International Herald Tribune: Taiwan and the West
TAIPEI As a Chinese national exiled for advocating democratic reforms in my homeland, I find French President Jacques Chirac’s condemnation of a referendum proposal by Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian to be a betrayal of trust. By calling a plebiscite scheduled for March 20 – the day of Taiwan’s presidential elections – a “grave error,” Chirac has issued the strongest warning yet that the international community is on China’s side when it comes to determining Taiwan’s future.
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Naïvely, I had hoped for better of France, which has become the latest in a roll call of democracies – the United States included – that appear ready to abandon Taiwan’s right to democratic freedoms if that is how Beijing says it must be.
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In 1989, along with other student leaders, I led a popular movement for democratic reform in China. It is estimated that about 100 million people countrywide participated. On June 4, that movement was violently suppressed in Tiananmen Square and on Chang’an Avenue; hundreds are believed to have been killed. I was lucky enough to escape into exile and to be given refuge in Paris.
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Nearly 15 years on, I have journeyed in exile from France to Taiwan, where I now live. Chirac’s remarks thus have a particular resonance for me.
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In the long years that I have been on China’s “most wanted” list, I have been granted asylum in three democracies – the other is the United States – and in the past month I have seen two of them turn against the third, Taiwan. The Taiwan question is, of course, vexing. It is in everybody’s interest that the status quo be maintained and that war not break out across the Taiwan Strait. But the so-called status quo is also vexing. For China, the Taiwan problem demands but one solution, and by any means, including the last resort it used on us in Tiananmen Square: bloodshed. Meanwhile, the people of Taiwan seek to determine their own future.
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This is not a status quo, but a standoff. Taiwan, which has made its own way in the world for more than half a century, and which has shaken off the shackles of martial law and evolved into the kind of model democracy the United States claims all nation-states should aspire to be, is under the threat of the gun. And this presents the United States, and now France – the homeland of democracy – with a challenge that neither seems ready to acknowledge.
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I remind them, then, of Article 2 of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, written by the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson and approved by the French National Assembly in 1789: “The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.”
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In particular, I remind them of the first and the last of these rights: the right to “liberty” and the right to “resistance to oppression.” In 1989, the world recognized that the people of China stood up for those rights in Tiananmen Square and were punished for doing so. I and others who managed to escape were given refuge, and for a brief period the international community paused and reappraised its relationship with a regime that was prepared to put down a peaceful people’s movement with troops and tanks.
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Where has that reappraisal brought us? Sadly, it seems nowhere. Since the Tiananmen bloodshed, we have seen a parade of foreign leaders and multinational corporations feting China’s leaders, as if somehow things have changed for the better. Nothing has changed. If anything, China’s leaders have learned their lesson, and have a tighter grip on power today than they did then. And doubters need only look to Taiwan, and recently also to Hong Kong – where on Jan. 1, 500,000 people took to the streets for greater democratic freedoms.
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Realpolitik demands that we be practical on the Taiwan issue; but it should also demand that we not delude ourselves about China. In 1989, Beijing chose military action over open dialogue with a peaceful people’s movement; today it tells us that a popular vote in Taiwan risks invasion. I fear now, when I see the leaders of the United States and France reprimanding Taiwan, that the ideals that those countries were founded on, that my countrymen shed blood for in Tiananmen, and that Taiwan now challenges with a popular vote, have become disposable. I ask Chirac, if that fear is ungrounded, then who is committing the “grave error”?
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WuEr KaXi, a former Tiananmen student leader, lives in exile in Taiwan.
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PS. Taiwan’s Chen Says Unification with China Possible
I am shocked and saddened by this, and Taiwan’s softenning of their stance has everything to do with the content of the above Article
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Taiwan’s Chen Says Unification with China Possible
By Alice Hung
TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan’s pro-independence president, Chen Shui-bian, does not rule out the possibility the island may eventually reunify with China, Time magazine said in a report on Monday.
But Chen stressed that Taiwan and China were at present separate states. Taipei and Beijing split after a civil war ended in 1949 and China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province that must be recovered — by force if necessary.
“Currently, there are two separate, independent countries across the Taiwan Strait, neither of which has jurisdiction over the other,” Chen told the magazine.
But Chen, a staunchly pro-independence leader who is trailing the more moderate Nationalist Party candidate, Lien Chan, in opinion polls before presidential elections due on March 20, would not rule out some form of eventual unification.
“But who knows if these two separate countries might become one over time? We do not exclude any possibilities for the future,” Chen told Time.
Chen rejected a “one China” principle or Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula to bring Taiwan back to the fold.
Beijing has said it would give Taiwan a greater degree of autonomy if the island agreed to the “one country, two systems” formula used when Hong Kong reverted from British rule in 1997.
Chen says Taiwan is already independent and he plans to hold a referendum together with the presidential elections to ask voters whether Taiwan should boost its anti-missile defenses if China does not withdraw 500 missiles aimed at the island.
ISOLATION FEARS
About 1,000 professionals threw their weight behind Chen’s referendum with a full-page advertisement in major newspapers on Monday, saying failure to support the move would only serve to provide China with further means to isolate the island.
The scholars, doctors, lawyers and accountants — many with close ties to Chen’s government — said boycotting the landmark referendum would undermine Taiwan’s hard-won democracy.
Analysts said the move reflected worries in the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that Chen has tied his re-election campaign too closely to the initiative.
“If the March 20 referendum fails, it will lead communist China to misjudge the will of the Taiwan people, to step up efforts to intervene in Taiwan’s democratic process and to take a tougher stand toward Taiwan’s international living space,” the advertisement said.
China has blasted the referendum as a step toward a formal declaration of independence that could lead to war. It regards Chen with deep suspicion, fearing he is inching the island toward sovereignty.
Chen’s main opponent in the election race, Lien, has adopted a more moderate stance, saying political disputes should be put aside in favor of fostering stronger business and cultural ties.
Lien’s Nationalists, who ruled Taiwan for five decades before they were ousted by Chen, formally endorse a policy of eventual unification with China.
A poll by the TVBS cable station last week found over 50 percent of people thought the referendum unnecessary and 44 percent did not intend to cast a ballot.
“If the referendum fails, it is very likely (Chen) will lose the presidential election,” said George Tsai of the Institute of International Relations at National Chengchi University.
Shortly after taking office in 2000, Chen had said unification was just one option — comments widely seen as a push for independence for the island.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 