Taiwan: Trying to please everyone
... By Laurence Eyton
TAIPEI -
One of the problems about trying to please everyone is
that you usually end up pleasing no one. Such might be
the situation of Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian. In
the run-up to his inauguration Thursday, there had been
fevered speculation as to what his speech might contain.
In the event, it was more noticeable for what was absent
than for the announcement of any bold policy initiatives
or departures.
In truth Chen was so boxed in by
others' expectations or demands that he was left with
little room in which to maneuver. He also had to please
such a diversity of opinion that someone was bound to be
disappointed. "President Chen strikes pragmatic tone,"
"Justice for all, vows Chen," and "Chen to continue
middle way" were the headlines in Taiwan's three
English-language newspapers; so far so bland.
The pressure on Chen came from four directions;
his own political camp, the Taiwan electorate in
general, China and the United States.
The more
extreme of Chen's supporters, consisting of two
political parties and widely known as the "green camp"
or the "pan-greens" after the color associated with
Taiwan independence, wanted to see constitutional
changes that would stress Taiwan's sovereign
independence and take it further away from the idea of
reunification with China.
The main body of
Taiwanese have little interest in the
reunification/independence debate, preferring the status
quo to any other option. What they want is an end to the
incredibly vicious atmosphere generated by the
presidential election campaign and the challenge to the
result by the losing "pan-blue camp" of the Chinese
Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First party
(PFP).
Taiwanese are used to shrugging off the
threat, such as it is, posed by China. They are not used
to their society being in constant political turmoil and
they are fed up with it. For the four years of Chen's
first term almost nothing of any note was achieved
because of the animosity between the pan-greens who
controlled the government and the pan-blues who
controlled the legislature. Most Taiwanese, except the
lunatic fringe of the pan-blues, are tired of this
impasse, and wanted to see some attempt by Chen to heal
the wounds of the last four years and particularly the
election campaign - which reached new heights of
ugliness for Taiwan.
China hates Chen because of
his background as a supporter of Taiwan independence.
During Chen's first term it resolutely refused to have
anything to do with him unless he adopted the "one
China" policy, that is, acknowledge that Taiwan is a
part of China. This Chen would and will not do, and it
might be worth pointing out that probably no Taiwan
politician, however pro-China he might be, could do this
without facing massive civil disturbances. The problem
for China was that Beijing was assured by its friends in
the KMT and PFP, with whom it has had extensive contacts
in the last four years, that independence-minded Chen
was a flash in the pan who would be ousted after a
single term. After this Beijing and the blue camp could
reach some kind of a rapprochement. A Chen second term -
assuming it is not upset by the ongoing vote recount and
the pan-blues' legal suits to get the March election
annulled - has holed China's policy of intransigence
below the water line.
Chen's party could have
a political lock on the future It is not that it
would be impossible to freeze Taiwan-China relations
another four years, but rather that the electoral
dynamics in Taiwan suggest that someone like Chen might
be around for a long time. The pan-greens increased
their share of the vote by 11 percentage points in just
four years to win the March presidential election. There
is a very strong possibility that without the pan-blues
radically changing their outlook, Chen's Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP) may have a lock-hold on Taiwan's
government for the foreseeable future. And the pan-blues
may only have a hope of ousting him in four years' time
by themselves becoming a Taiwanese nationalistic
grouping, something like DPP-lite.
The US, of
course, is in the midst of a nightmare in Iraq, and has
a significant amount of regional prestige on the line in
its dealings with North Korea. The message the booms out
from Washington loud and clear is that it does not want
any trouble in the Taiwan Strait. That means it does not
want to see any unilateral moves on either side that
would destabilize the current peace. What it has been
particularly concerned about is Chen's promise to
rewrite the constitution. This is simply because
Washington sees it as almost impossible to produce a new
constitution without going into matters of land area,
jurisdiction and sovereignty, which inevitably would
cross Beijing's red lines on these issues.
So
what did Chen say and who got what?
The
pan-greens were told that Chen was less keen on the kind
of identity grudge politics that had brought him to
power. The pan-greens are overwhelmingly from the
dominant Hoklo-speaking ethnic group in Taiwan, a group
which sees the pan-blues, the KMT in particular, as
interlopers from China who illegally, by the use of
state terror, deprived them of their birthright for half
a century. Chen's speech gave subtle but unmistakable
indications that this kind of politics had to come to an
end, that Taiwan for better or worse was a multi-ethnic
society and people had to learn to tolerate and accept
each other if it was going to prosper as such. Chen
talked forcefully of Taiwan as "ethnically diverse, but
one as a nation" and of the importance of having a
shared sense of belonging. He also said that after the
establishment of a democratic institutional framework,
there needed to be an expansion of people's involvement
in civil society and indicated, once again with subtlety
but quite clearly, that this expansion was far more
important that continuing to address past ethnic-based
grievances.
This is a plain and reasonable
statement of what Taiwan must do if it is to avoid the
fate of Northern Ireland or Yugoslavia - and the degree
of ethnic hatred whipped up during and since the
election makes such dark comparisons quite appropriate -
but it may alienate hard-core pan-greens. It is also
only fair to point out that to build the kind of society
Chen talks of requires the support of those ethnic
groups which lean toward the pan-blues - the mainland
Chinese, the Hakka, the Aboriginals - but the pan-blue
political parties have actually used the ethnic card in
their election campaigning even more than the
pan-greens. Given the state of inter-camp animosity it
is hard to see the kind of breakout from the ghettos of
ethnic prejudice into the large-minded liberal
multi-ethnic harmony that Chen wishes.
As to the
interminable political bickering that most Taiwanese are
now so sick of, Chen had platitudes to utter but few
ideas about how to bring it to an end. He promised to
abide by the law, whatever verdict that eventually gave
about his election. He also said that both the governing
party and the opposition had a responsibility to the
people - noticeably using the phrase "loyal opposition",
implying that the opposition had a duty to protect the
political processes of the state, something which the
pan-blues have ignored since losing the presidential
election in 2000.
But the main portion of Chen'
speech concerned constitutional change and China. About
the constitution, Chen was detailed and, at least from
the American's point of view, reassuring. Gone was talk
of drafting a new constitution, instead it was to be
"re-engineered". Also missing was talk of getting a new
constitution approved by referendum; Chen committed
himself to using the current constitutional framework.
What is to be changed is a mass of rather arcane
measures - a three-power or five-power government, what
form of proportional representation to adopt and so on -
of little interest to anyone except constitutional
scholars.
What Chen didn't say about
constitutional reform Far more important was what
Chen excluded from the scope of the constitutional
reform, namely "issues related to national sovereignty,
territory and the subject of unification/independence".
Chen's reason for this was that constitutional change
depended on a broad consensus. The changes had to
represent something for which people of any political
stamp could sign up. Since there was no such consensus
about change on these topics they should be excluded
"for the time being" from the constitutional reform
process.
The subtlety of this might well be lost
on Beijing. For what Chen was implying was that should a
consensus develop on these issues, then Taiwan may well
address them. And behind this implication is the well
known phenomenon that the more bellicose China is toward
Taiwan the more Taiwanese opinion hardens toward an
independence stance.
But by far the most
controversial part of Chen's address, "the low point",
one newspaper called it on Friday, was his China policy,
not because it was too intransigent but because in the
eyes of many Taiwanese it wasn't nearly tough enough. A
source of particular ire was Chen's remark that "we can
understand why the government on the other side of the
Taiwan Strait ... cannot relinquish the insistence on
the "one China Principle." Pan-green media were quick to
point out that this suggests that there is some
justification in China's claims on Taiwan whereas in
fact there is none.
Once again, however, some
elements were significant by their absence. In 2000 Chen
had pledged as a goodwill gesture to China, "five noes."
He would not, he said, declare independence, would not
change the nation's name, would not codify the
"state-to-state" model of cross-Strait relations into
the constitution, would not promote a referendum to
decide Taiwan's future, and would not abolish the
National Unification Guidelines established under the
KMT. In the run-up to the inauguration there had been
pressure on Chen from all sides. The US State Department
wanted a reiteration of the five noes, while Chen's most
senior advisers threatened to walk out on the ceremony
if he did any such thing. In the end he fudged,
reaffirming "the promises and principles set forth in my
inaugural speech in 2000." Chen's line was conciliatory.
"In the future ... Taiwan and China can seek to
establish relations in any form whatsoever. We would not
exclude any possibility, so long as there is the consent
of the 23 million people of Taiwan."
Chen's tone
caused great displeasure among his own supporters if
only because he could have made a much more forceful
argument. A change of policy in Beijing has to come from
a perception that given that Taiwan cannot be taken by
military force, and certainly cannot be diplomatically
bullied into accepting Beijing's suzerainty, it has to
be wooed. Beijing has to realize that Taiwanese have to
be persuaded that reunification is to their advantage
and that only they can decide when Beijing's efforts in
this direction have succeeded. Beijing has to accept
that Taiwanese can vote on their future. Chen had, his
detractors claim, a perfect opportunity to make this
point with force and great clarity, but he fluffed it.
Reaction to the speech outside Taiwan has been
good in the US and silence in China, at least
officially. White House spokesman Scott McClellan told
reporters: "By making clear his administration's
commitment not to take steps that would unilaterally
change the status quo, underscoring its openness to
seeking accord with Beijing, and reaffirming previous
commitments on cross-Strait relations, Chen Shui-bian's
address creates an opportunity for Taipei and Beijing to
restore dialogue across the Strait," while State
Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "We
particularly welcome the constructive message that was
offered in his inaugural speech. We appreciate his
pledge that constitutional reform will not touch on
issues of sovereignty, territory or national title."
As of Friday afternoon there has been no
official reaction from China. On Thursday night China
called Chen the "biggest threat" to regional peace, but
a spokesman said this was a reaction to US remarks
earlier in the week rather than a response to the
inauguration speech. Concerning the speech itself there
has been press comment of which the China Daily was
typical, opening its editorial Friday with the sentence,
"Chen Shui-bian's latest offer of 'goodwill' turns out
to be another sham."
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