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¡¥1992 consensus¡¦ irrelevant
There is much debate about the so-called ¡§1992 consensus.¡¨ This ¡§consensus¡¨ has
nothing to do with Taiwan. It is only relevant to China and the Chinese
Nationalist Party¡¦s (KMT) quest to unite with China.
The fictional ¡§1992 consensus¡¨ concerns the existence of ¡§one China¡¨ and the KMT
and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may or may not have come to some
understanding, each without respect or reference to the people either of Taiwan
or China, but this ¡§understanding¡¨ does not bind anyone except the two political
parties.
Whether or not these two entities believe there is ¡§one China¡¨ does not require
the 23 million Taiwanese to agree that Taiwan is somehow China. Even the KMT has
repeated over and over (whether its leadership believes it or not) that the
future of Taiwan will be left to its people, not the KMT or China, to decide.
Nor does the so-called ¡§1992 consensus¡¨ involve the issue of whether Taiwan is
part of China. The reason for this is the KMT¡¦s convenient usage of the term
Republic of China (ROC). That term has nothing to do with Taiwan¡¦s sovereignty.
It was coined long before the KMT came to Taiwan, when the latter was still a
colony of Japan.
The KMT¡¦s obsession with the consensus is proof that it does not consider
Taiwan¡¦s interests as important compared with China¡¦s. The consensus does not
involve Taiwan¡¦s sovereignty at all and the two interpretations mentioned in the
consensus only concern who rules China. The fact that it is ignored by the CCP
and the KMT is because there exists an obvious and very real third
¡§interpretation¡¨: that Taiwan belongs to Taiwan.
It is not surprising that the KMT and the CCP ignore this, because to confront
it would reveal an inconvenient truth ¡X that both the KMT and CCP lay claim to
the same land, which is now the People¡¦s Republic of China (PRC). Taiwan¡¦s
sovereignty issue is merely a tool the two sides use to distract everyone in
China and Taiwan while they talk about how to divvy up the spoils.
President Ma Ying-jeou (°¨^¤E) considers himself the president of China, with
Taiwan being a tiny part of what he considers his domain. He may play here and
there in Taiwan, but he does not consider himself the president of the Taiwanese
people. He is just temporarily in Taiwan until his party can make arrangements
for its triumphant return to the ¡§Mainland.¡¨
And what happens to Taiwan then? Casinos, betel nut beauties, red-light
districts, tourism and not much else. It will be a new Macau.
The ¡§1992 consensus¡¨ cannot involve the sovereignty of Taiwan, because it does
not allow for the possibility that Taiwan is independent, admittedly an issue
yet to be resolved. Therefore, for the ¡§1992 consensus¡¨ to govern relations
across the Taiwan Strait necessarily involves the surrender by the KMT of
Taiwan¡¦s sovereignty (never mind the ROC, which does not exist except in the
minds of the KMT) because under either interpretation, Taiwan cannot be
sovereign.
For the KMT to argue that this so-called consensus is therefore somehow the only
possible result is disingenuous because it contradicts the KMT¡¦s own
proclamation that the people of Taiwan must be allowed to determine their own
future and because it means the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese cannot
achieve what poll after poll shows they believe ¡X that is that they are citizens
of an already free and independent Taiwan.
The KMT is playing fast and loose with the people of Taiwan and Ma needs to come
clean about this. There is no Taiwanese sovereignty in the Economic Cooperation
Framework Agreement (ECFA), none in the 15 agreements signed between the KMT and
the CCP, none in the ¡§1992 consensus¡¨ and none in the KMT¡¦s future.
The KMT cannot give up Taiwan¡¦s sovereignty issue now, because then the KMT will
have nowhere to go. That is why the KMT clings to Taiwan and will cling to it
until it can negotiate its way back onto the ¡§Mainland.¡¨
The people of Taiwan need to remember that fact when they vote in 2012.
LEE LONG-HWA
New York
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