A few days ago, several students at Taoyuan County’s Kainan University, host of this year’s Asian University Basketball Championship, flew Republic of China (ROC) flags around the university sports arena in protest at the confiscation of ROC flags during a basketball game with a Chinese team the previous day. Behind this action is a burgeoning identification with Taiwan, a shared sense of patriotism and a feeling of unity among the younger generation. It represents a rejection of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) untenable concept of “one China.”
When they talk of their identification with the ROC, they are actually talking about their identification with Taiwan, distinct from the China on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. One country on either side, each with its own separate identity.
While it is true that not everyone identifies with the national flag of the ROC, the flag has represented the differentiation between Taiwan and China for the past 60 years, a material manifestation of the fact that there are two distinct countries on either side of the Strait. Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) refers to the country as the “Republic of China on Taiwan.” His successor, Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), had issues with the Constitution of the ROC, the ROC as the official name of the country and the ROC national flag, but was obliged to settle with the “one country on either side of the Strait” formula. Over time, the flag has come to represent Taiwan.
Ma lives in the ROC, but he has little time for the constitutionally designated national flag or for the right of people to display it. He obstinately clings to the idea that there is only one China and that it is the ROC; but when any Chinese official visits Taiwan he has all the national flags removed, lets the official address him as “Mister” and receives the visitor in the Taipei Guest House, where no flags are to be seen.
It was alright to fly the flag on patrol boats sent to the waters around the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) to protect Taiwan’s territorial claims, but when a Chinese official comes in through one door, the flags get ushered out the other. Then you have a student getting beaten up for having the audacity to wave his country’s flag at Chinese visitors, and the flag is confiscated. That student isn’t thinking of the ROC when he thinks of “one China.”
Ma says one thing and does another, following China in all things and suppressing any attempt to brandish objects deemed to represent the nation. This not only fills the future of the young generation with uncertainty, it also risks curtailing their sense of pride in their country and stifling their willingness to make a contribution to it.
The young cannot identify with the China that has thrown writer Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) behind bars just for calling for constitutional rights. Neither can they approve of a president who hides away the national flag of the country he represents whenever he comes across people from China. The youth want a country they can be proud of.
The youth of today think that politics is something reserved for grown-ups, and forget that it is they who will be populating the future. They have the right, and indeed the duty, to participate in and contribute to the future. If Ma and his government have their way, they will take Taiwan down a road that leads to eventual unification with China. This is not the kind of future the youth want. They need to stand up and be counted. The flag protest was a start. It’s time to support our country, to safeguard our future.
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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