The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) National Congress, which took place on July 24, unanimously passed a resolution nominating New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) as the party’s presidential candidate.
Hou has said that he supports the so-called “1992 consensus” and that he would take part in a protest march against Taiwan independence.
Taiwan People’s Party’s presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on July 18 said that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family, and there is room for negotiations between the two sides. He also said that Taiwan cannot achieve de jure independence. How sad for Taiwan to watch these two rival candidates singing China’s tune.
Hou and Ko have both called for restarting legislative deliberation on the cross-strait service trade agreement, which was signed in 2013, but never ratified by the Legislative Yuan.
According to National Taiwan University economics professor Jang Show-ling (鄭秀玲), the trade agreement was designed to complement China’s 12th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and its strategy for developing the Economic Zone of Taiwan Straits Western Shore by restricting most Taiwanese investment to China’s Fujian Province. Hou’s and Ko’s calls for reviving the trade agreement only serve to reveal their true intentions.
The plan of restarting the cross-strait service trade agreement is coupled with a political aim. In addition to this, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has paid substantial attention to academic circles. A day ahead of the CCP’s 102nd founding anniversary, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) said that a grander historical viewpoint must be consolidated, so that the CCP, with a much wider and forward-looking perspective, should be able to grasp the course of the world’s development and the correct way ahead. It is reported that the CCP has been enhancing its research on Taiwan’s history, with an attempt to command the power of academic discourse in the field. Through subject matter and interpretive perspective, the CCP is trying to change Taiwan’s desinicized viewpoint in history studies.
The journal Taiwan History Studies (台灣歷史研究), managed by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and published by its Institute of Modern History and Social Sciences Academic Press, was officially launched in 2021. It is China’s first academic journal devoted to publishing the results of research into Taiwan’s history.
Zhang Haipeng (張海鵬), director of the academy’s center for Taiwan history studies, has said that the journal would adhere to the correct political direction and theoretical and academic orientations in publishing academic achievements in the field of research into Taiwan’s history, as well as promoting academic exchanges and serving the nation’s major policies about Taiwan.
In other words, the core spirit of this academic journal is the assumption that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China and that Taiwan’s history is part of Chinese history. The journal was founded to oppose the historical viewpoints and ideology of Taiwanese independence and reversing Taiwan’s “desinicized” view of history.
Moreover, as early as in 1996, the CCP launched the China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database (CNKI), a key national information construction project. With the entire nation’s effort devoted to the project, China’s intellectual resources have been digitized on a large scale. Platforms based on a global network of resource-sharing, as well as technologies of building a world-leading Chinese digital library, have been developed on China’s initiative. By searching online on the CNKI platform, users can download a great amount of research resources, such as journals, theses and dissertations, conference papers, almanacs, statistics, books, standards and patents. Given that studies on Taiwan’s history are mostly conducted in Mandarin Chinese, Taiwan’s research, under China’s human wave attack, might not be able to benefit from academic discourse in the international community.
Athenian historian Thucydides once said that the duty of history studies is to seek truth. On Historical Method, a seminal work for historians, also demands that historians ensure that history be kept objective and unbiased.
However, the CCP appropriates academic research as a tool of “united front” tactics to encroach on Taiwan, not only affecting academic freedom, but also damaging the status quo of the Taiwan Strait. In this vein, Hou and Ko must answer the following question: Do you agree with the CCP’s move of annexing Taiwan through the means of academic research?
Hou and Ko should also remember what happened only a few years ago. The controversial cross-strait service trade agreement led to the outburst of the Sunflower Movement.
In 2015, when the KMT tried to revise the high-school history curriculum in line with a China-centric historical viewpoint, students protested against the non-transparent curriculum guideline changes.
If Hou and Ko choose to go against the grain of Taiwan’s mainstream public opinion, the loss would certainly outweigh the gain.
Ho Cheng-en is a policy researcher.
Translated by Julian Clegg and Emma Liu
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