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SPEAKING
FREELY
Myths about China-Taiwan
reunification
By Daniel McCarthy
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click here if you are
interested in contributing.
Many myths
about the China-Taiwan disagreement have appeared in the
press lately, particularly in the Western media.
Inaccurate statements in the People's Republic of China
(PRC) media can be attributed to political propaganda,
and inaccurate statements in the Hong Kong media can be
attributed to either political propaganda or to taking
sides. But inaccurate statements about the China-Taiwan
disagreement in the Western press usually can be
attributed to the effectiveness of PRC propaganda.
Dispelling the three main myths:
Myth 1: There is only one China and Taiwan is
part of it
As articulated by the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP), the so-called one-China policy
goes something like this: "There is only one China in
the world. Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. All
references to China shall mean the People's Republic of
China."
On the one hand, the CCP tells us that
all references to China mean the People's Republic of
China, the PRC, but on the other hand, the CCP talks
about 5,000 years of Chinese history. That would lead to
the inane conclusion that Emperor Qin Shihuang, who
first united China 2,500 years ago, was really the
emperor of the People's Republic of China that was
established in 1949.
Even skipping past that
logical problem, the one-China policy advocates would
have us believe that the People's Republic of China
(mainland) and the Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan) are
one nation. Certainly black can be white if we define it
as such, but can black and white both be red? Anyone
with open eyes can see that Taiwan is not part of the
People's Republic of China, and vice versa, so the only
logical conclusion is that there are two countries in
the world called China. Or are there?
In 1999,
US Secretary of State Colin Powell alluded to China as
being a geographic region. It follows that within the
geographic region called China, there are two nations:
The PRC and ROC. The PRC would like to ignore that
Mongolia is a third nation that was once part of China,
but perhaps this semantic problem is confusing enough
without bringing Mongolia into it.
So again on
the one hand, we are faced with a one-China policy that
makes absolutely no sense and is internally
contradictory. On the other hand, if we use the word
"China" to denote the geographic region in which the PRC
and ROC are located, then a one-China policy may not be
so offensive. We could also adopt a one-North America
policy, a one-Europe policy, and so on.
The
one-China myth can ultimately be dispelled in one of two
ways. Either China is a country called the People's
Republic of China and Taiwan is not (and never has been)
a part of it. Or China is a geographic region in which
both the People's Republic of China and Taiwan exist.
Myth 2: China will reunify with Taiwan at any
cost
When we hear the CCP chant this mantra, it
is trying to tell us that it will fight a war to take
over Taiwan. Use of the word "reunification" is of
course a misnomer. Taiwan has never been part of the
People's Republic of China, so by definition it is
impossible for Taiwan to reunify with the People's
Republic of China. But never mind that detail.
And we can also gloss over the assumption the
CCP makes that if the PRC fought a war against Taiwan,
the PRC would win. Certainly the PRC can lay waste to
Taiwan with nuclear weapons and can probably do
significant damage with conventional bombs. But modern
military analysis shows that a successful invasion of
Taiwan would require China to have complete air and sea
superiority as well as 2,000 ships to move more than a
million soldiers and their equipment and supplies to
Taiwan quickly enough to mount a successful invasion.
The impossibility of such a situation is obvious, so
Taiwan really has little to fear as long as its military
puts up a fight. Therefore the "at any cost" language is
really just hyperbole.
But if China really
wanted to unify with Taiwan at any cost, there is
certainly a way to do it, and it is a peaceful
technique. If the CCP were to offer to dissolve the PRC
and appoint the leader of the Kuomingtang to the
presidency of a new Republic of China that includes both
Taiwan and the mainland, the Kuomingtang would be unable
to resist the offer and the idea of a peaceable,
democratic and non-communist China might be appealing to
many Taiwanese. However, the disagreement between the
CCP and the Kuomintang has always been more about who is
in power than supposed national unity, so we will not
expect any proposal for this type of unification coming
from China.
Myth 3: The CCP is the only
entity capable of governing China
Whenever there
is a roundup of dissidents or pro-democracy activists in
China, the CCP asserts that only the CCP is capable of
governing China, and that if dissidents or pro-democracy
advocates are allowed to have their way, it will lead
China directly into chaos. First, it is not at all clear
that the Chinese Communist Party is actually capable of
governing China at all. With the blood of 30 million
Chinese on its hands due to disastrous economic policies
and political campaigns, followed by rampant
civil-rights abuses and the Tiananmen Square massacre,
it appears that the CCP's technique for governing China
amounts to killing or imprisoning those who might speak
a dissenting word. At the same time, China has 900
million farmers living a life of subsistence, and the
number of people without employment approximately equals
the entire population of the United States.
Of
course there has been admirable economic progress in
coastal cities in the past 20 years at the price of
environmental destruction and heretofore unknown levels
of corruption. But can the CCP claim credit for China's
economic progress? A careful look shows that the
greatest amount of progress is made where private
entrepreneurs are allowed to do their work without
substantial government interference. Where the
government is involved, whether it be state-owned
enterprises or joint ventures, the statistics show that
economic failure is far more likely than not.
This does not show that the CCP is the only
entity capable of governing China. Instead, it shows
that the CCP is capable of governing China quite badly,
and that where the CCP gets out of the way, Chinese do
quite well for themselves. If the CCP were to refrain
from quashing political dissent for just a few years, I
have no doubt that Chinese would show themselves to be
every bit as adept in the political arena as in science,
engineering and manufacturing, and create a form of
government far more efficient and effective than the CCP
has ever been.
Daniel McCarthy is a
lawyer in Salt Lake City, Utah. He has lived in Taiwan
and traveled extensively in China and represents both US
and Chinese businesses in international and domestic
transactions. He can be reached at dmccart@xmission.com.
(Copyright 2004 Daniel McCarthy.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click here if you are
interested in contributing.
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