SPEAKING
FREELY Outdated status quo in the Taiwan
Strait By Yenching Ho
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
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WASHINGTON - US
Senator Barack Obama, rising star in the
Democratic primaries ahead of next year's
presidential election and dubbed "the black JFK"
(a reference to the late president John F Kennedy)
by some of the US media, has delivered his first
direct comment on the
relationship between mainland China and Taiwan
since he became the fifth black senator in US
history.
On May 23 in addressing the visit
to Washington, DC, by Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi,
Obama said on the Senate floor, "China's rise
offers great opportunity but also poses serious
challenges ... This means maintaining our military
presence in the Asia-Pacific region, strengthening
our alliances, and making clear to both Beijing
and Taipei that a unilateral change in the status
quo in the Taiwan Strait is unacceptable. Also,
though today China's military spending is
one-tenth of ours, we must monitor closely China's
strategic capabilities while also pushing for
greater transparency of its defense activities."
It does not come as a surprise that a
first-term senator who was during his previous
life mostly confined to being a community activist
in Chicago does not stray from the standard cliche
of US policy toward the Taiwan Strait.
"No
unilateral change in the status quo in the Taiwan
Strait" is the most evoked statement by the US
administration, by Congress, and by scholars when
it comes to the China-Taiwan stalemate.
It
is ironic, though, that no US officials have ever
spelled out the contents and limits of the status
quo, a policy the US so rigidly and religiously
adheres to. Beijing's definition of the status quo
certainly is different from Taipei's. What is the
US definition?
Former assistant secretary
of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs James
Kelly infamously defended another cliche of the US
China policy during a House of Representatives
International Relations Committee hearing in 2004
- the US one-China policy.
When asked to
define this relic of the Cold War, Kelly stated:
"I'm not sure I very easily could define it. I can
tell you what it is not. It is not the one-China
policy or the one-China principle that Beijing
suggests, and it may not be the definition that
some would have in Taiwan."
Today, the
Taiwan Strait is one of the flashpoints in the
world and no one, not even the high-level
officials in the US State Department can clearly
define the policy that is supposedly one of the
fundamental pillars in the US-Taiwan-China
relationship.
Just like the one-China
policy, the policy of adhering to the status quo
has deteriorated into a mantra where no one
bothers to examine the content and review the
background that first lent credence to the
rhetoric. It is almost as if the status quo in the
Taiwan Strait will be magically preserved as long
as people keep reciting it. It is a policy of
wishful thinking.
But international
relations cannot be frozen.
The Berlin
Wall fell in 1989. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait
in 1991. Kosovo spiraled into a horrific civil war
in 1996. And the list goes on.
Moreover,
is the status quo in the Taiwan Strait that the
administration of US president Bill Clinton
defended so vehemently 15 years ago the same as
the status quo that the administration of
President George W Bush is defending today? If the
answer is yes, then we are overlooking the
missiles that the Beijing government continues to
add every year to intimidate Taiwan, or
overlooking the fact that Taiwan became a
democracy in 1996 when it held its first direct
presidential elections, and when the first
peaceful transfer of power took place in 2000.
What is the status quo?
The status
quo is that Taiwan is an independent and sovereign
country. It is a full-fledged democracy with
impressive economic prowess. Compared with a lot
of countries that gained democracy around the same
time that Taiwan did less than a decade ago,
Taiwan is faring exceptionally well.
On
the other side of the Taiwan Strait, China is a
repressive regime where there is no freedom of
speech, of the press or of association. It is the
world's third-largest economy, with a military
capacity capable of unnerving the United States.
Today, China deploys more than 900 ballistic
missiles targeted at Taiwan and is quashing
Taiwan's international presence.
If US
policy is to maintain the status quo, the policy
is tantamount to acquiescing to China's blatant
threats against a fledgling democracy, to
condoning the fact that the 23 million people of
Taiwan are being held hostage by Chinese missiles,
and to equating democracy with a communist and
oppressive regime. It is against the very
foundation the United States' founding fathers
built on more than 200 years ago.
After
reading David McCullough's book 1776, out
of admiration for the US founding fathers, I
shared my comparison of the American quest for
freedom with Taiwan's with a US congressional
aide. My audience got annoyed that I compared the
two situations. Undeterred, I told him that the
founding fathers not only inspire Americans but
people, young and old, in every corner of the
world; and not only this generation but many
generations to come.
And so does another
internationally known American hero - the late
Martin Luther King Jr. He provides inspiration for
humankind, for everyone who believes in freedom,
liberty and human rights. These are the heroes who
give a little boy in Tehran or a young girl in
Khartoum the hope and the courage that one day
they too can change the world.
During the
height of the US civil-rights movement in 1963, a
Newsweek poll showed that almost 75% of white
Americans asked, "Why do the civil-rights leaders
have to insist on equal rights for negroes so
immediately?
"Why can't blacks accept the
status quo?" they asked.
Let's hope
Senator Obama listens.
Yenching
Ho is a writer based in Washington, DC.
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd.
All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
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