The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is the most outspoken of all the government’s ministries. Due to Taiwan’s unique diplomatic impotence, the ministry has to search around for things to do, and thus recently created a storm in a teacup over the new biometric passport, which incorrectly used a photograph of Washington Dulles International Airport in its design.
The ministry responded by demoting Bureau of Consular Affairs director-general Agnes Chen (陳華玉) and her predecessor, Representative to Canada Kung Chung-chen (龔中誠).
Putting aside the issue of whether the disciplinary action taken by the ministry was in proportion to the severity of the mistake, the design and production of passports has nothing to do with foreign affairs. Rather, it is an internal administrative affair. For the Minister of Foreign Affairs’ position to be called into question over the issue shows that in Taiwan, domestic affairs trump foreign affairs.
The ministry has also become embroiled in a spat over a dictionary produced by Japanese publishing company Iwanami Shoten.
The Kojien dictionary refers to Taiwan as the 26th province of China on a map of the administrative regions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Although the publisher stated that all the information in its description of Taiwan is factually correct, the ministry waded into the issue.
The foreign ministry instructed the director of Taiwan’s representative office in Japan to issue a “stern protest” to the publisher and additionally requested that all entries in the dictionary that contain the “mistake” are corrected. Mistakes should of course be corrected, but the ministry’s correction itself included a series of mistakes.
The ministry explained it thus: The Republic of China (ROC) government assumed administrative control of Taiwan and its outlying Penghu Islands in 1945 and, in accordance with the Constitution, implemented a constitutional government and democratic rule on the islands.
However, in 1945 the ROC government simply accepted the surrender of Japan — there was no transfer of sovereignty.
Taiwan continued to remain in limbo until the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed between Japan and the Allied forces, which stipulated that Japan should surrender Taiwan, but did not state to which country Taiwan’s sovereignty would be transferred. The case for ROC sovereignty over Taiwan was not persuasive enough for the editors of the Kojien dictionary.
The ministry also argues that the “ROC (Taiwan)” is an independent sovereign nation and is not a province of China. However, the ROC is its own entity, just as Taiwan is its own entity. The “ROC (Taiwan)” pastiche is an artificial construct, formed out of necessity, and it has no recognition in the international community.
In the past, the ROC and the PRC were separate claimants in a fierce battle for recognition as the legal representative of China on the world stage.
If, as the ministry argues, Taiwan belongs to the ROC, this simply proves that the Kojien dictionary is correct in defining Taiwan as part of “one China” — although it opted to define “one China” as the PRC rather than the ROC.
In addition to the Kojien dictionary, the ROC’s allies also suffer from a similar contradiction. The ROC’s diplomatic allies recognize the ROC as the representative government of China and not the representative government of Taiwan. When an allied nation breaks off diplomatic relations with the ROC, it is transferring its recognition to the PRC as the legal government of China.
Therefore, the number of diplomatic allies the ROC possesses makes no difference: As long as the ROC continues to exist, it will never be able to escape the spell of “one China” and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) insistence that Taiwan is the ROC will continue to push Taiwan into a corner.
In 1971, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution to formally recognize the PRC as the legal government of China. At the time there was an opportunity for the ROC to remain in the UN under the name of “Taiwan,” but this would have shattered the illusion of the ROC that Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) had worked hard to create and would have opened the door to Taiwanese self-governance.
Chiang sacrificed the will of the Taiwanese people in order to protect his family’s interests. Chiang’s decision also dictated the future course of the country’s diplomacy.
This means that the foreign ministry is now damned if it does and damned if it does not. If it prolifically carries out its role, it runs the danger of reheating the war over which government represents China. On the other hand, if the ministry calls a diplomatic truce with China and adopts the formula, “one China, with different interpretations” (一中各表), this will become a noose around Taiwan’s neck.
As the democratization of Taiwan has progressed, its sovereign territory has in reality become limited to the main island of Taiwan and the outlying counties of Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu. Despite this, the ministry continues to pretend that the ROC’s sovereign territory extends to all of China.
Taiwan now has a nativist political party in government and is an independent, self-governing nation. Taiwan’s current official name is the Republic of China, which certainly sounds pleasant to the ear the first time you hear it. However, it is the foreign ministry that is being tested, and diplomacy is precisely the issue that most keenly highlights the contradiction between “Taiwan” and the “ROC.”
The difference in opinion between former presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), and President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) over the issue of Taiwan’s sovereignty could not be wider. However, diplomacy always operates within tight restrictions and politicians on either side of the political spectrum are constrained by this force.
This puts the spotlight on the essence of the ROC’s position on the international stage. The foreign ministry is left with no option but to play out its tragic part within a tragicomedy, regardless of whether individual actors identify with the position.
During Ma’s presidency, due to the so-called “1992 consensus” between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party, he introduced what he called a diplomatic truce with China. This policy was born out of the legal constraints imposed by the ROC Constitution: The foreign ministry was unable to completely break away from the contest over who represents China.
Due to the complete incompatibility of the ROC’s and PRC’s diplomatic allies, Ma’s administration was forced to enter into a truce with China. It was necessary to do so in order for Ma’s government to be able to shake off the Chiang-era anti-communist dogma and make the ideological leap to “one nation on each side” of the Taiwan Strait.
Although the Tsai administration’s policy of “maintaining the ‘status quo’” carefully avoids recognizing the “1992 consensus,” it continues to express goodwill toward Beijing. The foreign ministry has essentially continued respecting the Ma administration’s diplomatic truce.
In reality, the idea that “Taiwan is an independent nation whose official title is the Republic of China” is domestic politics designed for domestic consumption. Unfortunately, there is no room for maneuvering within diplomacy to fudge the nation’s name in the same way.
If the foreign ministry prolifically carries out its job and Beijing’s diplomats force Taiwan out of international politics, this will create a tension between “Taiwan” and the “ROC.” On the other hand, if the ministry passively goes about its work it will also get criticized.
Whatever it does, the ministry cannot win. The problem is not the foreign ministry; the problem is the ROC. Only the government has the ability to take on this unfinished business and resolve the perennial problem of the “ROC (Taiwan).”
Translated by Edward Jones
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