As Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) prepares to traverse what she has called the “last mile” to the party’s march back to power next year, there is a general perception that the same “last mile” upon which she faltered in the 2012 presidential election will remain her Achilles’ heel in the next presidential election — the party’s cross-strait policy.
A spate of criticism, much of it from China and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), has been leveled at Tsai, after she emphasized the sovereignty issue as she registered for the DPP’s presidential primary by saying that “consolidating state sovereignty” would be the party’s “most pressing priority” and describing the priority as “the specific point that distinguishes the DPP from the KMT” in terms of managing cross-strait relations.
Tsai also said that the DPP would draft its cross-strait policy based on “a new political culture” characterized by “openness and transparency, public participation and clean government” and that it would focus on “maintaining peaceful and stable development of cross-strait relations.”
Those comments were a clear response to the array of public concerns, which emerged alongside the Sunflower movement in March and April last year, about the direction in which President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration has been steering cross-strait relations.
In comparison, China and the KMT continue to view cross-strait issues through their own narrow lenses, ignoring the public’s viewpoint, as evidenced by an editorial in the Global Times, which is linked to the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece the People’s Daily, on Monday last week and remarks made by former National Security Council secretary-general Su Chi (蘇起) the same day, both in response to the statement Tsai delivered the previous day.
The editorial and Su struck a similar tone, warning of the repercussions if Beijing dislikes the DPP’s cross-strait policy and suggesting that the DPP’s return to power would only add to the unpredictability of cross-strait ties.
Then KMT spokesperson Charles Chen (陳以信) challenged Tsai over her remarks about sovereignty, saying that since Tsai had not specified the Republic of China, she should clarify which nation’s sovereignty she was pledging to protect and which nation’s presidency she is seeking.
While Tsai’s rejection of the so-called “1992 consensus” was one of the crucial factors that led to her 2012 defeat, the public perception today of the extent to which the nation has grown dependent on China under the “one China” principle is different from before.
The growing animosity toward China, in part stemming from the anxiety that the nation is forfeiting its ability to act independently of Beijing’s influence in the face of China’s rise and closer cross-strait ties, is a mixed blessing.
There is an increasing public awareness on the levels and scale of China factors that are affecting Taiwan, even as the confidence the public and the nation require to engage with China is fading.
The DPP is ahead of the KMT in answering the public’s call for cross-strait negotiations to be transparent and subject to the monitoring of the legislature and society. However, to institutionalize the oversight mechanism and boost the nation’s leverage in negotiations with China will require cooperation among parties across the political spectrum.
It is time for the KMT to turn its back on Beijing’s manipulations and be on the same side as Taiwanese.
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Acting Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) has formally announced his intention to stand for permanent party chairman. He has decided that he is the right person to steer the fledgling third force in Taiwan’s politics through the challenges it would certainly face in the post-Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) era, rather than serve in a caretaker role while the party finds a more suitable candidate. Huang is sure to secure the position. He is almost certainly not the right man for the job. Ko not only founded the party, he forged it into a one-man political force, with himself
RSS