The election campaign -- which has not officially started -- rolls on. Ten days ago we saw the KMT decide that DPP policies they have fought for years were such vote-winners that they should adopt them too. And last week we saw Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
That goes some way to addressing our concerns about the blue camp's intentions but not quite far enough. The worries we share with many others about the blue camp, and the KMT in particular, have always revolved around that party's commitment to Taiwanese self-determination -- by which we mean letting the people of Taiwan decide their future for themselves.
The KMT has always opposed referendums because, it claims, a referendum on Taiwan's independence would pose a threat to national security by provoking China's armed aggression. But this is weasely thinking. Taiwanese know quite well the possible consequences of a vote for de jure independence and it is not reasonable to expect such a vote to succeed any time in the near future.
The Taiwanese do not want the referendum law to cover issues of national identity and sovereignty
because they can thereby gain independence, but so they can have a say in any unification plan put before them. Actually what is really desirable is that any change in the status quo concerning the nation's sovereignty or status be put to a referendum. This means that a vote for some kind of unification, perhaps on the lines of a confederation suggested by Lien himself, should also be put to the people. If the KMT would commit itself to this then much of our rancor toward that party would be dispelled.
That the people of Taiwan should have the right to determine their own future status surely needs no argument. So why is it that the KMT has always opposed this? Partly because elements within that party have always regarded the project of Chinese nationalism, raising modern China to the world power status it believes it should have, as being more important than the -- as they see it -- trivial interests of Taiwan.
It is hard to imagine that Taiwanese would ever vote for unification with China while the communist regime is in place, no matter how tenuous the linkage. So, these KMT elements argue, it best not to make this issue subject to a vote. Here Beijing concurs, for two reasons. First, it knows, for all its rhetoric about the glories of the motherland, that it is not a very desirable suitor. More importantly, it wants to avoid, at almost any cost, its own oppressed people seeing Taiwanese exercising democratic rights with Beijing's acquiescence. What is sauce for the Taiwanese goose, they might think is also sauce for the mainland gander. Beijing has always thought that reunification was a deal to be made behind closed doors by party leaders.
Such considerations point to another reason why the KMT must give assurances about referendums over change of status. Even the KMT understands that politics in a democracy is very different to that of a dictatorship. Unfortunately that is something that it has not, so far, managed to make its friends in Beijing understand. By embracing the referendum idea, the KMT can help Beijing understand that Taiwan has to be wooed, it cannot be raped; that the people of Taiwan have to choose to unify, and that means Beijing has to give them good reasons to make that choice. By committing itself to a referendum on any change in Taiwan's status, the KMT can help China to work out what those reasons might be.
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