Fri, Dec 26, 2003 page8

• ROC exists only in the imagination

  • By Yen Chueh-an 顏厥安
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  Lately, stupid comments have been filling the air.

  The economy, the Legislative Yuan and the president have all become real issues invisible to stupid people. But all observations miss out on something, so I will not dare say that I understand the real issues, but I do feel that the Republic of China (ROC) is an important source of these issues.

  From an historical point of view, the ROC has, objectively speaking, ceased to exist, though it continues to exist in the imaginations of certain people.

  The idea that both China and Taiwan are part of the same country, and the idea of national "splittism," have marked Taiwan and the Taiwanese people with the stamp "Chinese property." Okay, let's assume that this is correct. What conclusion does that lead to?

  Based on the commonly accepted premise that Taiwan will not be able to defend itself from China without the US' help, the ROC only exists because China tolerates it.

  More correctly, the existence of the ROC is in fact an exceptional situation approved by the sovereign Chinese people. From this perspective, the ROC Constitution is in fact a piece of special legislation under China's constitution, and the ROC's territory a special capitalist region tolerated and accepted by China.

  This is why "one country, two systems" has been in existence for a long time. If the history of the ROC's staunchest supporter, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), can be retraced all the way back to the Society for Regenerating China (興中會), it is in fact a political group that has been rebelling and that has been rebelled against for a long time.

  After much effort, it finally launched a successful rebellion against the Qing dynasty, but its leaders traded off the presidency and then retreated to the south to set up a rebel group. The presidency was given to the warlord Yuan Shih-kai (袁世凱), who helped the KMT's uprising against the Qing dynasty. The KMT retreated to southern China and started a rebellion against Yuan when he made himself emperor.

  The KMT established a constitutional government after a great deal of effort, only to see a communist rebellion launched against it immediately, forcing it to suppress the rebellion. Once the KMT lost momentum, the ROC Constitution only held force in Taiwan, a place occupied by what China saw as a rebel group. The ROC Constitution became like an old religious symbol to be stored in a cellar and not used anymore.

  Did this political power truly want to implement constitutional government? When was this Constitution the basic law of a nation? Where is that nation?

  When the New Party gave up its longstanding opposition to nuclear power and supported the continued construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in the name of the constitution, the high priests of the ROC were happy enough to leave nuclear waste here while they ran off to the other side of the Taiwan Strait to live a life of splendor.

  The KMT proposed that the president, according to the Constitution, should call on the majority party to create a Cabinet, forgetting that the majority party could simply topple the Cabinet. It was difficult to understand why the KMT, being the majority party, couldn't simply engineer a no-confidence vote and bring down the DPP Cabinet.

  When the legislative speaker said he didn't rule out the option of future Taiwanese independence, but neglected to propose any constitutional process for its realization, we all were alerted to the possibility that the empty ROC Constitution was not meant to serve the expansion of a nationalist Chinese sacred motherland, but rather to serve a liberal democratic republic in its efforts to transform and educate the vulgar people of Taiwan.

  Since all stupid people have problems, the clever ones should work together to draft a new constitution. A constitution without a nation and a nation without a constitution: such a situation is but a soap opera in which lovers keep missing out on each other, and that should be quickly ended. Otherwise, we will all forget that there are other issues, such as the domestic violence problem.

  Yen Chueh-an is a law professor at National Taiwan University.

  Translated by Perry Svensson
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