Long-term independence advocate Su Beng (史明) says Taiwan will become a sovereign nation, but to do so it will need help from the US.
Commenting on the recent uproar over the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) push for UN membership and a referendum on the nation's UN bid, Su urged the DPP administration to respect the role the US has played protecting Taiwan's safety over the years.
Su said he was worried that President Chen Shui-bian's (
PHOTO: CNA
"He may stir up the emotions of some people, but had he taken the national interest into consideration, he would have adopted a more diplomatic approach," 89-year-old Su said in an interview with the Taipei Times.
Without the support of the US, Su said the nation faces an uphill battle to become a member of the UN despite the backing of its 24 diplomatic allies.
He sees the UN campaign more as an election ploy targeted at winning next year's presidential race than as a means to confirm the nation's independence.
Su was pessimistic on whether the DPP and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would be willing to combine their referendums or drop them altogether, saying the two proposals were politically motivated.
As Taiwan is strategically important to the US in the Western Pacific, Su said the US could not afford to see it occupied by a hostile force.
"Taiwan has become the world's, not our own," he said. "However, it will be very difficult to achieve independence without a clear plan for nation-building and an effective strategy to achieve the goal."
The nation has been safe from a Chinese invasion since World War II thanks to the US, Su said. That was not because Americans love the Taiwanese, he said, but because of the US' national interests in the Asia-Pacific region.
The US government has been consistent in its commitment to protect Taiwan, despite the absence of diplomatic relations, he said.
Taking the Shanghai Communique of February 1972 as an example, Su said the US government stated its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan issue, while the People's Republic of China (PRC) opposed any activities that aimed to create "two Chinas."
The US reaffirmed its position in the 1979 Communique on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the US and the PRC and the Joint Communique of the US and the PRC in 1982, Su said.
The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 has also helped maintain peace, security and stability in the Taiwan Strait, while China has long had the ambition to take Taiwan and become a more dominant power in the Pacific and the world, Su said.
Unlike some pro-independence activists who claim Taiwan is already an independent nation, Su said it is not yet sovereign and the reason was simple.
"Former dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) have been dead for decades, but the colonial rule of the Republic of China system still exists," he said.
Su criticized the KMT regime for continuing colonialism after taking over Taiwan. The KMT ruled Taiwan with an iron fist after losing the Chinese civil war to the Chinese Communist Party and withdrawing to Taiwan in 1949.
Su said Taiwanese had pinned their hopes on a change of government to bring justice, but, much to their disappointment, the DPP administration had failed to resolve the problems with the system of government.
The independence movement over the past five decades has been based on emotion rather than on reason, Su said.
To build an independent nation, Su said the political standards of the Taiwanese must change and reason should be allied with the general public's emotion.
Two paths must be adopted, he said.
First, overturn the political system, remove old colonial thinking that says "Taiwan is part of China," and practice democratic politics.
Second, demolish the old colonial systems and institutions one by one, promote "Taiwanese nationalism" and steadily approach the ideal of nation-building.
With Chen's "four noes" still in place, Su said he can not see any real prospect of realizing the goal of building an independent nation in the near future.
However, he believes the dream will eventually come true if the ambition and courage of the Taiwanese are sufficient and the strategy put in place is effective and well-planned.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS