Changes in Europe and Taiwan Linked

Dramatic changes that have redrawn the map of Europe played a key role in persuading opposition politicians to openly press for Taiwanese independence during a recent election campaign, Democratic Progressive Party Chairman Hsu Hsin-liang said at a news conference Sunday.

“In the past two years, we saw the reunification of Germany and we saw the will to unify of the Korean people,” Hsu said. “It’s time we tell the whole world: ‘Our case is different.’ People here on Taiwan want independence, just like the Baltic states. We don’t want unification as the Germans (did) or as Koreans (do). . . . Our case is (like) the Baltic states case. It’s time that we call the attention of the world to this.”

The ruling Nationalist Party, which polled 71% of Saturday’s vote in a National Assembly election that revolved partly around the independence issue, takes the official position that Taiwan is part of China. It has maintained the island’s de facto independence for more than four decades, however, by insisting that the Nationalist government here is the legitimate ruler of all China. Chiang Kai-shek moved the Nationalist government to the island from the mainland in 1949 after losing a civil war to the Communists, and it has endured here ever since.

Virtually no one in Taiwan, which enjoys a standard of living far higher than that of the mainland, wishes to see the island be controlled by the Communist government in Beijing. But the Nationalists, partly from Chinese patriotism and partly to defend their grip on the island’s politics, argue that reunification should come eventually, at some distant date in the future after communism collapses and democracy takes root on the mainland.

Advocacy of Taiwan independence is still technically illegal here, but in the past few years the government has gradually backed away from serious enforcement of the ban.

Hsu argued at his news conference that the Nationalists’ policy is dangerous for an island that wishes to preserve its freedom. He said it is necessary for his party to raise the independence issue openly now, even though it apparently did not help the opposition at the polls. The Democratic Progressive Party won 24% of the votes in Saturday’s balloting, slightly below its showing in local elections two years ago.

“The reason that we present this claim now is because we are afraid that the government policy will lead Taiwan to reunification,” Hsu said. “We are afraid of that. So we think it’s time that we, the opposition party, talk about this openly to the international community and to our people. . . . People here want independence, they don’t want reunification with China.”

Some comments published in Taiwan’s media Sunday suggested that the opposition made a tactical mistake by emphasizing the independence issue during the campaign. Many people here, fearful that a formal declaration of independence might provoke a military attack by Beijing, believe that the Nationalists’ policy is a more practical way to preserve de facto independence.

Hsu, however, said he has no regrets.

“I think because of the debate during the campaign, people in general have been forced to think about this issue seriously,” he said. “ . . . They will continue to think about this.”