In the week leading up to the 30th anniversary of Taiwan’s first direct presidential elections, former Polish president Lech Walesa visited the nation.
Over the past three decades, he has come to Taiwan numerous times, the first being soon after the first direct election, delivering a speech at the Legislative Yuan on Nov. 1, 1996. He has consistently encouraged Taiwan to forge its own future and advocated for peace.
Walesa appeared at the Yushan Forum on Monday last week and met with President William Lai (賴清德) at the Presidential Office on the following day. On Thursday, he gave a speech at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Institute of Diplomacy and International Affairs.
At Monday’s forum, he said that there must be a “unification of the Chinese people,” but also said the Taiwanese must be the deciders of their own fate. In his speech at the institute on Thursday, he maintained that unification must happen, but said that Taiwan had already shown the world that it has good economic and political solutions, and therefore it should be Taiwan leading the unification efforts.
As for the model espoused by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which the CCP expects Taiwan to be eventually subjugated to, Walesa said that evidence shows that it is not working.
One could approach Walesa’s ideas as a thought experiment. Walesa was certainly not talking about a situation in which the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan “retakes the mainland” as advocated by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) — but what if Taiwan could dictate the terms for unification? The CCP intends to absorb Taiwan into its authoritarian structure, and such a structure can only have one master: For Beijing, there would be no room for negotiation, and no room for political reform.
On Oct. 5, 2024, days before Double Ten National Day, Lai mused in a speech that, since the ROC was several decades older than the People’s Republic of China, it was illogical to say that the PRC was the “motherland” of Taiwan, adding that it might be more accurate to say that the ROC is actually the “motherland” of those aged 75 or older — even in China. This was almost certainly only meant to be a thought experiment, too, to serve as pushback against the CCP narrative. Lai is uninterested in having Taiwan take political control over the territory of China.
Walesa’s ideas were avidly dissected in the media, albeit through the lens of ideological bias. The pro-Taiwan, pan-green media emphasized the parts about Taiwan being an economic and political exemplar, of the poor fit of communism in China and of the need for the Taiwanese to be the masters of their fate. The pro-China, pan-blue media spoke more of the idea that unification was the only way forward. Both of these miss the point.
In the Yushan forum speech, Walesa was not talking about “reunification” of China in the way that Chiang intended and which former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) sought to transition away from; neither was he talking about the “eventual unification” that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) now seeks; he was not even talking about the economic, political and national decoupling that Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party want to achieve.
Walesa was not talking about the unification of “China.” He specifically referred to the unification of the Chinese people, and on multiple occasions in his speech referred to the EU model of regional integration, of coming together in a format based on dialogue and the values of peace, for the good of all parties.
It was a message of hope, and one that the CCP should consider if it wants to ensure its own national security. As an ally, on equal footing within the context of regional integration, Taiwan would be of huge benefit to China.
Consider the alternative: As Richard D. Fisher noted in his On Taiwan column (“Iran-Venezuela lessons for Taiwan,” page 8, March 16), if the CCP does ever annex Taiwan in the way it intends, it would be even more vulnerable than it is now, regarded as an immediate threat to other democracies who would have “no choice but to combine in an anti-CCP alliance.”
Walesa’s words could be a thought experiment that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) might want to contemplate.
On March 22, 2023, at the close of their meeting in Moscow, media microphones were allowed to record Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) telling Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin, “Right now there are changes — the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years — and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Widely read as Xi’s oath to create a China-Russia-dominated world order, it can be considered a high point for the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea (CRINK) informal alliance, which also included the dictatorships of Venezuela and Cuba. China enables and assists Russia’s war against Ukraine and North Korea’s
After thousands of Taiwanese fans poured into the Tokyo Dome to cheer for Taiwan’s national team in the World Baseball Classic’s (WBC) Pool C games, an image of food and drink waste left at the stadium said to have been left by Taiwanese fans began spreading on social media. The image sparked wide debate, only later to be revealed as an artificially generated image. The image caption claimed that “Taiwanese left trash everywhere after watching the game in Tokyo Dome,” and said that one of the “three bad habits” of Taiwanese is littering. However, a reporter from a Japanese media outlet
Taiwanese pragmatism has long been praised when it comes to addressing Chinese attempts to erase Taiwan from the international stage. “Taipei” and the even more inaccurate and degrading “Chinese Taipei,” imposed titles required to participate in international events, are loathed by Taiwanese. That is why there was huge applause in Taiwan when Japanese public broadcaster NHK referred to the Taiwanese Olympic team as “Taiwan,” instead of “Chinese Taipei” during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics. What is standard protocol for most nations — calling a national team by the name their country is commonly known by — is impossible for
India is not China, and many of its residents fear it never will be. It is hard to imagine a future in which the subcontinent’s manufacturing dominates the world, its foreign investment shapes nations’ destinies, and the challenge of its economic system forces the West to reshape its own policies and principles. However, that is, apparently, what the US administration fears. Speaking in New Delhi last week, US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau warned that “we will not make the same mistakes with India that we did with China 20 years ago.” Although he claimed the recently agreed framework
RSS