China is practicing state terrorism

By the Liberty Times editorial

Sunday, Dec 21, 2003,Page 8

Over the last few days, the global media has dedicated much attention to reports of the US Army's capture of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

After eight months on the run, following the US military's capture of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, this dictator, who is responsible for the persecution of his people, the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war and two Persian Gulf wars, was finally arrested on the outskirts of his hometown, Tikrit, thus putting an end to an era of terror in Iraq.

The US is of course the most qualified to comment on Saddam's capture, but, as a member of the international community and part of the anti-terrorist camp, Taiwan should also listen to what Israel, which finds itself in a situation similar to Taiwan's, says.

Israeli President Moshe Katsav has said that the capture of Saddam is not only a warning to those who support terrorism, but that it also proves that the international community will not tolerate a dictatorship that supports international terrorism.

Although the Chinese media initially publicized the news of Saddam's capture, Chinese officialdom has kept a low profile on the matter. The government in Beijing has, in fact, never supported US military action in Iraq. On account of the Chinese media's distortion of facts, the Chinese public feels that the US has been acting too much like a hegemon in its deployment of troops in Iraq.

Chinese officialdom has persisted in its view that the Iraqi issue should be resolved within the framework of the UN. Ironically, China's threats and actions toward Taiwan are not different from the behavior of Saddam and the former Iraqi government.

We all know that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), after its defeat of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in 1949, took over the Chinese mainland and founded the People's Republic of China. From that time on, the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have been individually and separately ruled, with neither side holding any jurisdiction over the other, thus creating a situation with one country on each side of the Taiwan Strait.

The People's Liberation Army continued its artillery aggression against Kinmen, and even though they were defeated twice, they never gave up their ambition to invade Taiwan.

But China, taking advantage of its increasing strength in recent years, has done its utmost to destroy the existence of the Republic of China, through political, economic and diplomatic means, as well as through suppressing athletic and cultural exchanges.

In particular, following Taiwan's continuous opening-up, China has in recent years mobilized its enormous manpower and material resources to infiltrate every level of Taiwanese society by means of fake marriages, prostitution, blood relations, trade, illegal immigration, drug smuggling and illegal arms.

They have carried out various kinds of intelligence-gathering, created family and social problems and upset social order; used marine-exploration vessels to carry out hydrographic exploration of Taiwan's territorial waters and paid Taiwanese businesspeople and unscrupulous elements to sell military secrets; used the Internet to hack into Taiwanese government Web sites to obtain classified materials, and organized an "Internet army" to carry out a large-scale information war; and used military exercises and other semi-military activities such as missile tests in attempts to control our elections and create public panic and stock market declines.

Today, they are aiming almost 500 missiles at Taiwan in order to terrorize the Taiwanese people into submission. All these activities can be summed up in one word -- terrorism.

We must understand what terrorism is. Terrorism includes a series of activities that attempt to spread terror, fear and destruction among groups of people. Terrorism can be divided into state and anti-state terrorism or social and political terrorism. Be it state or anti-state terrorism, terrorists strive for political goals.

In terms of state terrorism, the most important factor is that the organization in power wants to consolidate its power and oppose the will and determination of opposition forces. It does not hesitate to use violence for that purpose.

From this, we can more clearly understand China's ambitions and intentions.

Self-determination for residents and referendums are becoming a global trend, but China has used every method available to obstruct the passage of the Referendum Law (公民投票法) and to stop Taiwan from holding a referendum that has nothing to do with the issues of independence and unification.

To stop Taiwan from holding a referendum, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao did not hesitate to sacrifice China's trade interests to gain the US' guarantee that it would not support Taiwanese independence. It is difficult for us to accept such behavior from China.

The CCP has never ruled Taiwan, nor has it ever governed the 23 million people of Taiwan. The Chinese communist regime has never contributed to Taiwan's history and success, nor has it ever given any sympathy or concern to the Taiwanese people when they have suffered tribulations in the past.

We only see China using infiltration and sabotage in Taiwan, ruthlessly suppressing Taiwan's international survival and using military power to try to force the Taiwanese people to accept "one country, two systems," which would bring Taiwan under China's authoritarian rule.

In a marriage, a man and a woman need to seek mutual consensus.

How can the Chinese regime be allowed to call the shots in an issue involving the welfare of 23 million people?

The Taiwanese are a tenacious people.

They have never feared any bullying from external powers. In 50 years of facing China's military threat, we have never compromised or backed down. On the contrary, we have been able to succeed in an unfavorable environment and create a "Taiwan miracle" that is praised by everyone.

Taiwanese people are also a peace-loving people.

They have spared no effort to safeguard world peace. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the US, Taiwan joined the US' anti-terror efforts along with many other countries.

An anti-terrorism bill passed initial review in Taiwan recently. This was a demonstration of the government's determination to oppose terrorism.

Looking only at the military threats that China has posed to Taiwan, we perhaps cannot call China a terrorist organization.

But its long series of actions aimed at spreading terror, panic and destruction among groups of people do meet the criteria for terrorism.

They not only contravene the international community's beliefs about safeguarding peace, but also seriously hurt the Taiwanese people's feelings.

We hope the Chinese leaders can renounce their military threats and terrorism, withdraw the missiles they have deployed in coastal regions and aimed at Taiwan, take actions to win goodwill from Taiwanese people and let Taiwan's 23 million people be free from fear. This will be only the first step toward peaceful relations across the Taiwan Strait.

The US, for its part, should not employ double standards in fighting terrorism and maintaining world peace. Nor should it concern itself with capturing Saddam and Osama bin Laden while at the same time bowing and kneeling before China's state terrorism.

This would be truly deplorable, and detrimental to the US' democratic image.

A ticking time bomb among the pan-blues

By Chin Heng-wei

Sunday, Dec 21, 2003,Page 8

Legislative Yuan Speaker Wang Jin-pyng, who also heads the campaign headquarters of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-People First Party (PFP) alliance, recently claimed that the alliance "does not rule out independence as an option for Taiwan's future and it has never opposed the `one country on either side' of the Taiwan Strait formula."

Wang's remarks come as a surprise. It is the first time the pan-blue camp has shown a shift toward independence.

We do not know whether Wang received approval from the campaign headquarters to make these remarks, but his proposal is not so sudden, given that PFP Legislator Liu Sung-pan and KMT Central Standing Committee member Hung Yu-chin have suggested that the KMT should change its name to the "Taiwan Nationalist Party."

The problem is this: the alliance has presented neither measures to accomplish this nor a gradually progressive schedule, and so the public is confused.

But the KMT has not changed its name, KMT Chairman Lien Chan has not rescinded his statement that he is a "pure Chinese" and he has claimed that if he is elected, "unification will not occur in the next four years." All this casts doubt on the notion that the pan-blue camp "does not rule out independence."

So, has the KMT-PFP alliance made an ideological U-turn, or is Wang presenting this strategy in an attempt to "save the nation from extinction?"

For the majority of people, KMT support of independence is beyond their imagination. From 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek placed Taiwan under his rule of terror, to 1988, when his son Chiang Ching-kuo passed away, activists promoting Taiwanese independence have risked being sentenced to death.

Though former president Lee Teng-hui pushed for democratization and localization during his 12 years in power, Lien, who insists on calling himself Chinese, expelled Lee from the KMT after the party lost the presidential election in 2000 and had to hand over political power to the Democratic Progressive Party.

Returning to the KMT's "legally constituted authority," Lien presented the rule of Chiang Ching-kuo to demonstrate the party's sinicization and, at the same time, rejected the political path Lee had followed for 12 years.

Now, only 90 days away from the presidential election, Wang said that the KMT-PFP alliance would no longer mention the so-called "1992 consensus" and the notion of "one China, with each side making its own interpretation." Contradicting the past, he even said that the party "has never refuted the `one country on either side' platform."

In response, Lien said "this is Wang's personal opinion," indicating that the KMT's party platform is unchanged. If the KMT were to recognize the legality and rationality of independence, it actually has much to do.

For instance, the Guidelines for National Unification in the party platform should be scrapped, and Lien's stance that "one China is the Republic of China" must be changed. More importantly, the KMT-PFP version of the Referendum Law forbids putting the "national state" to a popular vote and must therefore be altered, otherwise the pan-blue camp cannot convince the public that "independence as an option for Taiwan" is part of its campaign platform.

In view of this, even if we brush aside the question of whether Wang's "personal opinion" can benefit the pan-blue camp's election campaign, he might have placed a time bomb in their midst. It is worth observing whether this will do them more harm than good.

Chin Heng-wei is editor in chief of Contemporary Monthly.

Editorial: Time for KMT to resolve asset issue

With the issue of the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) ill-gotten party assets having become the new center of attacks in the the DPP's election campaign, one cannot help but wonder what the KMT has been doing over the past several years regarding an issue that it knew perfectly well was bound to come up again.

The unfortunate answer is very little. In this regard, the KMT has no one to blame but itself for leaving itself vulnerable to attacks.

The immediate response of the party has been to criticize the DPP for bringing up the issue each time there is an election. But the DPP is able to do this precisely because it is a plain and indisputable fact that the issue remains far from being resolved -- that a good part of the assets of up to hundreds of billions of NT dollars, which went into the pockets of the party during the era of Chiang Kai-shek and his son, when the party saw the national treasury as their own automatic-teller machine, remains in the hands of the KMT.

Moreover, would these attacks by the DPP or anyone else prompt such immediate reactions from the KMT if an election campaign weren't going on?

The last time that the KMT took these attacks seriously was the last presidential election.

This time around the response of the KMT has been to return seven movie theaters and two other buildings to the government. Returning these assets is of course the right thing to do. But why do it only when your enemy begins to attack you?

If the KMT continues to cough up bits and pieces of these assets each time it comes under attack, both the general public and the pan-green camp will continue to believe there are loads of assets that the KMT is still hiding.

The KMT must realize that this is a problem that can never be wished away.

It is true that, with so many assets in the KMT's hands, it will take more than a few days or weeks to solve the problem. But the KMT has had close to four years to take care of things.

As long as the problem still exists, no response the KMT can make will seem appropriate. It has tried to stay silent and not respond at all. That only made the party look more guilty than ever. This is not to mention the voter resentment that such behavior triggers. Whatever, explanations and reasons the KMT offers will sound to voters like sorry excuses.

The KMT must realize that these assets belong to the country and the people here. No one is trying to rob the KMT of anything.

Moreover, since the people are the rightful owners of these assets, they are the judge of whether the KMT has done enough. If the KMT wishes to survive as a political party and even someday be elected as the ruling party again, it must deal with this political issue.

To make the matter worse, a bill that would mandate the return of ill-gotten assets of political parties, and which would give the government a legal basis to investigate such matters, remains buried in the huge to-do pile at the Legislative Yuan, where the pan-blue camp holds a majority.

It goes without saying how that makes the KMT look.

These party assets are not assets at all. They are burdens to the KMT. Virtually no other political party in any democratic country has the kind of wealth that the KMT has.

It must make a clean break with the past, and return these ill-gotten assets, so as to start again with a clean slate.