Taiwanese Nationalists Ask to Go ‘Home’

They spent their youth fighting the Communists in China and their middle age building an economic miracle in Taiwan under U.S. protection. Now they are old and want to go home.

“Falling leaves should return to the roots,” said an aging member of the Chinese Nationalist Party. “We don’t want to be away from home forever.”

He and other die-hard anti-Communists long for reunification and the strength of their desire is pulling Taiwan apart.

Many native Taiwanese, who account for 85% of the island’s 20 million people, say they want to remain apart from the huge, poor, authoritarian country on the mainland.

They fear that the success of Taiwan’s developing democracy and powerful economy will evaporate if Beijing takes over.

Relations between the rival governments have thawed in recent years, and hundreds of old Nationalists have visited China. Several have met contemporaries who lead China, such as President Yang Shangkun, whom they fought in the civil war that ended with a Communist victory in 1949.

In May, Deng Xiaoping, paramount leader of China, held his first meeting with a Nationalist Party member in more than 40 years.

Deng told retired Nationalist Gen. Teng Wen-yi in Beijing that he hoped for peaceful reunification in three years. Both are 86 and they once were schoolmates.

Many in Taiwan’s old guard want reunification talks to begin now, while they still hold power. Most will be forced out of the government by the end of 1991 under a program to dismantle an authoritarian system that has ensured Nationalist rule.

“Look, Germany has united and South Korea is talking with the North,” said Yen, 86, an electoral college member who spoke on condition that only his surname be used. “Our leaders keep saying there is only one China, but if we don’t hold talks at all, there won’t be reunification in 100 years.”

Hsu Hsin-liang, a leader of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, bemoans what he calls the romanticism of people like Yen.

“We are more worried that these oldsters would join hands with the Communists to attack Nationalist liberals and thus hamper Taiwan’s democratization,” he said.

In a letter to President Yang and Premier Li Peng of China, the Democracy Alliance in Taiwan accused the old Nationalists of “making their last try to sell out Taiwan” before retiring.

President Lee Teng-hui, born in Taiwan, has pledged to seek reunification but is proceeding cautiously. As conditions for talks, he said in a recent speech that China must promote democracy and a free economic system, renounce the use of force and end its policy of isolating Taiwan diplomatically.

Members of the Nationalist old guard, in a remarkable reversal of past attitudes, have described Lee’s position as too harsh.

“It’s like asking your enemy to cut his tongue before you agree to talk to him,” Yen said bitterly. “How long must we wait before they practice democracy? In 10 years, all of us oldsters will die. How will talks proceed then?”

Chang Yu-jen, an 84-year-old National Assemblyman and former general, agreed that it is time for reunification. He led Nationalist troops against Communist rebels in central China in the 1940s but now has a different attitude toward his old foes.

“What’s left of Chinese communism is but a scaffold without a building,” he said. “Its rise was a tragedy of the times. It has now fallen. The trend is for dialogue and reforms.”

Yen and Chang revisited China recently and say their wish is to see reunification talks begin before they die. The old leaders in Beijing echo the feeling.

President Yang told visiting editors of China Times, a major Taiwan newspaper, the problem should be resolved while the old Communist and Nationalist party leaders still live.

Chang and Yen are among more than 600 officeholders who were elected in China before 1949 and left in office to support the Nationalist claim to be the sole legitimate government of all China.