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Who cares about Taiwan? Not the
Chinese
By Macabe Keliher
BEIJING - Lien Chan said it, but the Chinese
people just don't seem to care.
Still, that
didn't stop Taiwanese presidential candidate Lien from
writing the inscription on his party's pro-unification
gravestone over the weekend as he pontificated in
academic idioms at a campaign rally. In a departure from
the KMT's traditional line, Chan declared that when it
comes to the Taiwan Strait divide: "It wouldn't be a
problem to say simply that there is one country on
either side."
It was not the most stirring prose
- the Kuomintang (KMT) chairman has never been known for
his crowd-pumping speeches - but the message was clear
enough. The KMT - the political party formed by Chinese
nationalist Sun Yat-sen, which once ruled mainland China
under the hand of Chiang Kai-shek, and the party exiled
to Taiwan, which for more than 50 years had held fast to
the hope of unification with mainland China - no longer
is seeking to unify Taiwan with China. The KMT has
buckled to voter sentiment and now stands on the side of
Taiwanese independence.
It is a trend that has
been building on both sides of the Strait. And while
Taiwan's politicians and voters have become less Chinese
and more Taiwanese, making all the right moves to define
themselves as an independent country, Beijing has grown
more accustomed to the fact that the unification of
Taiwan is not only not going to happen any time soon but
also that the island is drifting further and further
away. More so, the Chinese, once inundated with
nationalism and ready to sacrifice all to "liberate"
their "Taiwanese compatriots", now no longer seem to
care.
"Taiwan has existed apart from us for over
50 years," says Sam Huang, the owner of a small
publishing house in Beijing. "We have no idea what
Taiwan is like, only that it is obviously different and
doesn't want anything to do with China. Let them be."
Indeed, Taiwan has pursued its own path. The
years of former president Lee Tung-hui weaned the island
off the heavy-handed KMT unification line and on to
pro-Taiwan sentiments. And successive election victories
by independence parties have allowed the country to come
out of the closet, so to say. More than half of the
island now says that it is Taiwanese, up from around 10
percent in the early 1990s, according to polls by
Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council. The KMT must now jump
on the bandwagon or risk a fate similar to the
now-deceased hardline-unificationist New Party.
This leaves Taiwan without a
unification-oriented party and puts Beijing in a sticky
position. With the likelihood of unification having
become a fleeting simulacrum, where the only realistic
possibility of it ever happening is by force, Beijing's
options are severely limited (see Two bulls, one China shop, November
21). To go one further, with the mainland Chinese
population now emotionally bankrupt on the Taiwan
question, the only conceivable outcomes to the situation
are status quo or independence, not unification or
reunification.
Reaction has been muted thus far.
Chinese President Hu Jintao put a call in to US
President George W Bush on Saturday - one cannot be sure
if it came as a reaction to Lien's speech or not - to
tell him that Taiwanese independence "cannot be
tolerated". But if local Chinese views on the matter are
anything to go by, then it already is.
"What do I
care if Taiwan goes independent?" says Phoebe Chen, a
corporate English instructor in Beijing. "As far as I am
concerned, it is already independent. It has its own
government, laws and everything else."
Chen may
contradict herself with ingrained nationalism when she
appendices her views with the idea that Taiwan is (or
was) part of China, but this is something people on the
mainland cannot get away from. "Of course Taiwan is part
of China," says a taxi driver in Beijing whose surname
is Dai. "Since the time we were kids we have been told
Taiwan is part of China and we must fight for its
liberation." But Dai says he would not fight for the
island's unification. "I don't think it is worth
fighting over; we could use diplomatic pressure
instead."
The view in southern China and along
the coast seems to be that Taiwanese are good because
they bring in investment and jobs. In the capital,
Taiwan is so far removed from what people feel are the
real issues that the question elicits a response of
either apathy or passive resignation. "I am much more
concerned with pollution, with exposure to
electromagnetic waves, with traffic congestion," says
Wang Qi, an artist known for slapping stickers with the
character for "pollution" on the back of cars in traffic
jams.
The government in Beijing says that 97
percent of the country favors going to war if Taiwan
declares independence. However, only a few people I
spoke with expressed that same sentiment. But what is at
issue here is not absolute, rather, that the Chinese
population, which was once endowed with an ideology that
could be manipulated for whatever useful cause, now has
its own ideas about the country and its leaders. It is
not a question of social backlash if the government
decides on war - people may just continue to go on not
caring - but one of the lack of popular nationalistic
support. Adverse or apathetic sentiments at home, in
Taiwan and from the international community would not
bode well for the Chinese Communist Party.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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