There is something of a mystique surrounding the so-called “1992 consensus,” the idea that representatives of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) in 1992 met in Hong Kong and agreed to disagree on what “China” means.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) insists that it is used as a prerequisite for talks between Taiwan and China, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has a real problem letting it go.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) appears obsessed with it. Former KMT chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) tried to retire it two years ago, but the attempt ultimately cost him his job. KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) went big, trying to jettison it in Washington during his recent US trip, calling it a “non-consensus consensus.”
Chu’s move was an audacious, and likely intentional, public flogging of the concept meant to impress not the US, but Taiwanese politicians and the electorate back home, just before the upcoming nine-in-one elections.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) acknowledges it as a “historical fact,” albeit with hazy details.
The “1992 consensus” — in Taiwan used to refer to the idea that there is only “one China,” with each side of the Taiwan Strait having its own interpretation of what that means — has a habit of cropping up around elections.
In 2000, the KMT suffered the catastrophic blow of losing the presidential election, quite literally the first time it had ever lost power in an election to another political entity. Former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) invented the term “1992 consensus” just after that election, presumably to remind the electorate what they were missing.
The “consensus” was the mainstay of Ma’s pro-China stance, and the context for the KMT’s rout in the 2014 nine-in-one elections.
It reared its ugly head again in 2015, when Ma was exiting center stage and it was quite apparent that Chu was to lose the 2016 presidential election to Tsai, with Ma insisting on meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Singapore before he left office.
The pro-localization media in Taiwan lambasted Ma for only mentioning “one China” and not adding the phrase “with each side having its interpretation of what that means.” Criticism was also levied at Xi, as it was suspected that he had cynically dropped the second part and prevented Ma from saying it.
The media should have cut Xi some slack: One little detail that seems to have been lost in the creation of the “consensus” mystique is that the Chinese side never, ever agreed to the addition of each side having its own interpretation of what “one China” means, not even expressed verbally, and certainly not in written form.
The Chinese side would not need to, as it was always sure what it meant by “one China,” and did not have time for any other interpretation. As far as it was concerned, “one China” meant the PRC and that Taiwan was part of that “one China.”
At the 1992 Hong Kong talks, in which the “consensus” was supposedly arrived at, the Chinese delegation would not even allow the ROC year numbering — which begins at 1912, the year the republic was founded — to appear on any document that it signed, as that would imply the existence of the ROC, which would run counter to the very principle it was trying to establish.
People who are still confused about what the “1992 consensus” is should not blame the CCP, but those who made Taiwanese believe that a “consensus” ever existed, namely Ma and his coconspirator, Su.
Now Chu has decided to do what Chiang failed to do, and bid the “non-consensus consensus” farewell, sacrificing it in the run-up to the nine-in-one elections.
Good luck with that.
Wherever one looks, the United States is ceding ground to China. From foreign aid to foreign trade, and from reorganizations to organizational guidance, the Trump administration has embarked on a stunning effort to hobble itself in grappling with what his own secretary of state calls “the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted.” The problems start at the Department of State. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has asserted that “it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power” and that the world has returned to multipolarity, with “multi-great powers in different parts of the
President William Lai (賴清德) recently attended an event in Taipei marking the end of World War II in Europe, emphasizing in his speech: “Using force to invade another country is an unjust act and will ultimately fail.” In just a few words, he captured the core values of the postwar international order and reminded us again: History is not just for reflection, but serves as a warning for the present. From a broad historical perspective, his statement carries weight. For centuries, international relations operated under the law of the jungle — where the strong dominated and the weak were constrained. That
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
RSS