Academics on Saturday voiced worries that if Taiwanese do not express their aspirations to protect the nation’s sovereignty through their ballots, the country could eventually be unified with China via democratic elections.
“There are many nations and peoples who strongly express their aspirations for independence, and when they do so, the international community cannot overlook or oppress their will,” retired National Taiwan University history professor Lee Yeng-chyh (李永熾) told a conference on the impacts of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, in which China ceded sovereignty over Taiwan to Japan.
“But if the public does not have such aspirations, I’d doubt the effectiveness of a referendum on independence,” Lee said.
He said that while Taiwanese often complain about President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) China-leaning policies, “aren’t we all guilty of electing a president who denies the nation’s sovereignty and independence, and seeks to place Taiwan back into China?”
“This is an era of democracy, what else can we say when we negated ourselves by electing Ma president?” Lee added.
Former representative to Japan Lo Fu-chuan (羅福全) said Taiwanese are at the core of the question of whether Taiwan should become an independent country.
While pro-independence figures debate if Taiwanese independence should be achieved through a revolution outside of the system, or via changes within it, academics and activists at the conference said that, given the prevailing social conditions, making changes within the system may be the better option right now.
“In the past, exiled Taiwanese independence activists living overseas advocated a revolution, however, it’s because they didn’t have a choice back then, they couldn’t accomplish what they wanted through voting,” said Hsueh Hua-yuan (薛化元), head of the Graduate Institute of Taiwan History at National Chengchi University said. “But now it’s different, we have been given a choice and therefore the question now is what do we want as our choice?”
Citing India’s first prime minister after its independence, Jawaharlal Nehru, Hsueh said that Nehru was fighting for Indian independence while participating in colonial politics when India was under British rule.
He gave Brazil as another example, saying it was a Portuguese colony, but made itself a sovereign state through internal changes, saying that “we [Taiwanese] should learn from this.”
Another former representative to Japan, Koh Se-kai (許世楷), who spent many years in exile for advocating independence, agreed.
“We need to get someone from the outside elected president of the Republic of China, and have them make changes from within,” Koh said. “If we don’t, it’s going to be hard, almost impossible.”
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