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US-CHINA: QUEST FOR
PEACE
Part 6: Forget reunification, nothing to
reunite
By Henry C K Liu
Part
1: Two nations, worlds apart
Part 2: Cold War links Korea, Taiwan
Part 3: Korea: Wrong war, wrong place, wrong
enemy
Part 4: 38th Parallel leads straight to
Taiwan
Part 5: History of the Taiwan time bomb
While United Nations declarations and
international principles support the rights of some
aboriginal and colonial peoples to self-determination
and independence, they do not apply to Taiwan, a de
facto, de jure and inalienable part of China. It always
was and always will be, despite current talk of a
referendum.
Neither the UN's Draft Declaration
on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples nor the
Inter-American Draft Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples recognizes a right of complete
territorial and political independence. For example, the
UN Draft Declaration states, "As a specific form of
exercising their right of self-determination,
[indigenous peoples] have the right to autonomy or
self-government in matters related to their internal and
local affairs."
Although the exercise of
self-determination can include secession from an
existing state and the creation of a new one, it also
includes other less disruptive choices. The UN General
Assembly's 1970 Declaration on Principles of
International Law concerning Friendly Relations and
Cooperation among States explains that implementation of
the right to self-determination need not conflict with
the territorial sovereignty or political unity of a
state. The declaration provides that a people exercising
its right of self-determination may choose to form a
federation with an existing state, integration into an
existing state as an autonomous region, or "any other
political status freely determined by a people" - short
of secession.
The declaration goes on to explain
the conditions under which peoples are not justified in
seeking secession and independence from a sovereign
state. It states that independent countries possessing
governments that effectively represent the whole of
their populations (ethnic minorities included) are
considered to be conducting themselves in conformity
with the principle of equal rights and
self-determination of peoples. For example, if an
indigenous people or ethnic minority resides in a state
that enables it to participate effectively in the
political process and economy and to practice its
religion and culture, then it is exercising its right of
self-determination and has no cause to secede. The
self-determination argument does not fit at all the
Taiwan situation.
In 1919, the victorious World
War I Allies, including China, chose in the Versailles
Conference to grant German concessions in Shandong,
China, to Japan rather than returning them to China.
This outrageous decision was supported by a secret
British treaty with Japan in exchange for Japanese
recognition of British interests in Tibet, and also by a
secret Russo-Japanese treaty in exchange for Japanese
recognition of Russian interests in Outer Mongolia. This
concession to Japan, together with the affirmation of
Japan's 1915 Twenty-One Demands of China, sparked
violent protests all over China, led by students in
Beijing. This came to be known in history as the May
Fourth Movement, a watershed event that triggered the
release of revolutionary energy.
Riding the
momentum of national consciousness of the May Fourth
Movement, Sun Yat-sen reorganized the Guomindang (GMD,
known on Taiwan as the Kuomintang or KMT) into a
socialist and a nationalist party. Mao Zedong was
working as a librarian in Peking University at the time
of the student protests. Two years after the May Fourth
student protest, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was
founded in Shanghai. The political dynamism behind the
preservation of China's territorial integrity was the
fountainhead of all revolutionary movements in China.
No Chinese government can compromise on the
secession of Taiwan and survive.
In the 2000
election on Taiwan, exploiting his authority as
president of the Republic of China (ROC) and chairman of
the GMD, Lee Teng-hui clandestinely supported the
independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
and engineered the split of the GMD into contentious
factions that ensured the election of Chen Shui-bian as
president of the ROC with only 39.2 percent of the vote
cast. He won without a runoff in the "winner take all"
election by a narrow margin of 300,000 votes over James
Soong, former secretary of the late Jiang Jing-guo and
secretary general of the GMD. Soong had run as an
independent candidate after being forced off the GMD
ticket by Lee Teng-hui. Soong and Lien Chan, the GMD
candidate, together received 59.9 percent of the votes
but both lost the election separately to Chen, the
minority winner.
GMD lost in 2000 because of
a traitor
The GMD would have easily won the
election if it were not for the fact that it had a
traitor at the head of the party. After the election,
the gravely wounded GMD expelled Lee Teng-hui from the
party. But the most problematic aspect of the 2000
election was that it was unconstitutional, since local
elections on Taiwan could not legitimately elect holders
of national offices of China, be it Republic or People's
Republic (PRC).
Jiang Jing-guo was credited with
the democratization of Taiwan. As a young man of 16,
Jiang went to Moscow in 1925 to study communism
first-hand, which he embraced devotedly, quite typical
of patriotic youths of the time. He was a classmate of
Deng Xiaoping in Moscow. The inter-party struggle
between the GMD and the CCP was very much a family
affair at the leadership level.
Sun Yat-sen,
founder of the GMD and the ROC, welcomed CCP members to
join the GMD as individuals. After Sun's death in 1925,
Jiang Jie-shi (Chiang Kai-shek) at first sided with the
left wing of the GMD. By 1927, with the support of GMD
extreme rightists, Jiang undertook anti-communist purges
within the GMD. The young Jiang Jing-guo, then in
Moscow, publicly denounced his father as a reactionary
and went to work in Siberia, where he met and, in March
1935, married Fenna Epatcheva Vahaleva, a native
Russian. Jiang Jing-guo returned to China in April 1937
after having lived in the Soviet Union for 12 years.
In 1949, Jiang Jing-guo followed his father to
Taiwan to become head of the secret police (Blue Shirts)
in 1950, and he served until 1965. One of the
high-profile operations of Jiang Jing-guo's Blue Shirts
was against General Sun Li-jen, a Virginia Military
Institute-trained general who led victorious US-equipped
Chinese forces against the Japanese alongside US
commanding General Joseph Stilwell in Burma. Sun was the
first Chinese nationalist general who showed that given
modern weapons and training, the Chinese soldier could
be an excellent fighter. Sun was much appreciated by
Stilwell, whose opinion of Jiang Jie-shi was intensely
and openly unfavorable. General Douglas MacArthur had
plans to use Sun as commander of a new invasion force on
the Chinese mainland during the Korean War. Sun's
popularity with and loyalty from his troops made him an
unwitting political rival to Jiang Jie-shi and caused
him to be placed under house arrest until the end of
martial law in 1986.
From 1955-60, Jiang Jing-kuo
led the building of a cross-island highway, a key
infrastructure project that integrated the economy of
the island and facilitated administrative control over
the south from Taipei in the north. He was defense
minister from 1965 until 1969, when he became vice
premier. In 1972, he was appointed premier and served
until 1978. Jiang Jie-shi died in office in April 1975,
and Jiang Jing-guo succeeded his father to power - first
as premier, becoming president in 1978 after vice
president Yen Chai-kan served out Jiang Jie-shi's
remaining term. Jiang Jing-guo was re-elected to a
second term in 1984 by the National Assembly, which
consisted mostly of "thousand-year" legislators of
indefinite tenure who had been elected before the ROC
fled from the mainland. He was the last legal,
constitutionally legitimate elected president of the
ROC.
In 1987, Jiang Jing-guo lifted martial law
and allowed family visits to the mainland and a gradual
loosening of political controls, allowing opposition
political parties such as the DPP to function legally.
Jiang launched the "Fourteen Major Construction
Projects", the "Ten Major Construction Projects" and the
"Twelve New Development Projects", contributing to the
"Taiwan miracle". Not surprisingly, because of his
communist training, Jiang's development programs were
similar to the national construction programs on the
mainland led by Mao Zedong, the difference being that
Taiwan did not have to face hostile US containment and
total economic embargo, and Taiwan's problems were of a
much smaller scale and complexity than those on the
mainland.
Jiang Jing-guo. the people's
leader
Among Jiang's economic accomplishments
were the acceleration of the process of modernization to
give Taiwan a 13 percent growth rate, a US$4,600 per
capita annual income, and one of the world's largest
foreign-exchange reserves, at the time of his death.
Jiang Jing-guo died in office of heart failure in Taipei
at the age of 78 in 1988. In contrast to his father's
political persona, the legacy of Jiang Jing-guo is that
of a people's leader, very much in the mode of the ideal
communist cadre of his youth. He remains generally a
populist, and popular, figure popular among the
electorate on Taiwan today, particularly among those who
support eventual cooperation between the GMD and the CCP
for a peaceful end to the civil war. His memory and
image are frequently invoked by GMD officials who have
rejected the anti-party, pro-independence political
platform of Lee Teng-hui, Jiang's successor as president
and GMD party chairman.
The ROC had been
governed until 1991 under a constitution drafted in 1947
when the ROC government ruled the mainland and Taiwan.
The constitution outlined a government for all of China.
The document was in part drafted as a way of creating a
coalition government between the GMD the CCP, in hope of
avoiding a renewal of the civil war. It was adopted by
the National Assembly on December 25, 1946, was
promulgated by the ROC National Government on January 1,
1947, and went into effect on December 25, 1947. The
constitution was seen as the third and final stage of
political reconstruction of China.
Inter-party
cooperation between the GMD and the CCP took place twice
in history, the first time from 1920-27 when the GMD
looked to the Soviet Union as a model and the second
time from 1936-47 after the Xi'an Incident, when Jiang
Jie-shi was captured by the CCP and forced to join a
united front in the war of resistance against Japanese
aggression.
Significant amendments were made to
the ROC constitution in 1991, and a number of judicial
interpretations of the constitution reflect the drastic
shrinkage of GMD-controlled areas. Until 1991, the ROC
government in Taipei claimed to be the sole legitimate
government of all China, including the mainland and
Outer Mongolia, which had become a Soviet satellite as a
result of Moscow entering the war against Japan. In
keeping with that claim to represent all China, when the
GMD fled to Taipei in 1949, it re-established the full
array of central political bodies that had existed on
the mainland in its wartime capital Nanjing.
While much of this governmental structure
remained in place, in 1991 president Lee Teng-hui
unofficially abandoned the ROC government's claim of
sovereignty over the mainland, stating that the Taiwan
authorities do not "dispute the fact that the communists
control mainland China". The National Assembly, however,
never has officially changed the national borders, since
doing so would spell the de jure end of the ROC and be
seen as a prelude to Taiwan independence. National
Assembly members were anti-communists but they were not
traitors. They had no interest in allowing the
dismemberment of any part of China.
Taipei:
Either the government of all China or nothing
A
fundamental issue is at stake. A government cannot
selectively claim only a minor, offshore part of the
larger nation. It is either the government of all China,
inter-party disputes of legitimacy notwithstanding, or
it is not a government of China at all.
If the
Taiwan authorities do not claim to be the legitimate
government of China, they also forfeit their own
legitimacy even as a provincial government of Taiwan,
since Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, a fact
acknowledged by both the GMD and the CCP, the certified
participants in the political dispute.
The whole
notion of reunification of Taiwan is flawed and
misleading. The Taiwan issue is the product of a civil
war between two political parties, not two governments.
What is needed is not a reunification of Taiwan with
China, but a new political accommodation between the GMD
and the CCP to end the protracted civil war. There were
two previous periods of cooperation between the two
parties and there is no reason a third period of
cooperation cannot be arranged. Under GMD control,
Taiwan is a de facto and de jure part of China. There is
nothing to reunite. Throughout the modern history of
China, there have been many examples of more than one
government existing simultaneously on Chinese soil - but
there has been always only one China.
The
National Assembly of the ROC, elected on the mainland in
1947 to carry out the duties of choosing the president
and amending the constitution, was transferred to Taiwan
when the ROC government fled the mainland. Because after
1949 it was impossible to hold subsequent elections to
represent constituencies on the mainland,
representatives elected in 1947 held these seats
"indefinitely" as a temporary measure until the
anticipated return to the mainland.
In June
1990, the Council of Grand Justices, the equivalent of a
supreme court, faced reality - there was no prospect for
a return to the mainland. And therefore the council
mandated the retirement, effective December 1991, of all
surviving "indefinitely tenured" members of the National
Assembly, Legislative Yuan, and other national
governmental bodies.
The second National
Assembly, elected in 1991, was a provincial legislative
body, not a national one. It has no legitimate mandate
to decide on national issues, including the election of
a national president. This second National Assembly
amended the constitution in 1994 illegally and
unconstitutionally, paving the way for the
unconstitutional direct election of the national offices
of president and vice president of the ROC. Local
elections were then held on Taiwan in March 1996. This
unconstitutional second National Assembly retained the
authority to further amend the constitution, to recall
or impeach the president and the vice president, and to
ratify certain senior-level presidential appointments.
In April 2000, the members of the National
Assembly voted to permit their terms of office to expire
without holding new elections, in effect dissolving the
body as a standing institution. The members also
determined that such an election would be called in the
event the National Assembly would be needed to decide a
presidential recall or a constitutional amendment. In
recent years, the National Assembly has handed most of
its powers to the Legislative Yuan, including the power
of impeachment. The National Assembly in essence became
defunct, revoking with it the legitimacy of the new
government of the ROC.
Taiwan, like Hawaii,
can't amend the constitution
This is equivalent
to the US Congress being replaced because the state
legislature of Hawaii votes to amend the US constitution
without the required approval of the requisite number of
states. Taiwan's political and legislative machinations
are analogous to Hawaii's state legislature disbanding a
duly elected Congress and to declaring that the
territories of the United States would thereafter be
limited to the islands of Hawaii - and eventually be
known as the Republic of Hawaii. The US on the mainland,
according to this Taiwanesque scenario, would be viewed
by the new Republic of Hawaii as a foreign country. In
other words: illegal secession.
As the National
Assembly passed legislation in 1994 to allow for local
popular elections on Taiwan of national offices, the
Legislative Yuan in 1994 passed legislation to allow the
direct election of the governor of Taiwan province and
the mayors of Taipei and Kaohsiung municipalities. These
elections were held in December 1994, with the GMD
winning the governor's office and Kaohsiung's mayoral
post. The DPP won the Taipei mayoral position. In 1998,
GMD candidate Ma Ying-jeou regained the mayoralty of
Taipei by defeating the opposition DPP's most prominent
figure - Chen Shui-bian, who is now the illegal
president of the ROC.
The position of elected
governor and many other elements of the Taiwan
provincial government were eliminated by presidential
fiat at the end of 1998. The stated official purpose of
this move was to streamline administrative efficiency,
but in reality it was intended to weaken the political
base of governor James Soong. In the November 1997 local
elections, the DPP won 12 of the 23 county magistrate
and city mayoral contests to the GMD's eight, outpolling
the GMD for the first time in a major election.
Soong was GMD secretary general from 1989-93.
Despite his mainland provenance, Soong was widely seen
as a loyal supporter of Lee Teng-hui and an opponent of
the mainlander strongholds, the New Kuomintang Alliance
and the New Party. In support of Soong, Lee coined the
term "New Taiwanese" to describe a person born on the
mainland, raised on Taiwan, and calling Taiwan home.
Obviously, in keeping with the favorite-son doctrine,
the demographics of local elections naturally favor
local candidates in all elections. If Texas voters alone
could elect a US president through local elections in
Texas, a Texan would win the presidential race, although
a president so elected would not be constitutionally
legitimate.
In 1993 Soong was the first and only
directly elected governor of Taiwan province. He was an
effective campaigner and his good showing in the
governor's race ended hopes by the DPP of a so-called
Boris] Yeltsin effect, by which a locally elected
governor antagonistic to a national political structure
would command more influence than a national government
unpopular with the local population. Soong's position
was eliminated in 1998 after a National Development
Council meeting in 1996, when the NDC suggested that the
governmental structure of the Republic of China be
streamlined and the Taiwan provincial government be
abolished to remove administrative redundancy.
This was a political move by then-president Lee
Teng-hui to cut off Soong's power base and at the same
time to elevate the status of Taiwan from that of a
Chinese province to that of "one China, one Taiwan". Yet
there is no democratic principle that supports any right
of local voters on Taiwan to determine this or any other
national issue, which only can be decided by all voters
in all of China. One common belief on Taiwan is that Lee
Teng-hui favored the less popular vice president, Lien
Chan, over the highly popular Soong, in a deliberate
effort to sabotage GMD election chances.
Taiwan polls for national office are
illegitimate
Lien Chan is less popular with local
voters on Taiwan mainly because he is a mainlander and
as such always faces a disadvantage in local provincial
elections. But Lien Chan, or any other candidate running
for national office, would not have to face any local
election at all if the original National Assembly had
not been illegally disbanded. Others familiar with
Taiwan politics believe Lee feared that Soong if elected
would expose the corruption during Lee's tenure, and
undermine Lee's carefully nurtured legacy as a promoter
of democracy.
More important, by illegally
disbanding the National Assembly, Lee rendered all
Taiwan elections for national office illegitimate. By
denying GMD political control of Taiwan, Lee unwittingly
ended the Chinese civil war between the GMD and the CCP
- by making the GMD politically irrelevant. Deprived of
political control of any Chinese territory, the GMD
ceased to exist as a political force of consequence and
the Chinese civil war between two contending political
parties was at an end - for lack of a certifiable
contender.
Taiwan is now occupied by an
illegitimate authority that both the GMD and the CCP
have a common interest in eliminating. It also makes a
mockery of the official US position on Taiwan, which
aims to preserve the so-called status quo of Taiwan and
to oppose any unilateral changes. The status quo was GMD
control of Taiwan, through the government of the ROC.
This status quo has been unconstitutional, fundamentally
and unilaterally changed by the use of local elections
for national offices.
Unless and until the US
de-recognizes the usurpation of national offices of the
ROC by unconstitutional local elections, the "one China"
policy professed by the US is mere hypocrisy. The issue
is not local democracy; the issue is illegitimate
usurpation.
A recent controversy involving the
illegal 1994 ROC constitution is the right to
referendum, which is enshrined in that new constitution.
Although the right is constitutionally permitted,
implementing legislation had been blocked by the
pan-blue coalition - largely from suspicions that
proponents of a referendum law would use it to overturn
even the illegal new ROC constitution and provide a
legalistic means for declaring Taiwan independence.
In 2003, Chen Shui-bian, the illegally elected
president, proposed holding a referendum in 2006 for
implementation of an entirely new constitution on May
20, 2008, to coincide with the inauguration of the 12th
president of the ROC, and the 54th anniversary of the
first inauguration of Jiang Jie-shi as president.
Proponents of such a move, namely the DPP-led pan-green
coalition, play to the US anti-communist fixation and
argue that the constitution endorses a socialist
ideology - the Three People's Principles proclaimed by
Sun Yat-sen, the GMD founder, as the founding principles
of the GMD and the ROC.
Such socialist
principles, they argue, are only "precedented" in
communist countries. Furthermore, the current
constitution explicitly states: "To meet the requisites
of the nation prior to national unification ..." in
direct opposition to the pan-green agenda of keeping
Taiwan separated from the mainland under all
circumstances.
The pan-blue coalition has also
come up with its own constitutional reform proposals,
but for implementation in 2005. This position changes
the nature of the unfinished Chinese civil war between
the GMD and the CCP, and compels the PRC into actions to
protect the territorial integrity of China. On this
issue, the CCP and the GMD, as well as the PRC and the
ROC, are of one mind. Notwithstanding the illegality of
the new constitution, a referendum on the status of
Taiwan, aside from its controversial constitutionality,
can only be valid if it is held on all of China,
including the mainland, and not just held on Chinese
Taiwan.
Next: Any referendum is wrong, wrong, wrong
Henry C K Liu is chairman of New
York-based Liu Investment Group.
(Copyright
2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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