Ho Ying-lu (何鷹鷺), a Chinese spouse who was a member of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Central Standing Committee, on Wednesday last week resigned from the KMT, accusing the party of failing to clarify its “one China” policy.
In a video released in October, Ho, wearing a T-shirt featuring a portrait of Mao Zedong (毛澤東), said she hoped that Taiwan would “soon return to the embrace of the motherland” and “quickly unify — that is my purpose and my responsibility.”
The KMT’s Disciplinary Committee on Nov. 19 announced that Ho had been suspended from her position on the committee, although she was allowed her to continue her duties while she pursued an appeal.
When she resigned last week, she said that despite KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) assertion that “we are all Chinese,” Cheng has not made it clear whether China means the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan.
“The KMT should clarify which China it means,” Ho said. “Cheng’s intention is to deceive people in Taiwan and China.“
As a member of KMT’s Central Standing Committee, the party’s top decisionmaking body, Ho’s accusation exposed a core contradiction of the KMT’s cross-strait policy. The KMT has long upheld the so called “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means stance, claiming that the ROC and the PRC coexist under a “one China” banner.
However, it has buried its head in the sand.
China insists that “one China” is the PRC alone, leaving no room for the ROC or Taiwan.
The KMT’s forced “one China” ambiguity is a deceptive political tactic to serve the party’s interests. On the one hand it caters to China’s whims to gain benefits in cross-strait interactions, while on the other it harms the credibility of those who uphold the independent sovereignty of Taiwan with its inconsistent “one China” claims, which includes the anachronistic — but self-flattering — territorial claim to both sides of the Strait.
China is intensifying its legal warfare to promote its “one China” principle in the international arena, while the KMT’s “one China” echo is helping Beijing to isolate Taiwan and even paving the way for a Chinese invasion.
Former KMT chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and other party members attended a military parade in Beijing on Sept. 3 as China commemorated the end of World War II and the Second Sino-Japanese War. Their attendance can be interpreted as an endorsement of the CCP’s misrepresentation that the PRC was the victor. That is a malicious overturning of the facts, as the ROC was in charge at the time. The distortion of history is part of Beijing’s false claim that “Taiwan is an inseparable part of China.”
The attendance of the KMT members at the Beijing parade also implied that the party acquiesces to authoritarian China’s goal of cross-strait unification, including through the use of force.
An even more worrying aspect is that the pro-China party is enlarging its “one China” ideology to the point of affecting policymaking, putting Taiwan’s security and dignity at risk.
While other nations are increasing their defense budgets and upgrading their self-defense capabilities to counter threats from authoritarian regimes, the KMT is aligning itself with other pro-China parties and criticizing Taiwan’s self-defense deployments.
The KMT’s new leader said that Taiwan was “playing with fire” as the party blocked a proposal to increase defense spending. The party has compromised national sovereignty and is silent in the face of China’s military threats.
The KMT has also proposed amendments to the Nationality Act (國籍法) to exempt Chinese spouses from regulations requiring them to renounce foreign nationalities to hold public office.
The policy is a foundational legal requirement to ensure that public officials are loyal to a single country: Taiwan.
The pro-China nature of the proposed legislative change triggered concerns over national security and a push toward Sinicization.
The words and actions of a Chinese spouse have exposed the true nature of the KMT and the “emperor’s new clothes” nature of its cross-strait policies.
Taiwanese must see through the political fraudulence of pro-China forces threatening the nation’s democracy and sovereignty.
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