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Double Ten ‘distress’
I find it hard to understand why Arthur Waldron is “distressed” at Taiwan’s
opposition parties unofficially refusing to participate in the Double Ten
National Day “celebrations” (Letters, Oct. 7, page 8).
These “celebrations” come at a time when the administration of President Ma
Ying-jeou (馬英九) has actively sought to reinvigorate Chinese nationalism in
Taiwan through downgrading Taiwan from a state to a region within an
-anachronistic Republic of China (ROC), reviving the ROC’s absurd claims on not
only the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), which Japan claims as the Senkaku Islands, but
also China and Mongolia whilst siding with China in raising tensions with Japan,
blocking reasonable and legal requests for referendums on the Economic
Cooperation Framework Agreement despite allowing one on gambling in Penghu and
engaging in secret and unaccountable party-to-party negotiations with the Chines
Communist Party.
Waldron should know that the only consensus the current government cares for is
the fictional “1992 consensus,” which in turn is only a transparent tool to
reinforce the “one China” principle as a foundation for negotiations with China.
If the Ma administration had truly wanted the -opposition to celebrate the ROC’s
national day, why did it make every effort to remove and destroy the ROC
national flag so that it would not offend the delicate sensibilities of Chen
Yunlin (陳雲林) in November 2008? As one of my Taiwanese supervisors said to me
recently, what country denigrates and humiliates itself to the extent of
trashing its most potent symbol of national sovereignty so as to please visiting
foreign dignitaries?
Waldron’s distress would be better served lamenting how the Ma administration is
actively striving to reverse and undermine the gains in sovereignty and national
identity Taiwanese have accumulated since its democratization. He should see
clearly that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regard a strong Taiwanese
national identity as a threat to the ROC, a political edifice that they are
willing to protect at the cost of Taiwanese self-determination. To Ma, “Taiwan”
is a word to cynically manipulate at election time to condescendingly appeal to
“southern voters.”
When analysts of Taiwanese politics finally come to realize that the ROC is to
the KMT as water is to a fish, they will better understand the Janus-faced modus
vivendi of KMT foreign policy and their mischief-making complicity in aiding the
rise of a belligerent, expansionist and petulant China in the region. It is
hoped that they will also come to better respect the actions of Taiwanese
opposition politicians who clearly understand the quintessentially undemocratic
nature of this administration and want no part in celebrating the continued
colonization of their land, nor the KMT’s naked capitulation of the independent
democracy they worked so hard to forge.
BEN GOREN
Taichung
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