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Beijing's rants boost Taiwan referendum
and Chen
By Laurence
Eyton
TAIPEI - Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian
has been accused of using the referendum he wants to
hold in conjunction with the presidential election on
March 20 to bolster his otherwise poor chances of
re-election. Actually the referendum has been at least
as much a hindrance to Chen's campaign as it has been a
help.
And the China factor is a big one: too
much anti-vote blustering and bludgeoning from Beijing
could actually help the chances of the "defensive
referendum" on whether the Taiwanese people want Chinese
missiles pointed at their island - and it could boost
the re-election of Chen, who is reviled in Beijing. For
China, any referendum is a bad idea because it might
give people unacceptable ideas about expressing their
dissenting views, and it makes Taiwan's "yes" referendum
vote on eventual reunification a pipe dream - unless
Beijing is someday transformed beyond
recognition.
First, after Chen's announcement at
the end of November that he would hold a "defensive
referendum", there were six weeks of rocky relations
with the United States, including unprecedented
criticism of Chen's referendum plans by US President
George W Bush, which caused Chen's approval rating in
Taiwan to fall.
The referendum law passed last
November allows Taiwanese told hold referendums for the
first time. President Chen is using a provision of the
law to ask voters whether they want China to redirect
about 500 missiles aimed at the island Beijing considers
a renegade province. Chen estimates that 496 missiles
are aimed at the island, and last autumn a Taiwanese
official estimated at least 450 missiles, saying China
was adding about 75 missiles every year in the coastal
provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangxi and Zhejiang.
Flight time: five to seven minutes.
The
referendum will not ask voters on this island of 21.5
million people whether they wish to be independent of
China.
Part of the problem - perhaps because it
was making policy ad hoc and on the fly - was that
Taiwan did a bad job of explaining what the referendum
was about. China exploited these ambiguities in an
unusually efficient disinformation campaign that had
most of the world believing that Chen was about to
breech the great taboo and hold a referendum on
Taiwanese independence - that in itself is seen as
running the risk of a war in the Taiwan Strait. This was
never Chen's intention, but that is not how the
situation was widely perceived.
Washington, of
course, was better informed, but still showed anxiety
over Chen's intentions. This may have been the result of
a widely perceived incompatibility between Taiwan's
representative to Washington, Chen Chien-jen, and the
president's aims. Chen Chien-jen served as minister of
foreign affairs under the previous Kuomintang (KMT)
government - which at the time was vigorously opposed to
the referendum principle - and is a ranking KMT member.
Because he is not part of President Chen's Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP) - of which the president is also
the chairman - the foreign minister is seen in Taipei as
being remote from the center of policy formulation and
sharing the KMT's anti-referendum prejudices, making him
at best an inarticulate spokesman for President Chen's
ideas.
KMT urges officials to boycott
referendum
The KMT is vigorously opposed to the
president's holding of a referendum, as manifested most
recently by a demand last weekend to all KMT-affiliated
heads of local government to boycott the referendum vote
by refusing to coordinate with the Central Election
Commission to set up facilities for it to be carried
out.
This is ironic since it is the KMT and its
allied People First Party (PFP) - the two of which are
widely referred to as the "pan-blue alliance" (blue
after the color of the KMT emblem) - which pushed
through the legislation that allowed the president to
call the referendum.
The KMT-PFP support for
referendum legislation was either political opportunism
or a recognition of reality, depending on one's
preference. While the right to initiate and hold
referendums is supposedly guaranteed by Taiwan's
constitution, until the middle of last year both parties
were vigorously opposed to passage of organizing or
enabling legislation, detailing how this new
constitutional provision was to be carried out. The law
specified who could initiate a referendum and how to do
so, how the polling was to be organized and what kind of
result, how high a vote, would be considered valid or
binding.
The pan-blues have said they oppose the
referendum because it could endanger national security
by allowing a vote on Taiwanese independence that could
lead to conflict with China. But after listening to this
story for more than a decade, it became obvious this
year, when President Chen started a push for referendum
legislation, that the Taiwanese no longer believed that
old argument. After four years of DPP government, they
knew the pro-independence party was not going to seek a
referendum on the topic, just as the pro-independence
lobby knows that any referendum on declaring
independence would be defeated.
Taiwanese are
therefore no longer worried by what the DPP wild men
might do, having found them to be not so wild. But the
people are fed up with gridlock and rivalry between the
DPP-controlled government and the KMT-PFP
alliance-controlled legislature. The parties are
unwilling to break the stalemate and the constitution
makes no provisions for ending an impasse, so that
needed political reforms and policy implementation have
been reduced to a crawl. Referendums are seen as a way
to break this logjam, while at the same time empowering
the electorate at the expense of the widely despised
political class.
Some Taiwanese also saw setting
up a referendum mechanism as a way of safeguarding
Taiwan from the kind of reunification that Beijing has
always had in mind, to be effected by a cozy arrangement
between the ruling parties on either side of the Taiwan
Strait. The KMT's and PFP's dalliance with the Beijing
authorities during their three years in the political
wilderness has done much to reinforce this worry.
Referendums were therefore seen as a safeguard that
Taiwan would not be - to use an expression that has
gained popularity in the past year - "sold out" by
China's allies without consultation of the electorate.
This shift in public thinking resulted in broad
public support for the referendum law, and the KMT-PFP
alliance's opposition made the parties look like enemies
of popular democracy and, given their mainland
connections, fueled speculation about their motives.
Last summer, therefore, the alliance did a 180-degree
turnaround, said it would support referendum
legislation, and started to push its own version of a
referendum law through the legislature.
President exploits legal loophole
The
law that was passed at the end of November was almost
entirely a pan-blue creation and the alliance, by
removing the executive's right to initiate a referendum,
thought it had neutralized it in such a way as to
prevent the DPP from using it to Chen's electoral
advantage. The DPP's original intention had been to hold
a vote on some popular issue along with the presidential
election, thereby hoping to tie a "yes" vote on the
referendum to a vote for the president. The version of
the law the pan-blues eventually passed should have
prevented this, in theory.
The DPP, however, had
been able to insert one clause into the law that the
pan-blues had let stand, and that Chen could exploit.
This clause permitted a so-called "defensive
referendum", allowing the president, on his own
authority and without legislative oversight, to initiate
a referendum on national-security issues if the island
faced an external threat that could interfere with
national sovereignty.
At the time the law
passed, few even in the legislature itself understood
the implications or purpose of the clause. "Imminent
threat" was interpreted as something like a mobilization
of mainland forces against Taiwan, the imposition of a
naval blockade or a missile strike, and even DPP
supporters thought they would have something better to
do than worry about a referendum vote in such an
eventuality.
Chen proved that the "defensive
referendum" clause was not nearly as harmless as the
pan-blues had thought, as he declared that Taiwan was
under immediate threat from the 496 missiles China had
aimed at the island. That being so, he claimed his right
to initiate a referendum.
Since Chen was making
policy as he went along, it is not surprising that his
intentions were not clearly understood. The "defensive
referendum" clause was widely understood to be about
issues of sovereignty. Chen's determination to invoke it
naturally gave the impression that he sought to have a
referendum related to that topic. China, still reeling
after its pan-blue Taiwanese allies passed the
referendum law - which Beijing hated - was seething,
while the United States was in a panic over what to do.
When Washington asked Taipei about Chen's
intentions, it was told that two topics were being
considered, either a vote rejecting "one country, two
systems" as a basis for negotiation with Beijing, or a
vote condemning China's buildup of missiles and
demanding their removal. The Americans immediately told
Taipei that a vote on "one country, two systems" was
simply out of the question. Taipei settled on missiles
as the referendum topic, and there followed a confusing
six weeks of US sniping at Taiwan for no ostensible
reason and a vast amount of speculation as to why this
should be so.
At first the US position seemed
reasonable. It opposed any move by either Taiwan or
China aimed at unilaterally changing the status quo.
Apart from that, if Taiwanese wanted to have referendums
on their domestic affairs, they had every right to do
so.
Bush's criticism causes anger,
bewilderment
But almost immediately this attitude
changed and gained a harder edge. On December 9, during
a visit to the United States by Chinese Premier Wen
Jiabao, US President George W Bush delivered an
unprecedentedly harsh public criticism of Chen.
"The comments and actions made by the leader of
Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions
unilaterally to change the status quo, which we oppose,"
Bush said, to Beings's satisfaction.
In Taipei,
the reaction to Bush's reprimand was a mixture of
puzzlement and anger. Chen had said the referendum would
be about China's missiles, in effect public censure of
China's military intimidation. To most observers this in
no way could be seen as Taiwan's attempt to change the
cross-Strait status quo in a way the United States would
find objectionable, and so the US position needed
explaining. "The US sees the defensive referendum as an
attempt to change the cross-Strait status quo. Why? How?
So far the Bush administration refuses to say," said one
newspaper.
The most likely explanation, most
Taipei commentators said, was that the US needed China's
help to rein in North Korea's wayward nuclear program
and, as a result, was obliged to give Beijing something
important in return, a quid pro quo.
But there
was also considerable anger over what was seen as US
hypocrisy. Self-determination was a noble cause for the
13 colonies in 1776 and for Woodrow Wilson in 1918, and
democracy has been a much-trumpeted core value of
Bush's, but it was not, apparently, suitable for the
Taiwanese, ran a popular argument.
According to
Presidential Office insiders, however, most of this
speculation missed the main point of US concerns. US
assurances, made repeatedly throughout 2003, that
Taiwan's security would not be compromised for Chinese
cooperation on North Korea have not been broken. And, as
a Presidential Office staffer told this reporter, as a
matter of fact, "The US doesn't really care about the
missile issue."
The focus of US worries,
according to insiders, was not the topic of the
referendum scheduled for March 20 but Chen Shui-bian's
future intentions. Chen had, after all, first mooted
passing a law to enable the holding of referendums as a
way of being able to introduce a new constitution. The
current constitution, drawn up for the government of all
of China in 1947, is a contentious, anachronistic
document in need of massive reform and amendment. But
when most Taiwanese talk about constitutional change,
they are not thinking about the separation of powers,
the five-branch system of government and the exact
relationship between the premier and the president.
Taiwan seeks separate identity
The
latter half of 2003 saw massive demonstrations in Taiwan
in favor of changing the official name of the political
entity from the Republic of China, the name of the
exiled Chiang Kai-shek regime, to the Republic of
Taiwan. There are a number of secondary movements
connected with this issue, such as seeking a change in
the flag, its national anthem and other symbols. What is
sought is the replacement of the China-related symbols
of the old regime with distinct emblems of Taiwan.
The move for constitutional change, therefore,
is not only about reforming the dysfunctional 1947
constitution but also is mixed up with the popular
assertion of a Taiwanese-separatist identity and the
jettisoning of symbolic links with mainland China. Some
of this could be extremely inflammatory; a name change
might be seen by China as a casus belli. It is
this that really worries Washington, according to a
source in the Presidential Office.
Last Friday
Chen released the two questions for the referendum. They
are:
If China refuses to withdraw the missiles it has
targeted at Taiwan and to openly renounce the use of
force against us, would you agree that the government
should acquire more advanced anti-missile weapons to
strengthen Taiwan's self-defense capabilities?
Would you agree that our government should engage in
negotiations with China about the establishment of a
"peace and stability" framework for cross-Strait
interactions in order to build consensus and for the
welfare of the peoples on both sides?
Officially
the Taiwanese government is still awaiting the US
response. In practice the Presidential Office makes no
bones about the fact that it had the text of the
questions approved by Washington before Chen announced
them. It is tempting to speculate - and this is
something that presidential sources will neither confirm
or deny - that Taiwan has eased US worries by agreeing
to run proposed future referendum topics past Washington
for approval. For the time being, US worries seem to
have been allayed.
Referendum faces
problems
Chen now faces three problems: first, a
referendum perceived as innocuous or even silly; second,
a pan-blue boycott and obstruction by local polling
officials; and third, a possible appeal to the island's
highest court on whether a referendum is justified by a
genuine threat to security.
While the first
question is useful in that a "yes" answer would go some
way toward preventing a hostile pro-China pan-blue
legislature blocking or eviscerating the defense budget,
the second question seems so vapid that a number of
Taiwanese this reporter interviewed either cannot see
the point of it or think that "talk if you can" is what
the government is there for. Surely, they argue, the
government hardly needs to ask whether it should do its
job about promoting peace, stability, welfare and
consensus.
There is a very real sense that the
referendum is now so innocuous that this uproar has been
a storm in teacup. Apathy toward the outcome might limit
the referendum's downside for Chen, but it won't boost
his appeal.
Another problem is the pan-blues'
opposition to the proposed referendum taking place at
all. Pan-blue local-government heads have been ordered
not to cooperate with the Central Election Commission in
setting up the infrastructure for the referendum. To
what extent they can or will comply is anyone's guess.
The government was quick to point out that proposed
obstructive action is illegal - after all, it is part of
local officials' jobs to administer polls - and
officials who obey their parties' non-cooperation
instructions might find themselves out of work and even
in jail. Second, since the referendum piggybacks on the
presidential election that they have an interest in
facilitating, it is hard to see how arrangements can be
made for one and not the other.
And finally,
opponents could appeal the legality of the referendum to
the Council of Grand Justices, Taiwan's interpreters of
the constitution, for a decision on whether the missile
threat constitutes the "imminent danger" that allows
Chen to initiate the referendum in the first place.
It is possible, given the pan-blues' ineptitude
in the election campaign, that an attempted boycott
might backfire, especially since the alliance's zeal to
stop the referendum echoes Beijing's position. Beijing's
position is a difficult one and most Taiwanese seek a
choice, not an echo.
China's intervention
usually backfires
China's intervention in Taiwan
affairs has the tendency, as seen in the presidential
elections of both 1996 and 2000, to produce exactly the
opposite result from that intended by Beijing. China
appears to have hoped that by playing on US fears that
Chen was stepping out of line on the independence issue,
it could get Washington simply to stop the referendum in
its tracks. As a result, it mounted a massive
disinformation campaign in the United States, especially
targeting members of Congress, to persuade Washington
that Chen's plans were simply too dangerous.
Taiwan countered this with a certain amount of
contrition - the agreement to let the Americans vet the
proposed referendum questions, for example - and some
plain speaking. Chen let Washington know that he was
determined to hold the referendum, come what may. Last
week, prior to getting Washington's approval on the
questions, he said in two speeches, in effect, that
holding the referendum meant far more to him than
winning re-election, and if he had to choose a focus for
his efforts up to March 20, it would be the referendum.
If US anxiety now seems allayed, China is left
with a problem.
Now it is clear that the
referendum is neither about sovereignty nor about any
"hot button" issue that China can push in order to play
on US fears. So Beijing is having to adopt the very
course that has proved so self-defeating in the past:
trying to influence a Taiwanese election by intimidation
and bluster. It is also revealing that its opposition to
the referendum was never connected with the independence
issue, though it sought to delude others that this was
its concern.
Beijing, in fact, is opposed to any
referendum taking place about anything whatsoever. For
two reasons.
First, it detests the example that
a popular vote sets for other areas of China. Who knows?
Hong Kong residents might demand a vote on the proposed
security law under Article 23 of the region's Basic Law,
which could limit and criminalize some kinds of dissent
and free speech. China also finds the referendum odious
because it underscores Beijing's frustrating impotence
when it comes to influencing Taiwan's affairs.
Second, it knows that once Taiwanese have
knitted the idea of referendums into their political
culture, unification will become almost impossible. It
will not happen without a Taiwanese popular vote in
support of it. And this support will never be attained
until the current Beijing regime has been reformed and
transformed beyond recognition.
The more Beijing
rants against the referendum and Chen, the more it is
likely to persuade the Taiwanese that the referendum is
a good idea, thereby helping Chen's campaign. The
problem for Chen's domestic opponents is how to oppose
the referendum without being seen by Taiwanese voters as
unacceptably close to China.
(Copyright 2004
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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