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Chen's blow for democracy
By Laurence Eyton
One of the more
interesting characteristics of Taiwanese President Chen
Shui-bian is that, perhaps because his strategic sense
is not matched by tactical subtlety, he has the tendency
to move forward in stumbles. The result is that
commentators tend to focus on the nature and seriousness
of the stumble without noticing that Chen has, in fact,
taken a step forward.
Such has been the nature
of this week's furor over Chen's August 3 remarks about
China and Taiwan being separate countries on each side
of the Taiwan Strait and the need for Taiwan to pass
legislation legitimizing the petitioning and holding of
referendums to decide the unification/independence
issue.
After his comments Chen has been
lambasted by China for seeking Taiwan independence -
nothing new there, of course - and, more important from
Taipei's point of view, his comments have been dismissed
somewhat coolly by the US State Department.
In
Taipei itself there has been a sense that Chen's
comments were a clumsy restatement of what is already
government policy and that anything controversial has
been spun into insignificance as various government
agencies frantically denied that any significant change
had taken place.
But there is at least one
aspect in which Chen's apparent stumble has moved the
debate on Taiwan's future forward, and that is to
prepare the issue of a referendum for a new, open and
serious debate.
The idea of a referendum has
occasioned much comment not least from such entities as
the People's Liberation Army (PLA), senior figures in
which have been reported by the People's Daily as
thinking that Taiwan's holding of a referendum on
independence would be sufficient reason for China to
make good on its threat to attack Taiwan if it declared
independence - presumably without waiting for the
referendum result.
And it wasn't just the PLA
that mistook Chen's words to mean that it was high time
Taiwan held a referendum on the subject of independence;
this interpretation of Chen's remarks was made - perhaps
deliberately - by opposition parties and media in Taiwan
as well as in Washington.
Chen did not, of
course, say that Taiwan will hold a referendum any time
soon. What he did say was that the only democratic way
the debate could be decided was through a referendum and
that as China increased its pressure on Taiwan it might
be useful to have the legislation in place by which a
referendum might be sought and held.
During the
Kuomintang's (KMT) 51-year rule of Taiwan, the
formalization of referendum legislation was anathema. To
the Chinese exiles who monopolized power and claimed
China as their own, it was simply unthinkable that
Taiwan might want to go its own way, not least because
such an idea struck at the very basis of the legitimacy
of their rule. In its more repressive, White Terror days
the KMT characterized support for a referendum as a
(dis)loyalty issue. In the more democratic
post-martial-law era of the past 15 years it has painted
a referendum as a danger, a provocation of the military
colossus across the Taiwan Strait.
But one thing
has always been constant in the KMT's view and, because
of that party's long period of hegemony, it has come to
be almost a given in Taiwan's received political wisdom:
a referendum would be on the topic of whether to declare
independence unilaterally.
And this is where
Chen has made progress of a subtle kind. For, though few
in Taiwan realize it, certainly not the poorly led
opposition and its media flunkies, Chen has turned the
referendum issue on its head. Only the small
pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union caught the
drift of Chen's thought this week, but over the
remaining two years of his presidency his idea is
destined to become mainstream opinion, namely that there
can be no question of the reunification that both China
and Taiwan's opposition parties seek without its first
being endorsed by Taiwan's electorate via a referendum.
There are two reasons for Chen's doing this. He
wants to put pressure on Beijing and he wants to tie the
hands of the opposition at home.
In Beijing's
case, Chen is deeply frustrated that his repeated
goodwill gestures have been resolutely ignored by the
People's Republic of China (PRC) while its demand that
Chen upholds the "one China" principle has become almost
a mantra.
Part of the problem for any Taiwanese
leader is that what that principle is depends on whose
China's audience is. To Taiwan it is, at least
sometimes, the idea that there is one China of which
Taiwan and the PRC are both parts, the exact
relationship between the two to be worked out when
Taiwan has adopted this position. To the rest of the
world it is that there's one China, the PRC, of which
Taiwan is a dissident part that must eventually return
to Beijing's control.
Were the Taiwanese
president the most ardent unificationist, there is
nevertheless an enormous problem in supporting this
so-called principle until there is a unitary definition
of what it actually means. And here the United States'
policy of cross-Strait relations being a matter for both
sides of the Strait to thrash out between themselves is
less than helpful; China's tactic seems like a crude
form of bait and switch - too crude for the Taiwanese,
anyway - and Beijing needs to be firmly told so.
The real point of Chen's remarks is to stress
that the status quo is not as Beijing characterizes it -
Taiwan is not a province of the PRC and no amount of
wishful thinking on China's part can change that - and
that if things are to change, it has to be with the
consent of the Taiwanese. So far Beijing has hectored,
bullied, threatened and suborned, but it will never get
Taiwan to the alter without a little wooing.
In
this light, the idea of a referendum is not a way for
Taiwan to seek independence. It is a way in which Taiwan
can avoid reunification on unfavorable terms. And
however much China might detest the idea of a referendum
in such circumstances and refuse to acknowledge its
results, it seems almost impossible to imagine that the
United States would not support Taiwan's right to say
no, expressed through its electorate, if it had to.
Which means, of course, that Washington has a vested
interest in making sure that the question is never asked
unless the Taiwan can be sure of saying yes, which would
require a radical new approach from China.
What
Chen is doing is in fact almost the opposite of what his
many critics accuse him of. He is not advocating the
change of the status quo with a vote for independence.
Rather he is saying that the de facto independence that
Taiwan now enjoys cannot be given up in any way without
the democratic consent of the Taiwanese. As long as
Taiwan's previous KMT government refused to countenance
the idea of a referendum, Beijing's leaders thought that
they could "recover" Taiwan simply through negotiation
between the two groups of leaders or their respective
parties. Chen has served notice that this is not and
will not be so and that China had best come up with a
new strategy. Of course, whether Beijing is capable of
such a change is a different matter.
And the
import of Chen's comments does not stop there. China's
leaders have been told by ranking KMT officials that
Chen is best ignored, he will be out of power in 2004,
after which the two old adversaries, now united by a
pro-unification agenda and a deep distrust of democratic
processes, can start talking. But Chen's referendum
remarks are designed to stymie such an outcome. Polls
taken in the past week suggest that Taiwanese
overwhelmingly agree that any change to the status quo
would have to be endorsed by referendum. To some this is
of course seen as a guarantee that pro-independence
hotheads from Chen's own party will not lead the country
into conflict. Others see the opposition parties as
ready to sacrifice Taiwan's sovereignty, and a large
chunk of its political liberties, in return for being
appointed by Beijing as a form of "permanent government"
of Taiwan. Yet others simply think that such a decision
is simply too serious to be left to bribable,
grandstanding, fickle politicians.
So Chen is
trying to set up a little bit of insurance. If he does
not get re-elected in 2004 he wants to make sure that
whoever is - and he will definitely be a unification
supporter - cannot move on the unification question
unilaterally. The central point of the referendum is not
just to set up a mechanism for conducting one but to
also for calling one: this will not be left entirely to
the whim of the government, but will also be able to be
set in motion by public petition.
Chen has two
years in which to make such ideas common political
currency in Taiwan. He already has a large amount of
seldom voiced public support. His task now is to fire up
the debate. Direct democracy, letting the people choose,
watching the opposition trying to argue against this
promises to be very entertaining and can only enhance
Chen's stature as the only candidate for a leader who
trusts "the people".
(©2002 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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