Any Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) politicians still harboring the misconception that they have the same definition as China of the so-called “1992 consensus” need look no further than recent statements from Chinese officials and academics to wake up from their self-delusion.
“The KMT over the past years has distorted the original meaning of the consensus by defining it as both sides acknowledging there is ‘one China,’ with each side having its own interpretation of what ‘China’ means. Such an explanation has deviated from the ‘one China’ principle,” Wang Zaixi (王在希), former deputy director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) and current vice chairman of the Beijing-based National Society of Taiwan Studies, told a forum on Tuesday last week.
“Acknowledging there is ‘one China’ without seeking unification is not the ‘1992 consensus,’” he added.
The next day, TAO spokesman An Fengshan (安峰山) echoed Wang’s remarks, telling a news conference that “adhering to the ‘one China’ principle and jointly striving for national unification is the proper definition of the ‘1992 consensus.’”
Can Beijing make it any clearer for consensus believers that the KMT’s definition was a complete fabrication?
During eight years in office, former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration based its entire cross-strait policy on the fictional “consensus.”
At the time, Chinese authorities — in an effort to curtail Taiwan’s pro-localization movement and fulfill their wish that a China-friendly Ma would steer the nation toward their “one China” goal — happily played along with Ma’s deception and refrained from publicly pointing out how different his definition was from theirs.
Wang’s and An’s remarks merely underscore the truth: The “consensus” has never existed.
In a Jan. 2 speech, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) stressed this truth when he said that “both sides of the Strait belong to one China, both are to strive for national unification — and that is the 1992 consensus.”
As early as July 2017, China’s Xinhua news agency exposed Ma’s lies about any “consensus” when it published guidelines banning Chinese media from using “Republic of China (ROC)” and Ma’s interpretation of the “1992 consensus.”
In short, Beijing has clearly eliminated any gray area between its “one China” principle and the “1992 consensus.”
When Xi proposed a “one country, two systems” framework for Taiwan in his speech, many senior pan-blue politicians, including KMT Legislator Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) — a great-grandson of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) — voiced their opposition.
Beijing has confirmed that it does not agree with the KMT’s definition of the “1992 consensus,” nor with “China” being interpreted as the ROC, so the KMT should stop lying to itself and to Taiwanese by saying that Chinese authorities agree to let both sides of the Taiwan Strait interpret “one China” in their own way.
Anyone still clamoring for Taiwan to accept the imaginary “consensus” — be they pan-blue grassroots supporters or KMT presidential hopefuls — is simply promoting Beijing’s political agenda, which aims to wipe the ROC off the map and annex Taiwan under the “one China” principle.
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