I have often thought to myself over the last few years that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was a great civil rights leader, but not much of a president. His administration has often seemed incompetent, duplicitous and simply adrift. At times, it has even been embarrassing and cringe-inducing . The punishment that Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidates have been suffering in opinion polls would seem to bear me out to some degree.
Having witnessed the events surrounding the push for a referendum on a UN bid under the name "Taiwan," however, I think this judgement is now in need of serious modification. What US diplomats have described as crass electioneering on the part of the DPP may, in fact, be just that. Or, it may be the DPP coming to terms with its only reason for being.
The DPP is a civil-rights party that has failed to define itself on any other issue except the monumental one regarding the right of the people of this island to determine their collective fate, a right that may or may not be recognized by the UN, the US, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), China, international law, or academic theory, but which is decreed by something higher -- nature's God perhaps.
When Chen and the DPP are forced (by any of the aforementioned) on to any ground other than the fundamental question of the right to self-determination, they are out of their element and slip into confusion and even corruption, it would seem.
Therefore, what we are witnessing may in fact be an election forcing the normalization of Taiwanese politics (considering the circumstances), not a sudden break from what the US regards as the "status quo" (which seems to be a Taiwan that is devoted to manufacturing gizmos and protecting US intellectual property rights).
What is the "status quo" in East Asia anyway? New democracies in Taiwan and South Korea, a Japan slowly normalizing in terms of foreign relations and defense, a North Korean basketcase fiddling with nuclear bombs and kidnapping foreign nationals, and a China that is growing economically and militarily in a rapid, unpredictable, and opaque fashion.
The "status quo" is what anybody makes of it at any given time. It is hardly the basis for a foreign policy of a superpower with vital interests in the region.
US reservations about what is happening here are certainly understandable, as is its need for Chinese help in protecting Japan and South Korea from the regime in Pyongyang, but the US will find that it has been outmaneuvered by the "status quo" if it cannot come up with a more creative foreign policy than one that simply appeases Beijing.
Taiwanese political and economic development will be stunted and erratic so long as such fundamental questions regarding the sovereignty are kept "undecided" by the powers that have set themselves in judgement over Taiwan.
J. Tavis Overstreet
Chiayi
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