Next year’s presidential election is bearing down on the nation.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) leaders have been debating the best way forward for Taiwan within the contentious context of a US-China trade spat and increasing military tensions in the South China Sea. There is talk among some of exploring the possibility of signing a peace treaty with China, while others seem to prefer the idea of making a peace declaration.
There is little to recommend for either idea.
First, there is the tried and tested military principle of “do not hope that your enemy will not come; ensure that you are prepared for its attack.” Ignoring the wisdom of this approach and instead trusting in a hollow “agreement” or “declaration” is either underestimating the devious nature of the Chinese Communist Party or overestimating its trustworthiness.
Second, a peace treaty is by no means an assurance of peace: History is littered with peace treaties that have been thrown aside and abandoned by those who signed them. Neither do people have to look too far into the past to see examples of this.
Several examples can be seen in the run-up to World War II. Poland signed a nonaggression pact with Germany on Jan. 26, 1934, but this did not stop Adolf Hitler’s armies from invading the country on Sept. 1, 1939.
Just before that invasion, the Soviet Union on Aug. 23, 1939, signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact — officially known as the Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — but German tanks still rolled into Russian territory on June 22, 1941.
Before this, on Sept. 29, 1938, then-British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, then-French prime minister Edouard Daladier, Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini signed the Munich Agreement, but Germany still invaded France on May 10, 1940, and on Aug. 13 of that year German bombers launched an attack on radar stations situated along the British coast.
Third, China models itself as a country based in “socialism with Chinese characteristics” — these characteristics being completely at odds with the nature and appearance of the values of democracy, liberty and human rights as acknowledged in other countries.
Democracy under socialism with Chinese characteristics allowed Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to become “Emperor Xi,” a ruler with no term limits; liberty under socialism with Chinese characteristics allowed tanks during the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, 1989, to crush the legs of a young person attempting to rescue a female university student who had fallen to the ground; human rights under socialism with Chinese characteristics shuts Nobel Peace Prize laureates and human rights lawyers behind bars; and so-called “re-education camps” under socialism with Chinese characteristics entails gathering up Uighurs and brainwashing them.
You would have to be certifiably insane to think that signing any kind of peace pact — regardless of whether it is called a peace agreement or a peace declaration — with a government operating under socialism with Chinese characteristics — and which promises to “look after” its “Taiwanese compatriots” — would end well.
Would such a move bring peace? Or would it consign Taiwanese to servitude?
Chang Kuo-tsai is a former deputy secretary-general of the Taiwan Association of University Professors.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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