On Sept. 2, the day before Armed Forces Day, retired army general, former Department of General Political Warfare director and spiritual leader of the New Party Hsu Li-nung (許歷農) declared that the party would no longer oppose the communist People’s Republic of China, but would instead push for unification.
Is this really the natural conclusion of the pan-blue camp’s opposition to the Chinese communists — the beginning of an alliance with the old enemy and a running up of the white flag?
This would surely be the bitterest of ironies for former presidents Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) if they were still alive to see it.
The anti-communist position of Chiang Kai-shek was orchestrated by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) party-state, an extension of the civil war fought between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Support for his vendetta against the CCP was mandatory: There could be no dissent.
To unite the public behind the military, anti-communism became a career in itself. Hsu and his fellow officers made a living out of it and rose up through the ranks to become members of the KMT elite.
In reality, Chiang Kai-shek’s perpetual resistance against the “communist bandits” was simply a means to keep Taiwanese in check and consolidate his hold over the country. At the time, the Cold War was being waged, so the argument was put forward that to keep Taiwan secure, support was needed for the Chiang family clan.
However, in reality, the anti-communist resistance consisted of nothing more than empty sloganizing; No actual counterattack was ever launched nor, for that matter, even contemplated.
After the anti-communist campaign was wound down, a truly national movement came to a close. Everyone was finally free to assume their own view on communism without fear of reprisals.
Once the Chiang Ching-kuo era finished, then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) in 1991 announced the annulment of the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion (動員戡亂時期條款).
The government in China was no longer defined as a rebel group, and so anti-communism ceased to be a national priority.
Constrained by conditions at the time, the diplomatic relationship between Taiwan and China was ambiguous. Cross-strait high-level talks started off on shaky foundations. Later there was a period of political realignment and legal adjustment, with Taiwan pursuing a course of long-term normalization to become a regular country.
The problem was that although Taiwan long ago stopped defining China as an enemy, China absolutely refused to relinquish its aim of taking the nation by force and still conducts relations from the perspective that the civil war never actually ended.
In dealing with Taiwan’s democratization and transitions of political power, Beijing has employed a strategy of engagement with the KMT, while attempting to freeze out the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
The existence of a DPP government is a challenge to the KMT and CCP’s monopoly on cross-strait relations, and this very monopoly presents a challenge for the DPP.
Taiwanese would love for the civil war between the KMT and CCP to just disappear and for Taiwan to become a normalized country, but China sees things differently: It very much wants to keep the war going and to draw Taiwan into the “one China” framework.
Meanwhile, The DPP government is constrained internationally with an expectation of maintaining the “status quo,” a situation that only makes it more difficult for it to divest Taiwan of the ongoing “war,” and the primacy of the relationship between the Republic of China (ROC) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), both of which claim to represent China.
As a consequence, and despite having the presidency and a legislative majority, the DPP still finds itself unable to rid itself completely of the implications of this war. Indeed, it was because the government remains restricted by the “one China” framework that Taiwan had to compete under the name “Chinese Taipei” in the Taipei Summer Universiade, which was held in this very country last month.
In the meetings between former Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) and between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), each representing the PRC and KMT respectively, and even an imagined meeting between Xi and President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), the immediate association is not so much of diplomatic talks between two nations, but of peace talks between two adversaries still lacking a peace treaty.
This is the real crux of why the “status quo” Tsai has tried to maintain has gradually been changed over the past year or so and why it has been so difficult to normalize the nation.
From this perspective, for Hsu to decide to bury the hatchet and call for a truce with the communists has a certain amount to commend it, although it is certainly not entirely unproblematic.
The fact that Hsu has decided only now, so long after the annulment of the temporary provisions, to finally desist from opposing the communists shows that his vendetta has trailed far behind that of the national one, despite having retired from his career built on opposing the CCP.
Joining the ranks of the pro-China elements as he has, as far as a democratic Taiwan or the ROC is concerned, is tantamount to declaring defeat and putting his efforts in the service of those who would like to see Taiwan annexed by China.
Since its annulment in 1991, the party-state’s anti-communist machine has yet to be turned to a democratic machine geared toward protecting Taiwan, a turn of events difficult to justify. That a person living and paying taxes in Taiwan feels the need to aid and abet those who would help China annex Taiwan truly is a ridiculous confluence of a national and personal vocation to protect the ROC.
You have to wonder about the loyalty of retired generals like Hsu, who have been to China — and proclaimed things like: The ROC military and the PRC military are both the Chinese armed forces — and who have listened intently to Xi’s speeches and China’s national anthem, attended military parades and are as thick as thieves with each other in their ridiculing of Taiwan and the ROC in words as well as deeds.
That this was a seriously irregular state of affairs went left unsaid when the KMT was in power, but now even the DPP, with control of both reins of government, seems unwilling to tackle it. As a result, this is gradually becoming the new normal, spreading among active military personnel and throughout the armed forces.
Tsai’s reforms, despite obstacles provided by residual traces of the foreign party-state regime, have by-and-large been aimed at domestic issues.
She has yet to focus her attention on the normalization of cross-state issues. This is something that needs to be addressed for transitional justice on the level of national sovereignty.
If the nation continues to go around in circles, stuck in this logic of a continued civil war between the KMT and the CCP — albeit with the former replaced by the DPP — is time really going to be on Taiwan’s side?
The preamble to the ROC Constitution’s Additional Articles, which were created at the same time as the temporary provisions were revoked, says that the articles are necessary “to meet the requisites of the nation prior to national unification.”
They are a residue of the attempt to bring Taiwan into the orbit of the ROC Constitution.
Even these, the DPP government has grudgingly accepted.
This is how we get to the place were Tsai, a Taiwanese leader at the helm of a native Taiwanese government, can speak of her duty being to “protect the sovereignty and territory of the ROC.”
The idea that Taiwan is an independent, sovereign nation and its title is the ROC, in the context of the ongoing civil war, has meant that successive governments here — both KMT and DPP — have spent all their efforts attempting to legitimize the existence of the ROC.
This not only highlights the lack of any mechanism protecting national interests, it also reveals the weaknesses in Taiwan’s internal progress in turning itself into a normalized country amid China’s efforts to keep internal politics divided.
The problems with generals such as Hsu are merely the tip of the iceberg. Lambasting their words and actions only allows that weakness to become even more entrenched and distracts attention from the true enemy amassing its forces at the gates.
Translated by Edward Jones and Paul Cooper
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