Taiwan reassures US over plan for new constitution

By Charles Snyder

STAFF REPORTER IN WASHINGTON

Taiwanese officials in Taipei and Washington appear to have allayed fears among US officials over President Chen Shui-bian's weekend announcement that he would plan to write a new constitution for Taiwan in 2006 if he is reelected to the presidency.

A series of urgent meetings between Taiwanese and American officials appears to have assuaged Washington's fears that Chen's statement would bring a strong Chinese reaction and poison the US-Taiwan-China triangular situation.

The Taiwanese officials also appear to have calmed Washington anger over Chen's failure to notify the US beforehand of his constitutional demarche. The situation appeared to have been a replay of previous Chen pronouncements in which he failed to warn Washington beforehand, including his statement that there is "one country on each side" of the Taiwan Strait, and his plan to hold a referendum to coincide with next March's presidential election.

In the wake of the firestorm that erupted in response to Chen's constitution announcement, the George W. Bush administration dispatched the head of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), Therese Shaheen, and Deputy Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific Randall Shriver on Sunday to meet with Minister of Foreign Affairs Eugene Chien, in Baltimore, where he was visiting at the time, to solicit his views on Chen's pronouncement.

In Taipei, Secretary General of the Presidential Office Chiou I-jen, held a meeting with AIT Director Douglas Paal to explain Chen's words. It is not known whether the meeting was held before Chen's speech, at the time of the speech. or afterward.

In Washington, the head of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, Chen Chien-jen, and his top aides, held urgent meetings with officials of the White House and State Department, to explain Chen's words.

They made the following points, according to Taiwanese sources in Washington:

The new constitution would not deal with issues related to independence or unification with China. It would deal only with domestic political issues such as the size of the legislature, whether Taiwan would have a three-sided or five-sided government, and whether the government would be a presidential or a parliamentary style.

"They seemed to understand it better," a Taiwanese source said of the US administrations' position after the briefings.

Nevertheless, the Bush administration was concerned over Chen's remarks, and may still be concerned, over China's potential response to Chen's announcement and how that might affect Beijing-Taiwan-Washington trilateral ties.

"They may not like it," but at least Washington has a better understanding of Chen's intentions, a source said. The US' main concern is over the peace and stability of cross-strait relations, the source said.

The Taiwanese representatives' explanations in the US and Taiwan appear to ease those concerns, Taiwanese officials feel.

Drafting a constitution would alter status quo

By Hsu Yung-ming

President Chen Shui-bian proposed a timetable for the creation of a new constitution during the Democratic Progres-sive Party's (DPP) 15th anniversary celebrations. We should note, however, the muted reaction from opposition parties, the US and China, the media and the DPP's ally, the Taiwan Solidarity Union.

Media opinion polls show this is not an urgent matter. But when this plan is implemented, electoral democracy, previously focused on transferring power between political parties, will enter a new realm -- the referendum becomes another democratic channel, and a new constitution becomes the goal for political development.

Talk of a new constitution will have an immediate impact on the content of a referendum law. The opposition has kept the referendum issue a public-policy issue, and the pan-blue alliance has said that referendums should be initiated through public signature drives, thus depriving the executive of the right to initiate a referendum and eliminating consultative referendums.

But the issue of a new constitution affects the public referendum channel. The proposed referendum law must leave room for a referendum regarding a new constitution and allow for public participation.

This issue has clearly managed to specify the presidential election agenda since the focus of the election has turned towards symbolic issues such as presidential power, constitutional politics and even the movement to change Taiwan's name.

The unwillingness of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party (PFP) leaders to respond may be the correct approach in the short term, but continued silence will hurt their presidential image and raise questions as to whether there will be a reaction from the Chinese Communist Party.

In the long term, a new constitution will indeed change the status quo, in particular when it comes to adjusting inequalities in the US-China-Taiwan relationship. Chen's "Five No's" promised self-restraint in exchange for security and stability, but as he is trying to win a second term, it has instead turned into a mistake.

The US keeps reiterating the "Five No's" trying to restrict Chen's behavior, with the opposition and China silently chiming in. The constitutional issue has led to Chen being able to cast off the "Five No's" strait-jacket. Just like the movement to change Taiwan's name, it has demystified independence and made question of including the "state-to-state" model of cross-strait relations in the Constitution irrelevant.

The original direction of Tai-wan's democratization process was not to match the constitutional issue with a referendum. In the past, transformation came through compromise, with frequent meetings on issues of national concern. Government and opposition cooperated to amend the Constitution and this is why we today have an electoral democracy.

The longing for authoritarianism proves that this electoral democracy is incapable of solving fundamental issues. When demo-cracy is diminished to a mere matter of elections, the transfer of government power merely becomes distribution of power between political parties. Public frustrations are transformed into doubts of the democratic system. This is a problem that cannot be addressed by any number of changes in government.

The creation of a new constitution could deteriorate into just another campaign trick. This, together with the orientation of political leaders, will be the biggest motivating power deciding the question of whether the referendum will become a new channel for the democratic participation of the people.

Hsu Yung-ming is an assistant research fellow at the Sun Yat-Sen Institute for Social Sciences and Philosophy of the Academia Sinica.

History must be studied in context

By Chen Ro-jinn

My daughter has fallen in love with a series of biographies of the world's great people. She started with Hans Christian Anderson's story. While reading aloud the names listed on the book's back cover -- Walt Disney, George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte and Florence Nightingale -- she suddenly asked, "Why aren't there any Taiwanese great people? Who are the great people in Taiwan?"

I have asked many adults the same question, but no one was able to immediately give a name that we all feel proud of. This shows the seriousness of people's ignorance of Taiwanese history.

The root cause of this ignorance is that, over the past decades, children were not taught Taiwanese history but only studied China's history. Only Sun Yat-sen is the nation's "world-class great man." Even the late president Chiang Kai-shek dared not confer such a title on himself. He only became the "savior of the nation."

Only in a completely sick political environment would a 9m-long Chinese robe be forcibly put on a 1.5m-tall Taiwanese man.

Although the situation has seen some changes, many people still have that outdated mindset. Historians have been divided recently over draft guidelines for high-school history textbooks. Undoubtedly, this is another small battle between pro-unification and pro-independence advocates.

According to the draft, high-school students will have two-year prescribed history courses. They would have to study Taiwanese history in the first semester of their first year and Chinese history (till the Ming dynasty) in the second semester. Modern world history would be the topic through their second year.

Looking at this arrangement from a unification-independence perspective, neither side should have any problems with a curriculum that addresses both Taiwan-ese "self-awareness" and China's part in Taiwanese history. Yet, some history professors have criticized this proposal for being based on a strong sense of Taiwan independence ideology. They said placing the Republic of China's history in the section of world history is a result of ideological thinking.

I believe they have such anxiety because they still treat history classes as political-education courses, endow history education with a political mission and entertain the same fears the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) used to have when it ruled Taiwan. They worry that if Taiwanese people do not study lots of Chinese history, they will forget their "mother-land"; that if they were exposed to more Taiwanese history, they would become pro-independence advocates.

Let's think about it: when Japan ruled Taiwan and tried to brainwash the people with its imperial emperor-centered thinking, most Taiwanese people viewed themselves as Chinese. Consider the illiteracy at that time and the number of people who studied history, and yet their identity leaned toward the "motherland."

By the same token, after China's history has been taught for decades, has there been a huge increase in the number of Taiwanese who identify themselves as Chinese?

To build up identity cannot be solely achieved by deliberately instilling a certain view of history.

Some professors worry that identity confusion "will kill students." I am afraid that their worries go too far. Identity confusion is the reflection of people's minds under the influence of historical residue. Taiwanese students should better their understanding of this.

Some academics hope that under these circumstances, historical facts should be given in lectures for students to discuss and reflect on, rather than hurrying to settle the dispute on a single authority.

Opposing scholars have shown their pro-unification historical viewpoint when they criticized the draft and said, "[Students should] know that the history and fate of Taiwan and China are inseparable. So there is no need to waste energy in accomplishing a `mission impossible'...." I guess the "mission impossible" refers to Taiwan independence and its like.

These academics even warned: The fall of a nation comes after the destruction of its history. They equate not teaching the ROC's history with eliminating the ROC.

This argument falls short of experience: Once war is waged, the country will be dead. There is no need whatsoever to wipe out its history first. Just look at Chinese history -- the Qing dynasty altered the historical records of the Ming dynasty after exterminating it, just as previous dynasties had done to their predecessors.

According to the draft guidelines, the inception of the ROC would not be deleted from the textbooks but placed in the context of the modern world's great changes, thereby helping students develop a broader concept of history.

Some academics argued that these are odd textbooks because the country's founding is only discussed along with world history in the last of the textbooks. But the ROC, which has existed in Taiwan for more than 50 years, is only a giant empty shell given the mass territory the title alludes to.

We grow up in Taiwan, Peng-hu, Kinmen or Matsu and live here every single day. If we force our youth to study the ROC history dated between 50 and 100 years ago, which did not occur in Taiwan but is still required to be recorded in the same quantity as is Taiwanese history in the nation's textbooks, then I'd say this is a weird country and they are weird textbooks.

Chen Ro-jinn is a freelance writer.