This year marks the 40th anniversary of China’s “Message to Compatriots in Taiwan.” As in the past, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Jan. 2 delivered a speech. In the otherwise hackneyed speech, Xi for the first time proposed “Xi’s five points” in a bid to explore a “Taiwanese version of the one country, two systems framework” to achieve unification through peaceful means.
Xi also stressed the “one country, two systems” policy and modified the definition of the so-called “1992 consensus” to “the spirit of seeking common ground and shelving differences” by which “both sides of the Strait belong to one China and will work jointly to seek national unification.”
In a clear-cut response to Xi’s proposal of “one country, two systems,” President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who the previous day had proposed “four musts” as a prerequisite for cross-strait exchanges, said that Taiwan would never accept Beijing’s version of the “1992 consensus,” because it in effect translates to “one China” and “one country, two systems.” Opposing authoritarian dictatorship with democracy and freedom highlights the divergence between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, and shows that there are few similarities.
By borrowing terms from modern Internet slang, Xi’s speech was no more than a worthless post with political propaganda, filled with lies incongruent with historical fact and abounding in fanatical Chinese nationalist sentiment. As grandiloquent as it could be, the single-minded goal was to summon Taiwan to surrender, recreate the ancient Qin and Han dynasties, and bring about the great rejuvenation of the so-called Zhonghua minzu (中華民族, “Chinese ethnic group”).
In other words, the speech attempted to equate the incorporation of Taiwan into China’s territory with the mission of Chinese nationalism and use this to fabricate a justification for the annexation of Taiwan.
However, China’s territorial claim on Taiwan does not have any foundation in history. It is simply an extension of the expansionist reflex innate to the communist empire.
This reasoning is planted on a foundation of nationalism and historic imaginings that runs completely parallel and in no way intersects with democratic Taiwan, whose raison d’etre is to promote public well-being, and systemic design and operations; a state that is dependent on public opinion, and that can guarantee the public’s rights, interests and welfare.
This also explains why the Chinese leader wore such a solemn face and spoke in an impassioned tone as he read to the “compatriots in Taiwan” word-by-word, as if he were a religious leader delivering an oracle.
In the eyes of Taiwanese, he looked rather like a judge at a court of inquisition in medieval Europe, proclaiming that democratic Taiwan was a heretic and ordering it to convert to orthodoxy. Gone was the sentiment that “blood from the motherland is thicker than water,” while sympathy for Taiwanese “compatriots” was replaced by an austere atmosphere implying that surrender is required for survival and resistance would mean death.
China is trying to use its “one country, two systems” framework to cover up the differences in system, culture and values between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, but denies Taiwanese the autonomy to determine their own fate. This not only runs counter to the fundamental principles that constitute a modern nation, but also the spirit of democracy, which requires that public approve of its leaders.
This is no different than marriage by capture or by force, which Taiwanese naturally would never accept. Moreover, “one country, two systems” might have had some attraction before sovereignty over Hong Kong and Macau was transferred to China. Today, Hong Kong and Macau are nominally self-administered “special administrative regions,” but in practice there is nothing special about them, apart from the fact that they have been Sinicized, both politically and economically.
The rule of law and free economy that were so highly admired and praised in the past now exist in name alone, and the administrations now have to take their orders from the central government in the “motherland,” while transgressions are strictly prohibited. As implementation of “one country, two systems” has failed so miserably, how can China be so thick-skinned and shameless as to call on the Taiwanese to also “return to the fold”?
In addition to rejecting the “one country, two systems” framework, Taiwan must also acknowledge two dreadful scenarios for forcefully drawing Taiwan and China into the same trajectory. Only if China undergoes democratic reform, thus eliminating systemic and value differences between the two sides followed by a free choice by the public, would a merger be possible.
The other scenario is that China forces a disastrous unification using military force to occupy and annex Taiwan. The first scenario is highly unlikely, while the risk must never be ruled out that the second might occur. There is still a risk that the Chinese leader’s manipulation of radical populism will cause a misjudgement and trigger war.
There has never been a path toward democratic reform since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Although reform and opening up policies have brought significant economic achievements, talk of political reform remains prohibited.
China seems to have regressed to the ideologies of the Mao Zedong (毛澤東) era, especially since Xi took power, while it has used the Internet to build a digital authoritarian system giving the government total control over the public. This ultimate dictatorship and authoritarianism has given birth to an Orwellian empire.
In The China Order: Centralia, World Empire and the Nature of Chinese Power, US-based Chinese political science academic Wang Fei-ling (王飛凌) describes the PRC as “a reincarnated Qin-Han polity with a new autocracy, a Leninist-Stalinist party-state or partocracy.”
According to Wang, “the PRC Qin-Han polity has been struggling against the China that had been greatly transformed by the previous century, and externally the outside world for its regime survival and security.”
From this perspective, the rise of the Chinese empire will enslave Chinese and treat the whole world as its enemy. As Xi connects national unification with the reinvigoration of Chinese, exerting pressure squarely on Taiwan, he is also indirectly challenging the democratic world order.
The rise of China is not only a matter of life and death for Taiwan, it is also a threat that the whole world must face together. Only by placing China’s rise within this context would Taiwan be able to find a niche for survival on the greater global strategic game board and shake off the “one country, two systems” threat.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
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