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President Ma disappears the PRC
By J. Michael Cole 寇謐將
Sunday, Aug 08, 2010, Page 8
Based on recent comments by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), it
would seem that the cross-strait “diplomatic truce” he initiated soon after
coming to office either enfeebles the mind, or cannot be explained by anything
other than contradictions.
During a roundtable on Monday, Ma was all wisdom when, channeling ancient
Chinese philosopher Mencius (孟子), he said the best means by which two countries
can get along was for the smaller country to be smart and flexible in dealing
with the bigger one.
By smart, we can conclude that Ma meant keeping a low profile, being
conciliatory and willing to compromise and not rattling the diplomatic cage —
all things that his administration has managed with considerable success.
Just as the churning waters in the Taiwan Strait looked like they might be
pacified by Ma the wise, however, the president on Wednesday told visiting
Japanese academics that the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA)
signed in late June was not a treaty signed between two states. The reason?
“We do not recognize China as a state, so our relationship with each other is
not one of country-to-country,” Ma said.
So in Ma’s alternate universe, former presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Chen
Shui-bian (陳水扁) — who both recognized the existence of the People’s Republic of
China (PRC) as a sovereign state — were “troublemakers,” and yet the man who
would deny Beijing’s legitimacy, and the government of its 1.3 billion people,
is somehow a “peacemaker.”
Only in the hallucinatory world of Ma’s cross-strait politics could insulting
the larger neighbor by denying its existence be equated with wisdom and
peacemaking.
It was under Lee, who like Ma was from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), that
the Two-State Theory was formed, while under Chen relations were seen as falling
under the “one country on each side” principle, which grants de jure recognition
of China as a country. Yet Ma is Beijing’s man, while Lee and Chen were the
object of its hatred.
Ma’s comments further beg the question: Who, exactly, is the “we” that he refers
to? Just about everybody in Taiwan agrees that the PRC is a sovereign country
that meets all the requirements of a Westphalian state — it has a government, a
constitution, a currency, an army, relations with other states and (with the
exception of irredentist claims), it has clearly defined borders. Whether one is
of Chinese descent or one of the many different ethnic groups living in Taiwan,
no one questions the legitimacy of China as a state or the considerable
accomplishments of the Chinese people in consolidation of their state, through
sweat and blood, over the decades.
Ma’s “we,” therefore, cannot claim to represent the 23 million people in whose
name he is ostensibly speaking, including the great majority of KMT supporters
who voted for him. It is, rather, the voice of a tiny retinue of old-guard
politicians who have failed to modernize with the times and would take us back
to the 1950s and 1960s, when Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正) sought to reclaim China.
Their view stems from the by now largely discredited illusion that the Republic
of China (ROC) remains a valid political entity representing the whole of China.
It is, furthermore, predicated on an illusion that freezes us in time and that
threatens the very existence of democratic Taiwan by sucking it into the vortex
of an unsettled — but certainly avoidable — battle. There is no future for the
KMT in a “reunified” ROC that encompasses the Chinese Commuist Party. It is a
dead-end street, one that can only lead to political suicide and the end of
Taiwan.
The president’s comments are not only an affront to the Chinese people, they
equally denigrate decades of hard work and sacrifice by Taiwanese to create a
modern, democratic state of their own, one that is built on its own
idiosyncratic history.
With very few exceptions, “we” in Taiwan recognize China and seek to coexist
peacefully and prosperously with the giant next door. It is “they,” with a few
exceptions, who deny Taiwan’s right to exist. By turning the tables, Ma seems to
be attempting to create a moral equivalence in the Taiwan Strait that simply
does not stand up to scrutiny and that trivializes the tremendous challenges
facing Taiwanese today.
History has a long line of infamous politicians who, rather than look to the
future, chose to revisit the past. More often than not, this resulted in
catastrophe. Given Taiwan’s fragile situation, it cannot afford a leader who
would turn to an atrocious, unsettled past to build our future.
J. Michael Cole is deputy news editor at the Taipei Times.
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