Major General Zhu Chenghu (朱成虎) of China’s People’s Liberation Army recently criticised the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), saying that the party is a shadow of its former self. The KMT members who come to China to advocate the unification of Taiwan and China are simply “looking for a free lunch,” because this is not “mainstream opinion” in Taiwan, Zhu said.
Zhu is not a man to mince his words and his mocking of pro-unification groups, including the KMT, was merciless.
It is certainly true that those hangers-on who shuttle back and forth across the Taiwan Strait to sponge off Chinese largesse do not represent mainstream Taiwanese opinion. They sing from the same song sheet as Beijing and feel no allegiance whatsoever to Taiwan. All they are interested in is profiting from Taiwan’s problematic relationship with China.
Beijing must know that these freeloaders are unable to muster significant support for their cause. Yet it keeps extending invitations, so China’s leaders have clearly fallen for their fabrications, hook, line and sinker.
During Taiwan’s democratization, mainstream opinion broke free from the shackles of authoritarian rule and Taiwan eventually settled on a democratic government by, of and for the people.
Whether measured through opinion polls or elections, politics in Taiwan for the first time began to move along with public opinion rather than against it.
In democracies, politicians might be able to work against public opinion for a short period of time, but over the long-term they will be punished by the electorate, since democracies are largely transparent.
To secure the presidency, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) outwardly pandered to public opinion, but after eight years in government — during which he frequently rode roughshod over majority opinion — the KMT was unceremoniously turfed out of government by the Democratic Progressive Party.
What remains of Ma’s diminished party should serve as a lesson to those politicians who believe they can subvert public will. Taiwanese politics is based on the core principle that the public should be the master of its own affairs.
Whether one’s politics is tinged with blue, green, white or red, there is a shared belief among Taiwanese that no politician or political party should be allowed to use ideology to smother majority opinion.
The era when party dogma transcended popular will has well and truly been consigned to the dustbin of history.
Nevertheless, there remains a small minority who, despite having been roundly spurned by the electorate, are still unwilling to accept the majority decision of their compatriots. These political chameleons engage in the worst kind of opportunistic politics, then flee to Beijing to serve as “unification” turncoats.
The common denominator between these quislings and their Chinese hosts is that they are held in disdain by the majority of Taiwanese. Their “united front” public events and activities will unify no one but those who attend these events; this kind of self-absorbed navel-gazing has zero impact on the majority of Taiwanese.
Beijing’s embrace of those on Taiwan’s political margins will simply have the effect of further alienating the public from China. Taiwan’s pro-unification flunkies are well aware of this, but in search of a free lunch they act out their parts with as much verisimilitude as they can possibly muster.
China sees itself as a great power. Great powers should be able to accommodate contradictions. Yet, by allowing itself to be taken in by Taiwan’s fringe politicians, Beijing now holds a completely distorted picture of Taiwanese politics. In doing so, it has lost face as a “great power” and its efforts to win Taiwan over have been a complete waste.
Irrespective of Beijing’s motives, it needs to follow public opinion in Taiwan, and for this to have any real meaning, it must enter into dialogue with the governing party that the majority of Taiwanese elected to be their representative.
Taiwan is a democracy, not a one-party state like China. Beijing’s interlocutor is not an unelected autocrat, but a democratically elected representative of majority public opinion.
By choosing not to talk to Taiwan’s president, Chinese leaders are refusing to engage with Taiwan’s mainstream public opinion.
This means that they are effectively pursuing a “united front” strategy that seeks to push Taiwan further away from China — to engage with a minority while rebuffing the majority — a truly bizarre strategy.
From former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) to Ma, the KMT has used a series of political formulas, such as “‘one China,’ with each side having its own interpretation,” “eventual unification” or “both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to ‘one China,’” which have given Beijing a wholly false impression of cross-strait politics and mislead Chinese politicians into believing that if they shun public opinion and cozy up to pro-China politicians, they will be able to achieve their goal of unification.
During Ma’s eight years in office, the probability of unification with China certainly did increase. However, his administration’s sudden charge toward unification caused the pendulum to swing decisively the other way and was the catalyst for the Sunflower movement and widespread public anger.
By counting their chickens before they hatched, the KMT-Chinese Communist Party political nexus shot themselves in the foot.
If they are again making the lazy assumption that Taiwan’s pro-China political forces will bounce back from defeat and overturn the hard work of pro-Taiwanese politicians, they will learn that they cannot turn back the clock as they did once before.
Taiwan’s self-awareness is much stronger now; there is no more mileage left for pro-China politicians to sell out Taiwan.
If it does not wish to languish out in the cold indefinitely as a permanent opposition party, the KMT must implement a root-and-branch reform so that it becomes a party that respects and embraces majority opinion.
Those in the KMT who want to win an election again must split away and chart a different course from the party’s kamikaze wing of die-hard unification fundamentalists.
In 1991, then-president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) administration abolished the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion (動員戡亂時期臨時條款) and the so-called “10,000-year congress (萬年國會),” which had been elected in China in 1947. This opened a new chapter in the cross-strait relations.
Unfortunately, Beijing had other ideas and used military force to threaten Taiwanese voters during the 1996 presidential election.
China’s actions caused Lee to advocate a “special state-to-state relationship” between Taiwan and China. Later, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) advocated “one country on each side” of the Taiwan Strait.
What followed was a two-decade missed opportunity during which Beijing chose to reject the normalization of cross-strait relations.
During this time, the ball was sometimes in China’s court, sometimes in Taiwan’s, while the two nations struck an uneasy truce and relations moved forward on momentum alone.
Taiwan is now pinning its hopes on the US’ free and open Indo-Pacific strategy as the way forward to manage relations with China.
The impasse means that Taiwan is unable to become a normal state, while the cross-strait relationship also cannot normalize. Meanwhile, China is unable to normalize what it sees as a key part of its sovereign territory.
The small pro-unification camp in Taiwan is not alone in getting free lunches from China, they are joined by many opportunistic politicians and governments from around the world, leaving China unable to extricate itself from its long-standing “checkbook diplomacy.”
Who stands to gain from this situation? For the sake of the cross-strait relationship and China, it must come to an end.
Translated by Edward Jones
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