A Scottish perspective
In April 2017, I went to Scotland for my honeymoon. While paying for some purchases at a Superdry clothing store in Edinburgh, I handed my Republic of China passport to a male shop assistant to obtain a duty free receipt.
He asked me: “Are you Taiwanese?” After I said yes, the assistant, who said he was from Glasgow, proceeded to provide a self-assured analysis of cross-strait relations:
“Taiwan and China are not the same country. Although China claims Taiwan as part of its sovereign territory, Taiwan is a sovereign and independent nation,” he said.
Just like the relationship between Scotland and the rest of the UK, in his eyes, Scotland and the UK are not the same country.
He said: “Although England says that Scotland is a part of the UK, eventually Scotland will become a genuinely independent country through another independence referendum. China wants to trap Taiwan in a straitjacket by using the “one China” principle — come on, give me a break.”
After I finished listening, I could not help but gasp in admiration at this young Scottish man’s understanding of the cross-strait relationship. Not only did he understand that Taiwan is its own country, he also knew that Taiwanese must grudgingly submit to China’s “one China” principle framework.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has clearly misunderstood the voting intentions of the Taiwanese public in the Nov. 24 local elections. It was a repudiation of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) and the Cabinet’s performance in government to date, not an endorsement of the so-called “1992 consensus” — even less so an acknowledgment of “one China” (which abroad is universally recognized to mean the People’s Republic of China).
Beijing needs to understand that voters in the local elections were registering their concerns about the economy, not voting on cross-strait politics.
All Taiwanese recognize two things: first, the virtue of democratic government and, second, that Taiwan is not the same country as China. Xi should give up trying to peddle the “one China” principle to Taiwan. After all, it has been tried in Hong Kong with “one country, two systems” — and has been an unmitigated failure.
The Tsai administration would do well to study the 2014 Scottish independence referendum held under then-British prime minister David Cameron.
Shih Yu-hsuan
Changhua County
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