On March 18, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Tai-san (邱太三) made three appeals to the Chinese Communist Party and mentioned the notion of “constructive ambiguity.” In response, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said that to develop peacefully, the two sides of the Taiwan Strait should return to the so-called “1992 consensus.”
Coincidentally, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) also said that the “1992 consensus,” based on the Constitution of the Republic of China (ROC), is a kind of constructive ambiguity that the KMT was practicing in the past.
Former legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said that if both sides of the Strait put their minds to good use, it would produce a “faint beauty” that both sides should be able to accept.
The KMT has always interpreted the “1992 consensus with no consensus” as meaning “one China, with each side having its own interpretation.”
However, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in a 2019 speech interpreted the “consensus” as meaning “both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to ‘one China’ and should work together to achieve national unification” and that the “one country, two systems” is the best way to achieve that goal. This shows how differently the two sides view the “1992 consensus.”
The KMT caucus in October proposed a motion on “resuming diplomatic relations between Taiwan and the US,” which was approved unanimously by ruling and opposition legislators.
Chiang said in an interview that “Taiwan and the US used to have diplomatic relations.”
However, with whom did the US break diplomatic relations on Jan. 1, 1979 — China or Taiwan?
Furthermore, whenever an election is approaching, KMT candidates at all levels energetically wave the national flag and loudly voice their support for the “Republic of China.”
However, when proposing a motion in the legislature to resume diplomatic relations between Taiwan and the US, they no longer insist on calling the nation “China.” It makes one wonder how clear the KMT really is about its own national orientation and identity.
During the last legislative session, a group of lawmakers headed by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) proposed a constitutional amendment that would change the opening words of the Additional Articles of the ROC Constitution from “to meet the requisites of national unification” to “to meet the requisites of national development,” and also change the wording of Article 4 of the Constitution from “the territory of the Republic of China according to its existing national boundaries” to “the extent of the territory of the Republic of China is the area within which the Constitution has effect.”
Opinion polls show that about 70 percent of people in Taiwan identify as Taiwanese and not Chinese, while 80 percent think the Constitution should be amended to define the nation’s territory as “Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu.”
The objective of constitutional amendments should be to guide the nation toward normalization, so that it is no longer vaguely defined, and Taiwanese can resist anti-democratic external forces.
Constitutional amendments should also provide more written safeguards for new-generation human rights and make government institutions more complete.
Hopefully, the Legislative Yuan’s Constitutional Amendment Committee can go beyond a focus on citizenship rights for 18-year-olds and hold more comprehensive discussions about a blueprint for a new Constitution for Taiwan.
Lin Jun-jie is a student in Chung Yuan Christian University’s Department of Financial and Economic Law.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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