President William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday said that he hoped Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) would secure a consensus among the three main legislative parties on a joint statement on Taiwan’s stance regarding UN Resolution 2758.
US officials and the parliaments of Australia, the Netherlands and Italy have spoken out about the fact that Resolution 2758 does not mention Taiwan, does not touch upon the issue of whether the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has sovereignty over Taiwan, nor prevents Taiwan from seeking UN membership, so it would be a “serious issue” if Taiwan itself could not agree on a similar statement, Lai said during a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Central Standing Committee meeting.
Han had previously adjourned the discussion on the joint statement after the three parties — the DPP, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) — had proposed their own draft versions of a statement and sent the proposals for a second reading. He ran into some criticism for the adjournment, but the three parties have very different interpretations of what a statement should look like and, more importantly, different ideological reasons for this discrepancy.
It would take quite some hammering out between the three of them to reach a consensus. Unfortunately, if Lai really believes a consensus would look anything like a clear and straightforward denial of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) distorted interpretation of the resolution, he would likely be disappointed.
The DPP’s position is essentially in line with the US, Australian, Dutch and Italian statements, refuting the narrative being pushed by the CCP. Central to this argument is that the word “Taiwan” does not appear in the text of the UN resolution, which only undertakes to “expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek [蔣介石] from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all the organizations related to it.”
For the DPP, Taiwan has moved on from being governed by the “representatives of Chiang Kai-shek.” The CCP contends that those “representatives” are a reference to the government of the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan.
The CCP’s position happens to be one that the KMT is locked into, as it insists for ideological reasons that the ROC government has continued to exist uninterrupted, even after its retreat to Taiwan in 1949.
This is reflected in the differing DPP and KMT proposals: The former calls for the UN to allow Taiwan to join; the latter calls on it to allow the ROC to rejoin.
For the KMT, the problem lies not so much in the CCP’s interpretation of Resolution 2758, but in the fact that it was allowed to exist in the first place.
The TPP would prefer to sidestep the issue of the wording of the resolution altogether; it is calling instead on the Lai administration to step up its efforts to secure UN membership for the nation, whether it is called Taiwan or the ROC. It believes this focus on the resolution’s wording and various interpretations is a costly sideshow that would not reap any practical benefits.
This position is not without sympathy among some academics in Taiwan, who question the actual gains from this obsession with the narrative, even though the support of foreign governments is welcome. If one wonders why so much time and effort should be spent on the narrative, one need only ask the CCP, which has expended a lot of effort to push its interpretation of UN Resolution 2758, and with renewed urgency.
In this, the CCP is correct. Narrative is important. Winning the argument is crucial. The Lai administration is right to put so much effort into securing a joint statement in line with the consensus being voiced by countries supportive of Taiwan.
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