Taiwan’s New Openness Toward China Raises Hope for Political Reform at Home : Asia: A 43-year-old ‘mobilization’ ends. The opposition gains a chance to challenge the Nationalists.

For the Taiwanese, the Chinese civil war did not end in 1949. It ended last week. And peace--one could also call it an armed truce--brought with it vague hopes for national reconciliation and a democratic future.

But there was no rejoicing here, only a sober assessment that the road ahead is long and hard.

For the Nationalist Party, which once ruled all China and now governs only Taiwan, peace meant calling an end to 43 years of “national mobilization for suppression of the Communist rebellion.”

Taipei cautiously acknowledged that China is ruled, not by “Communist rebels,” but by “mainland authorities.” The Nationalists also promised real democracy in Taiwan and repeated their hope for reunification with the mainland after it, someday, becomes more democratic.

The opposition Democratic Progressive Party would seem to be a key beneficiary of the policy changes, but its leaders did not exult, either.

“People are pessimistic because they’ve seen the whole world--especially Eastern Europe--make so much progress,” said Cheng Pao-ching, director of the Democratic Progressive Party’s headquarters. “We’ve sacrificed so much . . . and we’ve made so little progress. . . . Other countries achieved democracy in one year. We have to go so slowly, for so many years! This is why some people in our party started talking about armed revolution.”

The ruling Nationalists bristle at this sort of comparison.

“What good is it . . . to follow the pattern of Eastern Europe?” said James C. Y. Chu, a Nationalist spokesman. “This is a democratic country, not a Communist country!”

In thinking about future relations between Taiwan and mainland China, the Nationalists draw their comparisons with European events.

The Nationalists see--or wish they could see--German reunification as their model: The rich, capitalist, democratic part of a divided nation wins the economic and ideological struggle, with peaceful reunification coming on the wealthy side’s terms. But Taiwan is so small. And the Chinese mainland is so big.

“What price did West Germany pay for reunification, in terms of the financial burden?” Chu lamented. “Can Taiwan afford to do it?”

The official end of war with the Communists and the attempt to build greater democracy at home are part of an attempt by Taiwan to find a constitutional structure and an international niche that can allow it to prosper.

Taiwan, which officially calls itself the Republic of China, is still governed under a constitutional structure set up in the late 1940s, when the Nationalists ruled China, including Taiwan, from their capital of Nanjing, then known as Nanking. Since 1949, when the victorious Communists set up their government in China, Beijing has viewed Taiwan as a breakaway province.

For Taiwan, the formal ending of war with the Communists and steps toward further political reform are inextricably linked. Each requires the other.

Emergency constitutional provisions enacted for the anti-Communist mobilization have provided the basis on which the Nationalist government maintained its structure after fleeing to Taiwan in 1949. Elderly Nationalist Party politicians who last faced election

in the late 1940s still make up large majorities in the National Assembly, which elects Taiwan’s president, and in the lawmaking Legislative Yuan.

Thus, while Taiwan has had freedom of speech and a multi-party system since the lifting in 1987 of nearly four decades of martial law, it still has been a constitutional impossibility for the opposition to take power.

Last month, during a special session of the National Assembly--which has power to revise the constitution--the Nationalist Party pushed through revisions providing for election of a new Assembly by year’s end and election of a new Legislative Yuan by Jan. 31, 1993. For the first time, voters in Taiwan will be able to exercise control of these bodies--although the next vote for president will not come until 1996.

As part of the same reform package, the assembly abrogated the “Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion,” passed in 1948, which had kept members of the old representative bodies in power.

President Lee Teng-hui terminated the anti-Communist mobilization and promulgated the new constitutional amendments in an action that took effect Wednesday.

The opposition Democratic Progressive Party, while supporting the official end to war with the mainland, objects to the other constitutional revisions, saying that they are designed to maintain the Nationalists’ grip on power.

The opposition has called for an entirely new constitution providing for direct election of the president. Last week, it launched a 40-day, island-wide campaign tour by top party officials to build support for this demand.

The opposition is also angry about amendments that allow special presidential powers and security measures, originally enacted as part of the anti-Communist mobilization, to continue under the revised constitution.

The new National Assembly is scheduled to work out further constitutional revisions next year. Amendments require 75% support for passage. It is likely that the opposition will have enough votes to block revisions that it views as biased in favor of the Nationalists. Some observers are predicting a deadlock that could prevent enactment of new amendments for years.

Further complicating matters, the newly amended constitution, in many analysts’ view, is ambiguous as to whether the prime minister or the president has greater executive power, thereby setting the stage for a crisis if the holders of these two offices ever get into a power struggle.

To press its case for more rapid reform, the Democratic Progressive Party staged the biggest demonstration in many years last month, with 20,000 slogan-chanting protesters marching through the streets of Taipei.

“We had no way to get justice in the National Assembly,” Cheng said. “The only thing we could do was take to the streets.”

Although the protest ended peacefully, it was conducted without a permit. Taipei police said last week that Democratic Progressive Party Chairman Huang Hsin-chieh faces possible prosecution for his role in organizing the rally.

In another incident, a small procession of opposition leaders, including Huang, was blocked by police Wednesday. Huang and others assert that they were beaten with police batons, while police said they had simply prevented an illegal demonstration from blocking traffic.

“Today is the first day after the termination of the Period of Mobilization for the Suppression of Communist Rebellion,” Huang said in angry comments to reporters Wednesday. “But it seems those policemen did not read the newspapers. They resorted to violence against a group of opposition party members who just wanted to walk down the street. I really do not understand whether the mobilization period has ended or is just beginning.”

The Democratic Progressive Party is not particularly leftist, but a large faction hopes to establish an independent Republic of Taiwan that would never acknowledge Chinese sovereignty--a goal vehemently opposed by the Nationalists. Security measures, set up as part of the anti-Communist mobilization, have for decades been used to suppress agitation for such a declaration of Taiwanese independence.

While battles continue over domestic political reform, Taipei is also engaged in a delicate restructuring of its relations with Beijing.

While Taiwan continues, technically, to refuse any direct official contact with Beijing, it has set up a quasi-official body, the Straits Exchange Foundation, which last week had a delegation in Beijing for its first meetings with Communist officials. The two sides agreed to promote further contacts between the foundation and Chinese government agencies.

Beijing is pushing for direct postal, transportation and trade links with Taiwan. But Taipei has said it will refuse such ties until Beijing renounces any possible use of force against the island--a pledge that the Communists have never given.

Taipei is promoting a three-stage process: more people-to-people exchanges to build trust, then direct official contacts, and finally, negotiations leading to national reunification on principles of democracy and a market economy. Taiwanese officials stress that this could take many decades.

“If the Chinese Communists refuse to acknowledge us as a political entity, or refuse continuously to renounce the use of force against us, or refuse to stop interfering with our conduct of external relations . . . then we will not go on to the second stage, but remain in the first stage indefinitely,” Ma Ying-jeou, vice chairman of Taipei’s Mainland Affairs Council, told reporters last week. “We don’t have a time frame for China’s unification.”

But the dramatic easing of Taipei-Beijing tensions has already led to booming economic contacts across the Taiwan Strait. Trade between Taiwan and China, conducted indirectly through Hong Kong, was valued at $4.4 billion last year, Ma said. Last week’s policy changes should lead to further growth.

“The end of the mobilization period . . . will open the door for overall interactions,” said Ting Tin-yu, a sociology professor who runs the Public Opinion Research Foundation in Taipei. “There’s no way to reverse the political, economic and social relations between Taiwan and the mainland. They can only increase. . . . We cannot punish people because they are helping ‘a rebellious group,’ the ‘Chinese Communist bandits.’ You cannot argue that. I think you’ll see dramatic change.”

TAIWAN IN TRANSITION

BACKGROUND

After the defeat of its armies by Mao Tse-tung’s Communists on the mainland, the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan in 1949. Only 15% of the island’s population were 1949 immigrants, but they dominated its government and military; Chiang maintained a 600,000-member army in hopes of recovering the mainland. A potential Communist invasion in 1950 was deterred by the presence of the U.S. fleet in the Taiwan Strait.

Taiwan was ousted from the United Nations in 1971 and the China seat given to the Communist government of Beijing. Chiang died in 1975; his son Chiang Ching-kuo became president in 1978. Under President Jimmy Carter, the U.S. established full diplomatic relations with Beijing as of Jan. 1, 1979, and severed official ties and terminated a mutual security treaty with Taiwan. The U.S. still supplies substantial arms to Taiwan but at a reduced level, and it offers other assurances of support for the Taipei regime. The opposition Democratic Progressive Party was formed in 1986; it is headed by Huang Hsin-chieh. Lee Teng-hui became president in 1988.

AT A GLANCE

Area: 13,895 square miles

Pop.: 20.2 million

Density per square mile: 1,604

Monetary unit: New Taiwan dollar

Religions: Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Shamanism, Christianity

Literacy rate: 92%

Products: rice, yams, sugar cane, bananas, pineapples, citrus fruits, textiles, clothing, chemicals, processed foods, cement, ships, plywood, electrical and electronic equipment.