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What about the 23 million?
Over a dinner table with heads of Taiwanese trade associations in Beijing last
week, China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen
Yunlin (陳雲林) said that China’s economic policy toward Taiwan is grounded in
politics.
“Without [the two sides] opposing Taiwanese independence and recognizing the
‘1992 consensus,’ China might have to reconsider its cross-strait economic
policy and measures,” Chen said, a statement that not only exposed the
anti-democratic and despotic reality of Beijing’s stand, but also President Ma
Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) lies.
Ma’s administration continually promoted the Economic Cooperation Framework
Agreement (ECFA) with China as a “purely economic issue” and this was the reason
Ma cited in his repeated refusal to hold a referendum on the pact, emphasizing
that negotiating a trade agreement with China “would not at all touch on
politics and sovereignty issues.”
Chen’s latest remarks show otherwise.
“If the two sides had not recognized the ‘1992 consensus’ and upheld the
anti-Taiwan independence stance, cross-strait relations would not have grown to
the present stage,” Chen said, suggesting that the 15 agreements Taiwan has
recently signed with China and the establishment of the Cross-Strait Economic
Cooperation Committee were all realized because the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)
administration has tacitly agreed with the political premises laid out by China.
If this is the case, then the government has lied to its own people about a
matter of the grandest severity: the nation’s very political sovereignty.
The KMT could argue there is no contradiction, as the KMT has long upheld the
so-called “1992 consensus” as the basis for Taiwan resuming cross-strait
negotiations, but what about Ma’s pledge that Taiwan’s future is to be decided
by Taiwan’s “23 million people?”
As recently as this month, Ma reiterated in his New Year’s Day address that “the
nation’s prospects and Taiwan’s future are in the hands of our 23 million
people.”
If Chen was not speaking the truth, why has Ma not stepped forward and rebutted
Chen’s statement to show Taiwanese that his administration has not
single-handedly and unilaterally ruled out the possibility that Taiwan’s “23
million people” might choose independence?
Not only has the Ma government not rebutted the comments, its response has been
downright obsequious.
Aside from repeating the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) press release stating
that the “1992 consensus” remains “the foundation for negotiations between
Taiwan and China that both sides should cherish,” MAC Minister Lai Shin-yuan
(賴幸媛) at a press conference on Tuesday completely shunned a press query with
regard to Chen’s comments on the political premise concerning Taiwanese
independence.
In light of this, coupled with a recent incident in which Taiwan’s coast guard
clashed with Chinese fishermen, Taiwanese are left to wonder whether the Ma
administration has the backbone to stick up for Taiwan’s authority and dignity.
Days have passed since the Chinese fishermen blatantly poached in Taiwan’s
territorial waters on Friday and attacked Taiwanese coast guard officers with
bamboo poles and stones, and yet not a single word has been uttered by the Ma
government on the incident. No condemnation, no protests, not even rhetoric
expressing regret; just pure silence.
In his New Year Day’s speech, Ma lauded how tension across the Strait has been
“dramatically reduced, thereby contributing to regional stability and
prosperity.” However, if this reduction in cross-strait tension is achieved
purely through the suppression of the Taiwanese government’s will to stick up
for its dignity and democratic values, what good is this fraudulent cross-strait
“peace?”
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