Taiwan: Reunification fast becoming
fiction By Antoaneta Bezlova
TAIPEI and BEIJING - Although talk of reunifying
the island of Taiwan with its overbearing mother
mainland China have dominated election platforms and
complicated Taiwan's sense of ethnic identity, the
long-sought goal of reunification promoted by groups on
both sides of the Taiwan Strait is becoming less
attainable. Now it seems that what once was fact has
turned to fiction.
Beijing still preaches
brotherhood and cultural kinship with its "Taiwanese
compatriots", whom it calls the fellow descendants of
the Yellow Emperor, recognized as the common ancestor of
the Chinese people. But the emergence of an assertive
Taiwanese identity is making the idea of reunification
between China and Taiwan an obsolete remnant of a bygone
era.
Never before in the five decades of rivalry
and belligerence between the island of Taiwan and
mainland China has the gap forged by different
consciousness on both sides of the Strait loomed this
large. Visions of reuniting Taiwan with the mainland,
whose government considers it a breakaway province, have
been lost among talks of an independent Taiwan. And
increasingly this talk is backed by a real and growing
sense of a new and collective Taiwanese identity.
"Reunification? Why?" asked Taiwanese sailor
Huang Ching-long. "We [Taiwanese] and mainlanders are
different. We have the right to vote, we can hold [a]
national referendum and go freely abroad. People in
mainland China are not allowed anything of the kind. Why
would we volunteer to get new dictators? We had enough
with the Kuomintang."
Indeed, in the highly
contested March 20 presidential election, incumbent
Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, leader of the
governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), campaigned
on a platform of greater independence in defiance of
communist China.
Chen won by a razor-thin margin
against the opposition alliance led by the Kuomintang's
Lien Chan and his running mate, People First Party
chairman James Soong, which favors a less
confrontational approach toward Beijing - although the
results of the vote are now the subject of violent,
angry divisions in Taiwan.
A shift in ethnic
identity Ten years ago, the majority of Taiwan's
23 million people described themselves as "Chinese". Now
that sentiment has changed, and polls show that the
majority of them feel "Taiwanese" before they feel
Chinese.
Yet the shift in this ethnic identity -
54 years after the communist revolution in China - has
gone almost unrecognized by mainland Chinese experts,
who continue to brandish threats against Chen for
pushing ahead with an agenda formally to declare Taiwan
an independent state.
China continues to claim
Taiwan as part of its territory, though it lost the
island during the Civil War (1945-49) between the
Nationalist (Kuomintang) forces of Chiang Kai-shek and
the communist Red Army of Mao Zedong. After his defeat
at the hands of communists, Chiang led the Kuomintang
(KMT) into exile on Taiwan.
The KMT's autocratic
rule of the island claimed thousands of victims, and
Taiwan lived under the heavy hand of military rule until
1987, when martial law was lifted. People born on the
island - native Taiwanese such as Chen Shui-bian -
resented the bullying domination and corrupt rule of the
mainlanders, but they had few means to fight it.
The years since Chiang Kai-shek's death have
seen the introduction of gradual democratic reforms that
have pushed Taiwan away from its historic claims to
regain what it called the "rebel provinces" of communist
China.
Lee Teng-hui, a native Taiwanese who
became the island's first democratically elected
president in 1996, admitted that the KMT's grand visions
of uniting the island with mainland China under
Nationalist rule had been taken over by open talk of
Taiwan being a separate state.
Lee's and,
consequently, Chen Shui-bian's talk about Taiwanese
national identity has infuriated communist leaders in
Beijing. China has warned Taiwanese voters not to
support pro-independence leaders but has refused to
acknowledge that their "provocative talk" is backed by a
real and growing sense of a new Taiwanese consciousness.
Democratic reforms usher in 'Taiwan first'
agenda The DPP, which promotes a "Taiwan first"
political agenda, has increased its electoral support
from 4.97 million votes in 2000 to 6.47 million votes
this year. Even the KMT, which advocates improved
relations with the mainland, stopped mentioning the goal
of reunification at its pre-election rallies.
Responding to popular support for a Taiwanese
identity, Lien Chan and James Soong (both originally
from the mainland), had to kiss the ground during a
recent political rally to show their love for Taiwan.
Yet little has been reported of these events to
the mainland public. State-controlled mainland media in
China give scarce information on life and social changes
in Taiwan apart from the official communist propaganda.
Chen and his party are regularly vilified by Beijing for
plotting to make the island's de facto independence
permanent and abandoning the goal they once shared of
one day seeking reunification.
While the drama
of Taiwan's presidential elections made headlines around
the world, the mainland's media virtually ignored the
polls until the opposition staged protests in front of
the Presidential Palace in Taipei demanding a recount of
the closely fought vote last week.
An avalanche
of reports that appeared in the mainland newspapers over
the weekend also sought to discredit Chen's leadership
and cast doubts on his legitimacy as the re-elected
president. "Taiwanese masses protest 'unfair, unjust'
election'," read a headline in the Beijing Youth Daily,
one of the mainland's most popular newspapers.
Mainlanders criticize election
outcome Chen won the March 20 presidential vote
by fewer than 30,000 votes. His opponent Lien Chan has
refused to accept the outcome, alleging that Chen won
because of a number of sympathy votes triggered by a
suspicious assassination attempt on the eve of the
election.
Messages in the mainland's Internet
chat rooms echoed Beijing's critical line of the DPP and
its leader. "Everyone knows he is cheating. Chen is not
to be trusted," said one entry. "We should give up the
dream of peaceful reunification and start preparing for
military action," wrote another netizen.
However, mainland writers who have visited
Taiwan in recent years and witnessed the surge of
nationalist pride among Taiwanese are issuing a
passionate plea to compatriots on the island not to
forget the motherland.
"Save the memories of the
homeland," writer Li Rui said at a panel discussion
organized by the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekend
newspaper last week.
"Common culture is like [a]
mother's womb," warned mainland author Zhang Wei. "You
may change the name it bears, you can even change the
laws, but eventually you cannot escape the truth that we
all came from the same womb."
Many Taiwanese
agree - but they also think the chance for
reunification, if there ever was one, has passed.
Huang Su-eng, a social worker with the Female
Labor Rights Association in Taiwan, sounded frustrated
when she described the current atmosphere of political
correctness.
"We have come to the point when
anybody that opposes confrontation with mainland China
is seen as an internal enemy, a person who doesn't love
Taiwan," she said. "I don't think reunification is
possible, not in any foreseeable future. But I also
don't like this antagonism with mainland China. Does
this make me an enemy of Taiwan?"
