Campaign for Taiwan
Since the newly elected local governmental officials were sworn in, the political environment has changed. Now a lot of people are seriously looking into the future of Taiwan.
They are asking questions such as: What is the political status of Taiwan today? How come Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations? Is Taiwan an independent and sovereign country? Is Taiwan the Republic of China (ROC) or is it only known as the ROC? Is the ROC an independent and sovereign country? Is it recognized as a sovereign state by the international community? I am afraid that the answer to all these questions are “nay.”
A constitution is the fundamental law of a nation. The ROC Constitution went into effect on Dec. 25, 1947. It was during the time of the Chinese Civil War that the Chinese Nationalist
Party (KMT)/ROC was expelled from China. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) they created a new constitution for China. Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) applied the canceled ROC Constitution and froze it through the “Temporary Provisions Effective During Period of Communist Rebellion (動員戡亂時期臨時條款)” soon after he built power in Taiwan. The ROC Constitution has never been fully executed a single day on its defined territory.
Article 4 of the Constitution says that “The territory of the Republic of China according to its existing national boundaries shall not be altered except by resolution of the National Assembly.” The national boundaries include Mongolia and China. It does not include Taiwan, which still belonged to Japan in 1947 and there has not been any revised resolution made by the National Assembly.
On March 13, 1950, Chiang told his followers at Yangmingshan that the ROC died in 1949, but the Taiwanese have been forced to live under this corpse since then. How sad are the Taiwanese: We uphold a non-accepted constitution, we live under a non-recognized dead country and we continue to believe and insist that Taiwan belongs to the ROC — the ROC on Taiwan. What a shame. Are we idiots or illiterate? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. The Taiwanese have been repeatedly fooled, year after year, since 1949.
There is no excuse but to blame ourselves for being stupid enough to believe the KMT, a Chinese political party that belongs in China, not Taiwan. We should send them back home. The KMT lives in Taiwan, eating our flesh and sucking our blood. Shame on those KMT members who identify as Taiwanese, unless they change name to “Taiwanese Nationalist Party.”
There is no legal document to prove that Japan ceded sovereignty over Taiwan to the KMT/ROC. The only legal document was General Douglas MacArthur’s General Order No.1, issued on Sept. 2, 1945, authorizing the Japanese military force then in Taiwan to surrender to Chiang, but the military occupation does not mean authorizing transfer of sovereignty. That can only be done by an international treaty.
US Congress issued the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) as a domestic law to regulate US dealings with Taiwan under the authorization of the San Francisco Peace Treaty that indicates the US Military Government as the principal occupying power of Taiwan. There is only the governing authority, not the ROC government in Taiwan today.
So, don’t be naive and apply the unrecognized ROC Constitution, don’t say you will campaign for the fake ROC president because no one recognizes it, especially not the USA and the PRC. Anyone interested in Taiwan’s presidential election next year should campaign for the presidency of Taiwan, not the ROC. Even though the TRA only recognizes the head of the Taiwan Governing Authority, all international media will say “president of Taiwan.” So, openly identify yourself as the candidate for president of Taiwan, not of the ROC.
John Hsieh
Hayward, California
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its