Taiwan is governed by the rule of law. China is, too, but only to the extent that the law can be bent to the whims of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) are separate entities — politically, economically and historically, each with their own legal systems — regardless of what Chinese Central Foreign Affairs Commission Director Wang Yi (王毅) said at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday last week, and what delusions the CCP would have the international community subscribe to.
Adhering to the rule of law requires a high bar to be maintained, respecting legal precedent and constitutionality. Taiwan’s problem is that legal interpretations and common sense pertaining to the ROC’s relationship with the PRC occasionally clash, and clash spectacularly.
So it is with the case of a PRC national who in August 2018 died tragically while on a cycling holiday in Taiwan. The cause of death was reportedly electrocution via contact with a street light in Kaohsiung’s Lujhu District (路竹). His family sued, and a judge on Friday last week ruled that the state was liable to pay compensation of NT$4.63 million (US$151,783) to the man’s family.
What has proven so controversial, and which exemplifies the “spectacular clash,” is the judge’s reasoning that, according to the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), PRC citizens are legally regarded as ROC nationals. The judge quoted a letter written in 1993 by the then-minister of justice, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), stating that the act does not prohibit “people from the mainland area” from seeking state compensation in Taiwan under the provisions of the State Compensation Act (國家賠償法).
Lawyer Huang Di-ying (黃帝穎) said the ruling was unsound and should be appealed, and pointed out the inherent absurdities and pitfalls if it is allowed to stand.
What is interesting is that Ma’s letter was written at a time when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — in which he was, and is, a senior figure — had yet to be removed from its uninterrupted control of Taiwan since the end of World War II and the national narrative. The position he espoused was fully consistent with the absurd claims of the ROC to the territory governed by the CCP. Those claims were unrealistic when he penned the letter; today they seem totally untethered from reality.
The problem is that, while they are illogical, they are legally coherent — albeit not indefensible — and backed by the ROC Constitution, first promulgated when the KMT was still governing China pre-1949. That, in a nutshell, is the reason for the apparent absurdity of the ruling on Friday last week.
Essentially, there are three actors in this drama: the PRC, represented by Wang, whose narrative is delusional and historically farcical; the version of the ROC espoused by the KMT, which is an anachronism in terms of common sense, although not in terms of the law or constitutionality; and the ROC as it is today, an independent, sovereign nation entirely separate from China, where common sense should preside, but does not.
The moral of the drama is this: It is impossible to understand Taiwan without understanding its complex relationship with the ROC and the PRC, held up by the Constitution and the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area, and acknowledging that to many Taiwanese, albeit in shrinking numbers, the narrative informing the judge’s ruling is perfectly coherent, even if untethered from today’s reality and common sense.
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