. All of these islands, by the way, have fewer inhabitants than Taiwan.
The new country could set up its capital either in Kaohsiung or in the historic capital Tainan, again perhaps through a referendum. Its primary official language, naturally, would be Hokkien, but it would do well to consider elevating Hakka, Mandarin and Paiwan (the largest Aboriginal group in the new state) to official status as well.
Of course, there would be a certain amount of dislocation, as people and enterprises shifted around. However, as long as the breakup was relatively amicable, this could be minimized by allowing free flows of goods, investment or even labor, a la the EU or the US and Canada.
As for military forces and other governmental assets, they would be divided, as for example the Soviet Black Sea fleet was divided between the newly independent Russia and Ukraine. The new state could ease the process by offering to assume its fair share of the current government's debts, perhaps calculated on a per capita basis.
It would certainly be intriguing to see how such a move would be observed overseas. One can imagine that the Chinese government would be flabbergasted by the spectacle of a North ever more willing to cosy up to them, while the South moves towards full independence. Quite a conundrum! They would probably think the whole thing was some kind of devilish trick, a smoke screen for some larger splittist plot. Certainly, as devout "big state-ists", they would have a hard time comprehending how a place they regard as a speck could divide itself like some kind of bacterium.
Most of the international community would be similarly perplexed and one could not expect that any significant numbers of nations would recognize the new state. The US could probably be counted on to promptly declare its support for the "one Taiwan policy." On the other hand, since only a small number of countries recognize the currently constituted "Republic of China," it's hard to see that this would faze the citizens of the new state.
So there we have it: the solution for Taiwan's age-old identity crisis. Elementary, really....
Bo Tedards is a Taipei-based political commentator.
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