Earlier this month, US National Security Council Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell said that the US administration does not support Taiwanese independence. Supporters of independence should not become overly concerned, because Campbell was addressing Beijing.
As the saying goes: “Actions speak louder than words.” For example, three US senators in a C-17 military transport plane landed at Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) early last month, met with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and announced that Washington would donate COVID-19 vaccine doses to Taiwan.
The US made the move not only to thank Taiwan for its donation of masks when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out last year, but also to challenge China: “If Taiwan was a Chinese province as you claim, instead of an independent sovereign state, how could a US military plane directly enter your territory like this?”
Before the US made its donation, Japan quickly donated COVID-19 vaccine doses to Taiwan out of appreciation for Taiwan’s mask donation to Japanese. Of course, Tokyo’s move was also intended to send a signal to Chinese.
On Monday last week, Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso said: “Japan needs to defend Taiwan with the US if the island is invaded.” The next day, Japanese Minister of Defense Nobuo Kishi said that the Japanese government would make its judgement based on the actual circumstances and keep monitoring the Taiwan situation.
Perhaps their remarks can be seen as a conceptual extension of the US-Japan security treaty, as they advise China not to take any reckless action.
At the G7 summit in the UK last month, the seven national leaders’ support for Taiwan was a message to China, too.
How should “Taiwanese independence” be defined? After all, as Taiwan has always been an independent political entity, why should the US express support for its independence? Moreover, when visiting China in 1998, then-US president Bill Clinton said that he did not support Taiwanese independence. Later, when asked again by reporters after leaving China, Clinton told them that he had said he did not support Taiwanese independence, but not that he opposed it.
In response to Campbell’s claim that the US does not support Taiwanese independence, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs simply said that the “Republic of China (ROC), Taiwan is an independent sovereign state.” The ministry added the word “Taiwan” not only to include the name by which most people know the nation, but also to highlight Taiwan’s status as an independent state. The statement was made not only to Taiwanese, but also to the world, which certainly caught its meaning.
However, some independence advocates in Taiwan have condemned the Tsai administration as being a fake “Taiwanese independence” administration, brandishing it as a liar. They refuse to consider the foreign and domestic contexts, and the objective and subjective conditions of the moment, merely caring to achieve a new national title: the “Republic of Taiwan.”
In their eyes, all efforts to promote Taiwanese independence are illusory unless they lead to the announcement of a new national name. This might suggest that they are as inflexible on the issue as former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) was, but if they are merely putting on a show to gain support for their cause, that is an intelligent way to go about it.
Philosopher Immanuel Kant knew that politics was possible for anyone with intelligence, but that politics should also be an art and that it takes not just intelligence but flexibility to master that art.
Lee Hsiao-feng is an honorary professor of the National Taipei University of Education.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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