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Brotherhood misleading for modern nation
states
By James Wang ¤ý´º¥°
Friday, Mar 26, 2010, Page 8
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (·Å®aÄ_) recently launched a charm offensive to woo
Taiwan, talking about his ¡§Taiwanese brothers,¡¨ while a complacent President Ma
Ying-jeou (°¨^¤E) has taken to discussing the ¡§greater¡¨ and ¡§lesser¡¨ sides of the
Taiwan Strait. Both of these approaches show a fundamental lack of understanding
of the nature of the modern state.
Wen is not the first to talk about brothers. In 1982, Liao Chengzhi (¹ù©Ó§Ó), a
former head of the Xinhua news agency, called then-Taiwanese president Chiang
Ching-kuo (½±¸g°ê) ¡§brother¡¨ when referring to past cooperation between the Chinese
Communist Party and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Kenjohn Wang (¤ý®Ûºa), a former president of the Formosan Association for Public
Affairs, once told former Chinese president Yang Shangkun (·¨©|©ø) that Taiwan and
China were like two brothers who had moved away from home and started their own
families. Sometimes they would meet and feel close to each other, but if they
lived together under the same roof, their wives would quarrel.
When Wen uses the word ¡§brother¡¨ in this context, the irony stinks to high
heaven. On May 19, 1989, Wen joined then premier Zhao Ziyang (»¯µµ¶§) on his famous
visit to Tiananmen Square to try to persuade the students to leave. These
¡§children of the revolution¡¨ were soon after slaughtered by People¡¦s Liberation
Army tanks and Zhao was disgraced, while Wen not only survived but continued to
prosper on his way to becoming premier.
Wen¡¦s talk about brotherhood has nothing to do with the brotherhood between
countries. When in the past the KMT talked about the Republic of China (ROC) and
South Korea as ¡§two brotherly countries,¡¨ did South Korean academics start to
discuss who was the elder and who the younger brother?
The old KMT also had its own ¡§brother theory.¡¨ Since the ROC saw the light of
day before the People¡¦s Republic of China, the ROC was of course the elder
brother and Beijing the younger. By confusing ¡§state¡¨ with ¡§government,¡¨ the KMT
displayed a singular failure to understand that the younger brother had
displaced the big brother.
Ma loves to show off his erudition and often brings up such ancient teachings as
Mencius¡¦ talk about ¡§the greater serving the lesser¡¨ and ¡§the lesser serving the
greater.¡¨ In terms of big and small, Taiwan is certainly China¡¦s little brother.
However, this also involves leaving out parts of the original quote and throwing
such phrases around without actually understanding what they mean or how they
should be applied. When the old philosophers discussed the philosophical
implications of the greater and the lesser thousands of years ago, there were no
modern states, no international law and no UN Charter. ¡§Greater¡¨ and ¡§lesser¡¨
referred to the relationship between more or less powerful kings and their
individual benevolence and methods of governance.
A discussion about ¡§greater¡¨ and ¡§lesser¡¨ in this context refers to greater and
lesser countries, but the principle of sovereignty on which much international
law is based states that the world is not divided into greater and lesser
countries. Key importance is instead given to equality and sovereignty, and one
country is not allowed to interfere in the domestic affairs of other countries.
Talking about how ¡§the greater¡¨ and ¡§the lesser¡¨ should get along instead of
talking about countries and the modern state is more akin to a discussion about
rules in the underworld.
If you don¡¦t call things by their proper name, nothing you say will make any
sense. If one talks about elder and younger brothers instead of countries or
discusses ¡§the greater¡¨ and ¡§the lesser¡¨ instead of states, one inevitably comes
to the wrong conclusions.
James Wang is a journalist based in Washington.
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