Last Sunday, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) officially accepted the DPP chairmanship. During his inauguration ceremony, Chen indicated that having assumed the post, he would actively push for exchanges of visits between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait on an inter-party level.
But, he added, "I sincerely ask everyone to think again. If our goodwill is not met with reciprocity from the other side of the strait, we should perhaps seriously consider taking a path of our own. Take Taiwan's own path. Move toward Taiwan's own future." In any other country, talk of this kind would not raise an eyebrow. But Taiwan's opposition has questioned Chen's statement about "Taiwan taking its own path." They have also asked that Chen confirm whether the remark meant Taiwan independence or something else. The PFP has also claimed that denouncing "the path of the ROC" is the path to destruction.
Obviously, Chen made the statement because China had just successfully pressured, by means of an offer of US$130 million in aid, President Rene Harris of Taiwan's former diplomatic ally Nauru to sign a joint communique between the two countries, establishing formal diplomatic ties. The joint communique further states that the Nauru government recognizes that there is only one China, that the PRC is the sole legitimate representative government of China, and that Taiwan is part of the inseparable Chinese territory.
Confronted with such practices to buy off our diplomatic allies and dwarf our state sovereignty, Chen emphasized that any political parties accountable to the people of Taiwan must insist on giving absolute top priority to Taiwan's national status and the interests of its people. Chen said that Taiwan's sovereignty can under no circumstances be stripped or restricted, and that he hoped that no one any longer held any illusions about seeking peace from China through compromises and humility. The fact is that Chen's remark should reflect a basic truth recognized by the 23 million inhabitants of Taiwan.
As the PFP and KMT questioned Chen's remark about "Taiwan taking its own path," they also rejected individually a proposal for a party leadership summit. The KMT said that the very notion of such a summit reflects feudal thinking, and if Chen is sincere, he should table for discussion a deadline to delete from the DPP charter what the opposition calls the "Taiwan independence clause." [Editor's note: The clause calls for a public referendum to decide on any future change to the current status of Taiwan and acknowledges that Taiwan is an independent sovereign state called "the Republic Of China.]
The PFP, on the other hand, indicated that it will not attend any such summit if opposition to the "one China" principle is a precondition for attendance. As everyone knows, these two parties have been pressuring the government to accept the so-called "1992 consensus" between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, under which the two accept "the one China principle, but are free to make their own interpretation of what that principle means (一個中國,各自表述)." It is perfectly clear that the two parties question Chen's statement because they suspect it of departing from "great China" ideology.
It is obviously right for Taiwan to take its own path. China's hostility toward Taiwan has been escalating on a daily basis in recent years. From attempts to suck Taiwan dry through economic means, to the use of a divide-and-conquer strategy against Taiwan's political parties in order to influence Taiwan government policy, to escalations of military threats against Taiwan, China has demonstrated consistently that Taiwan cannot afford to hold any illusions about China, let alone thoughts of "surrendering for peace," or "seeking peace through economic means."
The opposition continues its love affair with the "1992 consensus." We prefer to believe that this is due to their misunderstandings about China's policy toward Taiwan. The "consensus" as the opposition chooses to define it has never been acknowledged by China. China's consistent position is that the two sides had reached "a consensus under which the [two] would respectively make verbal statements that both sides of the Taiwan Strait insist on [abiding] by the `one China' principle." As anyone can plainly see without further elaboration, this is completely different from what the opposition calls the "1992 consensus."
The fact that the joint communique between China and Nauru emphasizes that the PRC is the sole legitimate and representative government of China and that Taiwan is an inseparable part of Chinese territory further explains this -- Beijing's comment that "the Mainland and Taiwan all belong to one China" is nothing but a unification propaganda aimed at Taiwan. It neither respects Taiwan's sovereign status, nor leaves any room for survival of the ROC. We are bound to ask whether, under such circumstances, if Taiwan does not take its own path, must it take the path designated by China?
On the other hand, since the president knows that Taiwan may have to take its own path, his policies should seek to strengthen the country's national security and economic autonomy. Otherwise, with loopholes surfacing in Taiwan's national defense and the nation's economic dependency on China becoming heavier all the time, will Taiwan actually be able to take its own path? After the government adopted its active-opening policy on investments in China, Taiwan's industry, capital, technologies, and manpower all poured out to China at an increased rate. The supposedly experimental "small three links" have become a loophole in the nation's national security.
As for cross-strait economic and political integration, these have made some in Taiwan incapable of knowing who the enemy is. In recent days, the government has made claims that the "three direct links" are inevitable, and that it plans to open up direct investments in China. All this indicates that Taiwan's government does not seem to give any thought to the fact that the country's economy has bled to death. The lives of unemployed workers and their families have been devastated. In our view, none of this would have happened had Taiwan already taken its own path.
In the past decade or so, Taiwan has striven to achieve peace in the Taiwan Strait. Ever since Chen gave his inaugural speech, Taiwan's China policy has been characterized by the goodwill it has shown toward China. But what has Taiwan's hard work accomplished?
Leaving everything else aside, China's deployment of more than 300 ballistic missiles along the Chinese coast and aimed at Taiwan, its purchase of advance weapons to intimidate Taiwan, and its use of Taiwan businessmen and capital as bargaining chips to compel favorable policies from Taiwan, are enough to make the people of Taiwan edgy.
While the opposition camp may be out of power, it is still accountable to the people of Taiwan. How can it question, in defiance of the popular will, the legitimacy of Taiwan taking its own path? If Taiwan does indeed take its own path, it can in no event become part of China. Nor can it become an economic vassal of China. At this moment in time, not only our countrymen but also our government must engage in deep reflection. How is Taiwan to take its own path? We cannot be manipulated by China's dual "peace-war" strategy.
In our view, in order to respond to the growing China threat, the government's most important task is to ensure that it is fully prepared for the worst-case Chinese invasion scenario. It must immediately cease the lifting of restrictions on investments by eight-inch wafer foundries in China, cross-strait direct links and indirect investments in China. It must exert maximum effort to revive domestic industry, and bolster our countrymen's ability to know their enemy. This is the only way to put our own future into our own hands.
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