President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has a mindset that is “stuck in the Cold War era,” former presidential adviser Ruan Ming (阮銘) said yesterday.
Ruan, an advisor to former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) who became a Taiwanese citizen in 2002 after serving as a secretary to late Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chairman Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦), made the remarks at a forum hosted by the Taiwan Research Institute held to mark the sixth anniversary of China’s enactment of its “Anti-Secession” Law. Beijing passed the law on March 14, 2005, authorizing the Chinese military to take Taiwan via “non-peaceful” means if Taiwan made moves toward de jure independence.
Ruan said Ma’s talk of the sovereignty of the Republic of China (ROC) was moot considering that the CCP had toppled the ROC government in China and chased the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) out of the country.
“ROC sovereignty is not -acknowledged by the People’s Republic of China [PRC], the UN nor the US. It’s ‘the emporer’s new clothes’ [pure self-delusion],” Ruan said.
While polls have shown the majority of people in Taiwan favoring maintaining the “status quo,” the question lies in the perception of what the “status quo” actually is, he said.
“Taiwan now isn’t the Taiwan of four decades ago, and certainly not the Taiwan from a century ago. The sovereignty of Taiwan lies with its 23 million people,” Ruan said, adding that Ma should listen to the people and not the other way around.
“The danger facing us is the combined efforts of the People’s Republic of China and the ROC to wipe out the democratic liberty of Taiwan,” Ruan said.
On the issue of national defense, nothing the military did would be effective, “as the Ma government’s strategy is incorrect,” said Chen Wen-cheng (陳文政), an associate professor at Tamkang University’s Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies.
The Ma administration’s pro-China policies have confused the armed forces’ sense of who the enemy is, Chen said.
“With flocks of KMT politicians heading to Beijing to ‘pay tribute,’ how would the army not feel puzzled?” Chen said.
Tung Li-wen (董立文), a consultant with Taiwan Thinktank, said that as the result of the Ma administration’s agreement with the PRC government on the so-called “1992 consensus,” Taiwan has seemingly been allowed a wider range of participation on the international arena with Beijing’s silent approval.
Saying that diplomacy is the manifestation of national power and a declaration of a nation’s sovereignty, and that an “armistice” should be declared, Tamkang University’s Institute of Futures Studies assistant professor Ji Shun-jie (紀舜傑) told the forum that since Ma came to power, the identification of being Chinese has come back into full force, allowing Taiwan to completely succumb to China’s economic, psychological and media warfare.
“It’s an insult to national pride and Taiwanese sovereignty, and moreover, renders the country’s proud democratic liberalism completely worthless,” he said.
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