The pursuit of Taiwanese independence is “unrealistic,” which has led to fewer people advocating for Taiwan having independent status, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in a joint interview with three foreign media outlets, according to a transcript released by the Presidential Office yesterday.
“About 30 years ago, when I studied in the US, the movement for Taiwan’s independence was very popular in many places there. Nowadays, the number of people advocating for Taiwan’s independence has dwindled,” Ma said.
Some have even deemed the advocacy of Taiwanese independence a “box office flop,” Ma added.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
“Why so? Since Taiwan practices democracy, there is no need to advocate [an] unrealistic political ideal,” he said.
The Presidential Office yesterday released the Chinese-language transcript of the Oct. 28 interview conducted at Ma’s office with newspapers the US-based GlobalPost, Jyllands-Posten of Denmark and Sweden’s Dagens Industri. His answers on Taiwan’s independence were in response to questions from Jes Randrup Nielsen from the Jyllands-Posten.
Ma was asked what he considered to be a practical approach to cross-strait relations when more people in Taiwan identify themselves as Taiwanese, as opposed to identifying as being of Zhonghua minzu (中華民族, Chinese ethnicity), and also if he considered it reasonable for Taiwanese to reconcile two different political systems in “one China,” the transcript showed.
Evoking a statement he made in a CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour four years ago, Ma said: “Have you ever heard of any nation declaring independence twice?”
“There is no need to declare independence because we have been independent since 1912,” Ma said, referring to the establishment of the Republic of China (ROC).
After the US switched diplomatic recognition of the ROC as representing “China” to the People’s Republic of China in 1979, Ma said he wrote an essay in which he argued that Taiwan should develop as a democracy without moving toward independence.
“That is what we have been doing right now. As for the issue you [Nielsen] brought up regarding identification, it would disappear as time goes by,” Ma said.
He said that when asked to identify themselves, young people in Taiwan say: “We are all Taiwanese.”
“Like me, when I ran for president, I said I was running to be ‘president of Taiwan.’ However, the formal name of the nation is ‘ROC.’ The ROC Constitution was written when China was a united nation. It is an undeniable fact,” Ma said.
During the interview, he also reiterated his pledges of “No independence, no unification and no use of force,” saying that he would not discuss issues related to “unification” with China during his term.
Asked by the GlobalPost’s Benjamin Carlson if he supports eventual “unification,” Ma said that all major issues concerning Taiwan should be decided in accordance with democratic principles, including the future of cross-strait relations, because the ROC is a democratic, sovereign nation.
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