Broadcasting Corp of China chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) has said that “voting for the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] means pushing the youth to the war front.”
His remarks are questionable at best and deeply problematic. There is also the possibility that Jaw has an ulterior motive.
China is the only country in the world that is constantly barking at and threatening Taiwan. As a result, if it should ever come to the situation that young Taiwanese are asked to take up arms and fight to the death to protect their country, and the freedoms and way of life that they hold dear, it is quite apparent that their one and only enemy would be China.
It is guaranteed that the only reason for Taiwanese to take up arms would be to stop China from invading Taiwan. It cannot be the other way round.
At a superficial level, the DPP, which has consistently rejected Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which has said that it wants “exchanges, not war” and believes that there is “one family across the Taiwan Strait,” seem to be different. One way of looking at this is that the DPP’s approach would lead to war, while the KMT’s would promote peace. In this sense, whether the youth goes to war would depend on the ruling party’s stance.
Jaw is calling on young people who do not want to take up arms to reassess their options and vote for the KMT, or arguably the agent of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Taiwan. His intent needs no explanation.
There is no such thing as a free lunch; one could extend this idea and say that free peace is even more unlikely to exist.
At the CCP’s 20th National Congress last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) reiterated the “one country, two systems” formula and said China would not renounce the use of force against Taiwan.
Negotiating peace is just a euphemism for surrender. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that “Ukraine is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space.”
When Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Ukraine had only two options: surrender or fight.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 did not satisfy Putin’s ambitions, and only encouraged him to invade Ukraine. If Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had chosen to surrender on Feb. 24, the war could have been avoided, but only temporarily.
The reason is simple: If Putin had been handed a victory, he could have been emboldened to repeat his tactic of annexing Crimea. Ukraine would have become Russia’s stepping stone to attack other countries, and Ukraine would have still been dragged into a war.
Russia has only a few allies, while many democratic states, such as the US, Japan, Australia, the UK, France, Germany and Finland, stand with Ukraine. Obviously, it is Russia that is caught in a dilemma, struggling to end the war.
Similarly, Beijing claims that “Taiwan is an inherent territory of China.”
If China attacks Taiwan, and the nation surrenders and becomes part of China, a war could be avoided only temporarily, as Xi’s ambition would only intensify, rather than being satisfied. He could continue to advance across the Pacific Ocean, sparking a confrontation with the US. Taiwan would become a pawn of China and fight on the front line against the US.
Taiwanese youth under China’s autocratic rule would undoubtedly engage in hostilities. Waging war against the democratic camp would only be disastrous.
As many leading democratic countries have become wary of China’s ambitions, they have changed their policy of appeasement to confrontation with Beijing.
The DPP as the ruling party openly opposes the “one country, two systems” formula, says no to China, sides with the US and Japan, and safeguards the nation under the aegis of the democratic camp.
This is in stark contrast to the KMT, whose members are pro-China, with some even kowtowing to Beijing. The KMT is dancing to the tune of China and antagonizing the international democratic community.
Taiwanese want freedom and democracy, not autocracy and communism. They must realize that Jaw’s remark is sugar-coated poison.
Chang Kuo-tsai is a retired National Hsinchu University of Education associate professor.
Translated by Sylvia Hsu
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