A year before Britain handed Hong Kong to China, then-president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) hailed the “one country, two systems” plan for the city as a model for the country to one day unify with Taiwan.
Taiwan would get “a high degree of autonomy” — the same pledge China used for Hong Kong — while keeping legislative and independent judicial power, and its own armed forces, according to Jiang’s speech, copies of which were distributed at Hong Kong’s handover center in 1997.
For Taiwan though, the proposal has never been an option. Even the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — a vestige of the losing side in China’s civil war and the main force backing eventual unification — has rejected the model. Making President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) task even more daunting is a drastic shift in the consensus in Taiwan against any form of integration with China, thanks to the nation’s growing sense of nationhood and to the Chinese Communist Party’s sweeping crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong.
Photo: Bloomberg
China’s handling of Hong Kong shows “all promises of autonomy and respect for local conditions will be violated,” said Steve Tsang (曾銳生), director of the China Institute at SOAS University of London, who has written books on Hong Kong and Taiwan. “It becomes very difficult even for advocates for greater engagement with the mainland in Taiwan itself to be able to sustain that argument.”
On July 1, China celebrated the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover, the halfway mark in the 50 years of autonomy enshrined in a treaty cementing China’s deal with Britain. The UK has said China breached commitments made under the deal, but Xi called “one country, two systems” a success and has personally endorsed it as the model under which he intends to take over Taiwan — by force, if necessary.
The dispute over Taiwan’s sovereignty is the main issue that risks one day leading to war between the US and China, with calls growing among American politicians for a commitment to get involved if Beijing invades the island. China has steadily ramped up its military pressure in recent years, regularly sending warplanes near Taiwan and warning the US that the strait separating the island from Fujian province isn’t international waters.
Last November, the Communist Party affirmed the framework for “resolving the Taiwan question” in a landmark historical resolution. Xi may further articulate his goals for Taiwan during a once-in-five-year Communist Party Congress later this year, when he’s expected to secure a third term as president.
ONE COUNTRY, NO THANKS
Beijing’s suppression of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests has underscored key differences with Taiwan, where the 2014 Sunflower movement demonstrations successfully stopped legislation to closely integrate the economy with China. The nation has since strengthened its image as a liberal bastion with a female leader where gay marriage is legal, just as China’s relations with the West have deteriorated over everything from its support for Russia to its treatment of the LGBTQ community and Uighurs in Xinjiang.
There is little support in Taiwan for a political union with China, according to the Election Study Center at Taipei’s National Chengchi University. Since 1997, the percentage of the population that backs formal independence has doubled to more than 30 percent, while support for unification has more than halved to single digits.
“The idea that the PRC will evolve into something more free and democratic seems increasingly unlikely to a larger and larger share of the population,” said Nathan Batto, an academic who helps administer the Election Study Center poll, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “Taiwan is fiercely democratic, and the repression of Hong Kong and Xi Jinping’s concentration of power over the last decade have made it clear that limited government, much less full democracy, is fundamentally incompatible with the PRC.”
Even those in Taiwan who favor eventual unification “are attracted by the grand history, tradition and culture of China,” he added. “Very few of them are attracted by this repressive PRC regime.”
While Britain ruled much of Hong Kong under a lease that expired in 1997, Taiwan isn’t subject to any such legal arrangement. Proponents of independence say it should get to choose its own fate, arguing it was never fully ruled by the Qing Dynasty, which ceded it to Japan in the nineteenth century.
“Only 25 years have passed, and what China promised in the past, ‘unchanged for 50 years,’ is no longer true,” Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) told reporters in Taipei on Friday. “We know that we should stick to guarding Taiwan’s sovereignty, freedom and democracy as China’s ‘one country, two systems’ can’t stand the test.”
NATIONAL SECURITY LAW
Shifting sentiment in Taiwan, especially among younger generations that predominantly identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese, has bolstered support for President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which asserts the island is already a de facto independent nation awaiting broader international recognition.
The KMT, which has never given up its goal of unifying with China since fleeing to Taiwan in 1949, has also rejected “one country, two systems.”
In 1987, then-KMT President Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) suggested an alternative to China’s model for unification called “one country, better system” — whereby the people of China and Taiwan choose which system of government they prefer.
But Xi isn’t budging.
“The concept of ‘peaceful reunification and one country, two systems’ is the best approach to realizing national reunification,” Xi said in a landmark speech on Taiwan in January 2019. “It embodies the Chinese wisdom that we thrive by embracing each other, gives full account to Taiwan’s reality and is conducive to the long-term stability in Taiwan after reunification.”
The speech was seen as a major turning point in recent cross-strait relations. Xi’s clear articulation of ‘one country, two systems’ as the only path the Communist Party is willing to consider punctured any illusions that Beijing may be willing to allow unification to occur under an alternative model more acceptable to Taiwan.
Yet since Xi’s speech, Taiwan’s economy has prospered, thanks to a response to the coronavirus that avoided a full lockdown and allowed growth and exports to expand, in contrast to some of the heavy-handed curbs seen in China. Taiwan’s economic growth in 2020 outpaced China’s for the first time in 30 years.
RUSSIA’S INVASION
“Freedom, democracy and opposition to ‘one country, two systems’ have become common denominators within Taiwanese society,” said Christina Lai (賴潤瑤) of the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica in Taipei. “This consensus means we have a comparative advantage compared to Hong Kong because Beijing has never achieved unification with Taiwan. That gives the Taiwanese public a really important role at the negotiating table.”
China has ended most contacts with Taiwan, angered by Tsai’s stance that she is willing to sit down and talk only if Beijing drops its precondition that Taipei accept it is part of “one China.”
Concerns about the island’s fate have grown in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The unexpectedly strong response to Moscow’s aggression by both Ukraine and the international community will have taught Beijing to plan well and avoid being underprepared, said Tsang from SOAS.
“The reality is that Xi Jinping will try to catch Taiwan through a combination of diplomacy and intimidation, and if diplomacy backed up by intimidation cannot work, then it will do whatever it takes, even using force,” Tsang said. “How can he achieve the China dream of national rejuvenation if he does not take what he calls the ‘sacred territory of Taiwan.’”
Taiwan, once relegated to the backwaters of international news media and viewed as a subset topic of “greater China,” is now a hot topic. Words associated with Taiwan include “invasion,” “contingency” and, on the more cheerful side, “semiconductors” and “tourism.” It is worth noting that while Taiwanese companies play important roles in the semiconductor industry, there is no such thing as a “Taiwan semiconductor” or a “Taiwan chip.” If crucial suppliers are included, the supply chain is in the thousands and spans the globe. Both of the variants of the so-called “silicon shield” are pure fantasy. There are four primary drivers
The sprawling port city of Kaohsiung seldom wins plaudits for its beauty or architectural history. That said, like any other metropolis of its size, it does have a number of strange or striking buildings. This article describes a few such curiosities, all but one of which I stumbled across by accident. BOMBPROOF HANGARS Just north of Kaohsiung International Airport, hidden among houses and small apartment buildings that look as though they were built between 15 and 30 years ago, are two mysterious bunker-like structures that date from the airport’s establishment as a Japanese base during World War II. Each is just about
Japan is celebrated for its exceptional levels of customer service. But the behavior of a growing number of customers and clients leaves a lot to be desired. The rise of the abusive consumer has prompted authorities in Tokyo to introduce the country’s first ordinance — a locally approved regulation — to protect service industry staff from kasuhara — the Japanese abbreviated form of “customer harassment.” While the Tokyo ordinance, which will go into effect in April, does not carry penalties, experts hope the move will highlight a growing social problem and, perhaps, encourage people to think twice before taking out their frustrations
Two years ago my wife and I went to Orchid Island off Taitung for a few days vacation. We were shocked to realize that for what it cost us, we could have done a bike vacation in Borneo for a week or two, or taken another trip to the Philippines. Indeed, most of the places we could have gone for that vacation in neighboring countries offer a much better experience than Taiwan at a much lower price. Hence, the recent news showing that tourist visits to Pingtung County’s Kenting, long in decline, reached a 27 year low this summer came
RSS