Pro-unification professor of Chinese literature Wang Hsiao-po (王曉波) on Friday said that the only way for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to survive is to cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and achieve a peaceful unification.
While some have proposed removing “China” from the KMT’s party name, others have said that the party took a drubbing in the election because it is against mainstream public opinion — meaning that it is not “green” enough.
Wang was quoted by the Chinese-language China Review News as saying “that is nonsense” at a forum in Taipei on Friday. The forum was organized by several pro-unification groups to discuss post-election development of cross-strait relations.
Wang said the presidential and legislative election results did not reflect a shift of blue-green distribution of party allegiance but was rather only a result of a low turnout of the blue-camp supporters.
“What had defeated the KMT was not the Democratic Progressive Party (DDP), but the KMT’s shifting toward the DPP and not being KMT enough,” he said.
The 73-year-old said that for the KMT to survive, the only way is to cooperate with the CCP again, as it had done in the 1920s and late 1930s, and achieve a peaceful unification of Taiwan and China.
“Otherwise the KMT will be annihilated in Taiwan,” he said.
Wang called on the KMT to propose convening a cross-strait peace conference and to declare its intention to sign a peace agreement, saying that the next step would then be peaceful unification.
He said the KMT has not been making clear arguments against Taiwanese independence.
“It is easy, since Taiwan’s independence disturbs the cross-strait peace agreement and peaceful development,” he said.
Regarding the so-called “1992 consensus” that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration has been constantly invoking, stressing the “different interpretations” part of the “one China, different interpretations” tacit consensus that has been said to recognize the existence of the Republic of China on Taiwan, Wang said he has a different perspective.
“The ‘1992 consensus’ is simply ‘two sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one China,’ as ‘one China’ signifies the glorious retrocession of Taiwan, which was made possible by [China’s] victory against Japan in the War of Resistance against Japan,” he said. “Denying the 1992 consensus is therefore tantamount to denying victory [against Japan].”
Tamkang University professor Lin Chin-yuan (林金源) said that one indicator of the possibility of a successful remaking of the KMT is the winning of party chairmanship by Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), the outgoing deputy legislative speaker whose presidential candidacy had been revoked last October.
“Hung has a ‘Chinese heart’ and dares to talk about eventual unification when no one else in the party does,” Lin said.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday condemned Chinese and Russian authorities for escalating regional tensions, citing Chinese warplanes crossing the Taiwan Strait’s median line and joint China-Russia military activities breaching South Korea’s air defense identification zone (KADIZ) over the past two days. A total of 30 Chinese warplanes crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait on Thursday and Friday, entering Taiwan’s northern and southwestern airspace in coordination with 15 naval vessels and three high-altitude balloons, the MAC said in a statement. The Chinese military also carried out another “joint combat readiness patrol” targeting Taiwan on Thursday evening, the MAC said. On
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