The fact that China and Taiwan are not subordinate to each other defines the “status quo,” despite how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) exploits the concept of the “Chinese nation” to pressure and emotionally blackmail Taiwan and the world, the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) China Affairs Department said yesterday.
China has long used concepts and phrases such as “shared roots and origins” to falsely equate Han Chinese ethnicity with Chinese nationality and support for unification, the department wrote in a Facebook post.
Referncing Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) remarks that the city state’s relationship with China is grounded in mutual benefit, not common ethnicity, the DPP department said Lee’s comments have exposed the CCP’s lie used in its “united front” tactics — that all ethnic Chinese should identify with China and accept its political agenda.
Photo: AP
While Taiwan shares geographical proximity, mutual economic benefits and cultural roots with China, it is a fact of the “status quo” that the Republic of China (ROC) and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, it said.
It is totally illegitimate for the CCP to appeal to nationalism through the concept of “shared roots and origins” to manipulate cross-strait relations, it said.
International media and think tanks, including the New York Times, the Washington Post and the US-based Jamestown Foundation, have repeatedly exposed China’s efforts to use concepts such as shared bloodlines, the “Chinese nation” and the “global Chinese community” to transform cultural and ethnic ties into political loyalty to Beijing, it said.
This united front model is deployed even more aggressively and directly against Taiwan, it said.
From recent exchanges, including the meeting between Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and the cross-strait media summit, to upcoming events such as the Straits Forum, Chinese officials have repeatedly emphasized notions that both sides of the strait belong to the Chinese nation, and that the Chinese nation is inseparable, it said.
Some KMT members agree with the CCP, echoing the claim that both sides of the Strait are Chinese, and even pushing for “unification with the motherland,” it said, calling it unfathomable and concerning.
The department warned that the CCP has not been only talking about culture, but also using “shared roots and origins” to push its political agenda.
Exchanges between Taiwan and China should be based on equality, dignity and mutual interests, instead of a framework of ethnopolitics unilaterally imposed by Beijing, the department said.
Taiwan’s future can only be decided freely by Taiwanese, and Beijing should not force it by appealing to bloodlines, ethnicity or ancestry, it said.
The Chinese government should acknowledge the existence of the ROC, stop treating cross-strait exchanges as platforms for united front work, engage in a pragmatic dialogue with Taiwan’s democratically elected government and promote the wellbeing of the people on both sides of the Strait, it said.
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