Former Control Yuan president Wang Chien-shien recently announced that he would run in next year’s presidential election, saying that his reason is that “Taiwan and China are on the brink of war.”
If elected, he would enable China to achieve the goal of peaceful unification with Taiwan by 2025, Wang said.
Sun Yat-sen School president Chang Ya-chung (張亞中), a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) member who has announced his intention to run for president, has voiced his support for Wang.
An online poll showed that 40 percent of respondents think that this would make pan-blue voters “switch camp,” but it remains to be seen how many senior KMT members would throw their weight behind these moves.
Wang’s “unification” plan is the inevitable result of anti-US, pro-China narratives promoted by the KMT. Outside the party’s echo chamber, Wang’s cross-strait policy proposal appears to come from a parallel universe.
However, such proposals are no surprise to people who have been paying close attention to the foreign and cross-strait policy schemes put forward by the KMT and pro-unification supporters in the past few years.
To the KMT’s understanding, cross-strait tensions are caused by the governing Democratic Progressive Party, the US, Japan, Europe and other democratic countries, while China is the “benign patriarch” that seeks peace and prosperity. As Taiwan keeps “provoking” China by bolstering its military capabilities and diplomacy, the threat of war naturally looms when it does not adopt the KMT’s policy of befriending China and rejecting the US.
It is only natural that a fossil like Wang says something “clever” and ludicrous like “the only solution to Taiwan’s predicament is unification” with China.
A Mainland Affairs Council poll in October last year showed that only 1.7 percent of Taiwanese support “speedy unification.” With this in mind, how would Wang push for unification by 2025?
The poll also showed that only 8.7 percent support unification “in the future,” while a similar poll by National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center showed that 7.2 percent of Taiwanese support “unification” and only 1.2 percent support “speedy unification.”
How deluded and out of touch with the public are the so-called “blue elite” and “blue intelligentsia” to come up with such proposals? Perhaps their proposals are no longer made with the interests of Taiwanese in mind.
Wang has not only set the goal of unification, he even came up with a procedure. Next year, he would set up a special team to incorporate opinions from different factions and negotiate with China, and sign a peace deal by 2025, completing the “unification” agenda, he said.
Wang’s concept of “unification negotiations” is essentially the same as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) “democratic negotiation” plan.
Under that plan, Beijing says it would invite Taiwanese “representatives” to China for negotiations. Wang’s plan is even more considerate, as he suggests to hold voluntary negotiations in Taiwan and send the results to China for “political negotiations,” while bearing in mind China’s most prized “one China” principle.
If major players in the KMT such as its chairman, Eric Chu (朱立倫), New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) and others do not have the courage to reject the delusions spouted by Wang, Chang, former KMT chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and 1.2 to 1.7 percent “speedy unification” supporters, they will eventually be marginalized by the majority of Taiwanese.
Jethro Wang is a former secretary at the Mainland Affairs Council.
Translated by Rita Wang
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