Living in the past over our status
　

By Lin Cho-shui 林濁水
Sunday, May 17, 2009, Page 8

‘Domestic bickering over [Taiwan’s undetermined] status has become a political show for the galleries and has nothing to do with resolving Taiwan’s international dilemma.’

Taiwan has become a place of conflict between proponents of unification and independence. At regular intervals, there must be a fight over Taiwan’s undetermined status.

Leaving Taiwan’s status undetermined was a strategy arranged by the US after the Korean War that bequeathed Taiwan a position in international law that would prevent Chinese annexation as Taiwanese attempted to resolve the question of sovereignty.

In recent years, however, domestic bickering over this status has become a political show for the galleries and has nothing to do with resolving Taiwan’s international dilemma.

A typical example of this is former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). He should have been the most likely person to support the “undetermined status” discourse because it denies the existence of the Republic of China (ROC). Instead, he rejected it in 2004 for fear that it would threaten the legitimacy of his presidency.

Chen was quoted as saying that “We must be grateful and not forget our roots … the connections between Taiwan and the ROC cannot be distorted … in particular, those years when the ROC occupied the mainland before 1949 cannot be wiped away.”

Arguing that Taiwan’s undetermined status has little to do with resolving Taiwan’s sovereignty under international law does not mean the subject is passe in the international community — a view advanced in 2004 by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and more recently by other pro-unification individuals.

In fact, several countries with international influence have never given up the position that Taiwan’s status is undetermined. Evidence of this can be found in recent remarks by Japan’s representative to Taiwan, Masaki Saito, that Taiwan’s status is “still unresolved.”

In another example that appeared not so long ago, the US government opposed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon when he interpreted UN Resolution 2758 as saying that Taiwan is a part of the People’s Republic of China.

In addition, all the talk in the US about maintaining the “status quo” can only be interpreted as support for the view that Taiwan’s status is undetermined.

When the US first brought up the concept, it was framed in terms of the self-determination of the residents of Taiwan or a possible declaration of independence by dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石). Maintaining undetermined status was not the US’ first choice for Taiwan — it wanted either Taiwanese independence or “two Chinas.”

After the ROC withdrew from the UN, Taiwan’s status remained unresolved, but the concepts of “Taiwanese independence” and “two Chinas” were dismissed by most major governments, denying Taiwan even the right to self-determination. The new version of Taiwan’s undetermined status came to denote both anti-independence and anti-unification.

If this were the case, it would be absurd for pro-unification and pro-independence fundamentalists to display anger or rejoice over Saito’s remarks.

To supporters of unification, accepting that Taiwan’s status is undetermined means not recognizing the ROC. Nowadays, however, these people do not even get irritated when Ma backs away from the position of “one China, with each side having its own interpretation” when addressing the international community or at cross-strait events — or even when he advocates the concept of “no unification and no independence.”

Thus, they have no reason to be angry with Saito’s remarks: The new version of Taiwan’s undetermined status no longer has a connotation of independence.

Supporters of independence, while affirming the “no unification” element, should be upset by the implications of “no independence” and the rejection of referendums that would resolve the sovereignty issue. So why have they been praising Saito?

The discourse of Taiwan’s undetermined status has changed greatly, but pro-unification and pro-independence fundamentalists are living in the past. For them, time has stopped. They refer to 60-year-old international treaties in defending their positions. The independence side invokes the San Francisco Peace Treaty, while the unification side relies on the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty. But these discourses are pointless.

Worse, these two treaties, as well as the Cairo Declaration, are residue of the power struggles of past superpowers. They deal with problems between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party — both oppressors in the eyes of Taiwanese.

The treaties treat Taiwanese as property rather than masters of their territory.

At that time, the Taiwanese interest in striving for democracy and self-determination was not strong enough, so they had to helplessly accept the superpowers’ view of their status.

Today, however, Taiwan is a democracy. Yet pro-unification and pro-independence fundamentalists are failing to maintain that the Taiwanese have the right to self-determination.

Instead, they worship treaties that were drawn up by the superpowers of yesteryear and that have nothing more than historical meaning today. It is truly pathetic.

Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.