The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Sunday last week held its annual national congress. The event failed to attract too much attention, possibly because observers anticipated that — as the old saying goes — you cannot teach an old dog new tricks.
What attracted the most attention at the congress was KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang’s (江啟臣) proposal for the party’s new discourse on cross-strait relations.
Since Chiang did not dare to cross China’s “red line” by abolishing the so-called “1992 consensus,” supported by former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and certain other party heavyweights, his push for reform on the party’s cross-strait policy was in vain.
Keeping the “consensus” also shows that Chiang is in the embarrassing position of being as “outdated and inflexible” as he had once described the “consensus.”
Take a look at the remarks of Chen Li-hsu (陳麗旭), a Tainan delegate to the congress, who suggested that, since the KMT had brought the treasures of the National Palace Museum from China to Taiwan, the museum’s holdings and ticket revenues should go to the party, serving as a new income source.
Chen made the wild claim as if Taiwan were still under Martial Law, had never been through a democratization process and the nation’s public assets belonged to the KMT, while all party delegates were powerful players in a party-state system as they had once been.
The refusal of the KMT’s heavyweights and hawkish factions to face the changing times is understandable.
However, if the party still wants someday to regain power, it urgently needs to get with the plot. It cannot allow itself to be frozen in time due to the stubborn insistence of a small number of its members.
If the KMT continues to embrace the “1992 consensus,” while arguing that the “one China” part of it actually refers to the Republic of China (ROC), it will fade away.
In particular, the Constitution has become a source of contradiction in the past few years, and the calls for amending it, or even writing a new constitution and changing the nation’s name, are heard increasingly more often.
Under such circumstances, as the nation’s largest opposition party, the KMT has kept changing its political stance on a series of issues, such as lowering the legal age of adulthood from 20 to 18, and abolishing the Examination Yuan and the Control Yuan.
Yet it does not seem to know where it is going.
Moreover, since the majority of the public is opposed to being seen as Chinese, the KMT’s discourse on “one China” as referring to the ROC runs counter to popular opinion in Taiwan.
By taking such a position, the party might be suspected of echoing the People’s Republic of China’s “united front” propaganda, and this pro-China image could hurt the KMT badly.
At the opening of the congress, the KMT played a video reviewing what it has changed and not changed over the years, but it revealed the party’s historical tragedy: The KMT has always been driven by a need to move forward, but it is reluctant to take the initiative to transform itself.
Once it encounters a major defeat, it simply flees to the next location with the troops it has under its direct control.
This can be proven by its relocation to Taiwan, as well as its embrace of die-hard supporters of outdated policies.
Chen Kuan-fu is a graduate student at National Taipei University’s Department of Law.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations