They are plenty of Ms. Zhang/Mr. Tillman types in Taiwan as well. Ms Zhang and those future Taiwanese heros will serve their respective countries with pride. The following article is a good one.
Anti-secession law may backfire in Taiwan
By Laurence Eyton
TAIPEI - Taiwan will be watching the four-day meeting of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress which begins Christmas Day with some concern in the wake of reports from the state-controlled Xinhua News Agency that Beijing is considering passage of an "anti-secession law", which is expected to be discussed at the session.
Originally it was expected that Chinese President Hu Jintao would announce the proposal of the law at a ceremony to mark the fifth anniversary of the Macao hand over on Monday. While Hu sung the praise of the "one country, two systems" rule for both pacific Macao and restless Hong Kong, no mention was made of Taiwan.
This did not mean, however, that the law was not still on track. On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Liu Jianchao told reporters that "the initiation of the anti-secession law ... has as its sole purpose containing Taiwan independence forces separatist activities."
Details of the law have not been released, and the Standing Committee meets behind closed doors, so it is uncertain whether the contents of the proposed law might be made public anytime soon.
Taiwan is awaiting the United States' reaction to the proposed law, and Washington has not been publicly forthcoming. Having been heavily criticized several times in the past year for "trying to change the status quo" across the Taiwan Strait by the administration of US President George W Bush, Taipei is very interested to see if Washington will react to the proposed law with the same degree of vehemence (and apply the same standard to China). Washington says it cannot comment until it knows the content of the proposed law.
An immense amount of speculation abounds about what the law might contain and what its purpose might be. Will it, for example, mandate reunification by a certain date? Will it in some way criminalize pro-independence sympathies in a way that might be used against Taiwan in China (blackmail on some trumped-up accusation is particularly feared by the business community)? How will it define secession and will it simply be against a formal declaration of independence - which nobody in Taiwan is going to declare soon - or will it attempt to map out some kind of calibrated response to other Taiwanese actions as well - changing the constitution or the national flag, for example?
Since the precise contents of the bill are not known, there is little point in speculating about such details. Irrespective of the fine points of the anti-secession law's actual content, however, the law cannot deal with what is actually the biggest threat to the goal of unification, and it might well be seriously counterproductive in other ways.
The threat of Taiwan's cultural trend
Such a law, whatever its content, cannot stop growing separatist sentiment and the proposed legislation and the enacted law will quite probably contribute to it. China has threatened Taiwan with attack if it moves toward independence for well over a decade. This might have deterred a de jure declaration of independence, but it has hardly interfered in any way with the reshaping and defining of "Taiwanese consciousness".
China interprets separatism as a political movement driving a cultural agenda of de-sinicization. This involves the downplaying of traditional links between Taiwan and China and its culture and the discovery - or invention, as unificationists either side of the Strait see it - of something sui generis in the Taiwan experience, around which a sense of separate nationhood can be developed.
But de-sinicization will happen in any case, whoever holds political power. It is simply the inevitable result of democratization, which means majority rule by the native Taiwanese, whose links to a Chinese motherland are no stronger than, for example, those of Australians to Britain.
Taiwanese see themselves as having been kicked around by others, be they Chinese imperial officials, Japanese colonialists or the mainlander exiles of Chiang Kai-shek, for centuries. Now they control their own destiny, they seek to redefine their collective historical experience as the story of the building of a new nation by a settler community. It is this wider cultural consciousness that is driving politics, not, as Beijing mistakenly believes, the other way round, of the actual secessionists driving the Taiwanese majority.
For example, Taiwan is changing its schoolbooks to give far more emphasis to Taiwanese history and to put 20th century Chinese history into the foreign history syllabus. This is obviously a case of de-sinicization. It certainly needs political will to bring it about. But the demand for this has existed for a long time and the current Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government is only extending measures originally initiated by its pro-unification Kuomintang (KMT) predecessor.
The problem for China is that de-sinicization is now a mainstream cultural trend in Taiwan which will persist irrespective of which political camp holds power, and there is nothing at all that Beijing can do about this.
Problem 1: Limitations on creative thinking
The first way in which the law might prove counterproductive depends on the degree to which it might constrain intelligent discussion and treatment of the Taiwan question in China itself.
Taiwanese do not see themselves as Chinese and no amount of Beijing's huffing and puffing can make them. But they would like to get on with China if they could. The hard-line independence movement actually gets most of its oxygen from Beijing's bellicose and hegemonic behavior. If China could come up with an acceptable modus vivendi, Taiwanese, in spite of the de-sinicization movement, would probably be willing to trade some of the trappings of sovereignty for lasting security. Some kind of confederal arrangement, or some kind of European Union-style integration might be acceptable.
The problem is that China simply will not consider anything except "one country, two systems", but more than seven years after the Hong Kong handover, the former British colony's situation, and perhaps its fate, is seen by Taiwanese as a dire warning, rather than an attractive solution.
Taiwan's democratic system means that, in the end, however much Beijing dislikes it, peaceful unification will never occur without a vote of approval by Taiwan's electorate. This means that Beijing has to make an offer the Taiwanese find attractive, which in turn means China has to accept that "one country, two systems" has zero appeal in Taiwan - and then start thinking creatively about what might take its place.
The problem with the anti-secession law is that it might seriously hinder this much-needed creative thinking. Some Chinese scholars argue that the anti-secession law is not designed to bring about unification, but rather establish a holding pattern that will prevent Taiwan from moving further toward formal independence. But if unification is ever to be a goal, then the longer the de-sinicization trend continues, the further away Taiwan will drift, irrespective of its formal status. The only thing that might militate against de-sinicization is a sensible policy from Beijing offering the Taiwanese something they might find acceptable. So anything that precludes China from working out what such a policy might be can only contribute to the growing distance across the Taiwan Strait.
Problem 2: Taiwanese reprisals
The second problem is the likelihood that the Taiwan government will counter with a law of its own. As early as Sunday, DPP legislators announced they were working on drafting an "anti-annexation law". What this would contain depends on the as-yet unknown content of China's anti-secession law. But there is wide agreement among advocates of such a measure by Taiwan that it would include an immediate declaration of formal independence were Taiwan attacked. And, according to legislator Trong Chai, it would be likely to mandate a referendum on any move designed to change the status quo, as well as serious lobbying in Washington for revision of the Taiwan Relations Act to contain a commitment for the US to help Taiwan if the status quo is endangered without a referendum by the Taiwanese people.
Currently, under the Taiwan Referendum Law passed last year, questions about unification or independence cannot be put to Taiwan's voters. The irony of Beijing's move is that it might cause a popular clamor for the law's amendment to allow such questions, as well as a new law mandating referendums on any proposed unification arrangement or even as a show of will, should China cross as yet undefined "red lines", such as the missiles aimed at Taiwan reaching a certain number or Taiwan's diplomatic allies falling below a particular threshold. If Beijing is serious about unification this is exactly what it should not want.
Problem 3: Weakening the position of allies
China might think that the opposition's control of the legislature may stymie passage of such measures. But some sort of reprisal is likely to prove so popular with the public that the opposition "pan-blue alliance" of the KMT and People First Party, which is seen as being more pro-China than the ruling DPP, will have no choice other than to back it - as they had to back the referendum law last year.
Actually, the topic of the anti-secession law has been seriously damaging to the pan-blues. After their unexpected triumph in the December 11 election, it was thought that this would mean that China's pressure on Taiwan might ease, now that President Chen Shui-bian's hands had been tied for the remainder of his term. The pan-blues were seen as the party of the status quo. But now it appears that such hopes were misplaced. China's interpretation of the election appears to be that pressure works, so apply more pressure. Taiwan's view of this is de cun, jin chi or "give them an inch, and they take a foot."
The idea that favoring the pan-blues over the independence-minded DPP and its allies can mollify Beijing has received a severe blow, and the end result of the anti-secession law might well, ironically enough, be a growth in support for those who favor secession, who are seen as able and willing to "stand up to Chinese bullying."
Laurence Eyton is deputy editor in- chief of the Taipei Times. He has worked in Taiwan for 18 years. |
