Taiwan Far From Ready for Reunification

For two days last week, Taiwan’s armed forces put on a confident display of advanced weaponry, including three newly acquired types of fighter planes: U.S.-made F-16s, French Mirages and local Ching-kuo jets.

Throughout the high-profile exercises, leaders from President Lee Teng-hui on down insisted that the event had nothing to do with today’s return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty, or Beijing’s insistence that Taiwan also should be reunified with China under the “one country, two systems” formula.

But a cartoon printed here in the China Post captured what was really going on. “It’s just a routine military exercise, and no political message is intended!” declared the caption, repeating the official line. The drawing itself showed a Taiwanese tank roaring into action flying two banners: “Hands Off!” and “We’re not Hong Kong.”

Fifteen years after Deng Xiaoping, China’s late senior leader, first proposed the “one country, two systems” formula--mainly with Taiwan in mind--contacts between this island, which Beijing considers a renegade province, and the Chinese mainland have grown significantly. Yet it is far from clear that the two sides have moved any closer to reunification.

Quite to the contrary, the government in Taipei--the direct successor to the Chiang Kai-shek regime that fled to here in 1949 after losing a mainland civil war to the Communists--appears to have largely stabilized the status quo.

Lee’s Nationalist Party government, which rules what it calls the Republic of China, officially supports reunification. But it says conditions are not ripe, and it disagrees with Beijing’s terms.

“The ROC government cannot accept the ‘one China, two systems’ formula imposed on Hong Kong,” Lee repeated in a statement timed to the Hong Kong hand-over. “Such an approach would run counter to the aspirations of the 21.5 million people on Taiwan.”

Taipei’s position is that reunification can come only after mainland China becomes democratic and prosperous, conditions it admits may not be met for a very long time. Meanwhile, it wants Beijing to accept the concept of “one China, two governments”--with the mainland governed by Beijing and the island of Taiwan governed by Taipei.

China has “a written history of more than 3,000 years,” noted Lee Ching-ping, deputy secretary-general of the Straits Exchange Foundation, Taipei’s quasi-official body for dealings with Beijing. “Sometimes we are united, and sometimes we are divided. We can say from now to reunification is 100 miles, but we’ve gone only one mile.”

Beijing, for its part, refuses to renounce the possible use of force against Taiwan--but also says it won’t attack unless Taiwan formally declares independence or allows the stationing of foreign troops here.

While the two sides remain far from any comprehensive agreement, there is nothing in their respective positions that requires them to go to war or otherwise upset current arrangements--which are profitable for both.

Taiwanese businesses have invested more than $30 billion on the mainland, where they run 35,000 factories, according to Taipei government statistics. Two-way trade last year totaled $22.7 billion, with a huge surplus in Taiwan’s favor.

In taking control of Hong Kong, Beijing has now promised the former British colony a “high degree of autonomy” and its own way of life for the next 50 years. Two years from now, under an agreement between Beijing and Lisbon, the Portuguese colony of Macao will follow Hong Kong’s path back to Chinese sovereignty.

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In Beijing’s game plan, Taiwan--which has been offered an “even greater” degree of autonomy than Hong Kong--is then supposed to be next, leading to a fully reunited China under Beijing’s control.

Hong Kong’s return “is a major step toward realizing the reunification of the motherland under the ‘one country, two systems’ guide, and is extremely useful in setting an example for solving the Taiwan problem,” Beijing’s official New China News Agency said in a recent commentary.

But in regaining control of Hong Kong, Beijing is “playing with a double-edged sword,” argues Shao Yu-ming, director of the Institute of International Relations at National Chengchi University in Taipei.

“If it succeeds with the takeover, certainly it will increase its weight in saying that Taiwan should be the next target, [by] increasing international receptivity to the idea of ‘one country, two systems,’ ” Shao said. “But if it louses up, it loses both the international community and us. . . . On the one hand, they are trying to use Hong Kong as leverage against us, but on the other hand they might cut themselves.”

While there is very little sentiment in Taiwan in favor of caving in, there is some fear that Beijing may ultimately get the upper hand. “I would say concern about growing pressure is quite common here,” said Hsu Hsin-liang, chairman of the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party, which in its platform advocates a sovereign Republic of Taiwan.

But Hsu predicted that Chinese control of Hong Kong will lead to greater international support for Taiwan’s effort to stay free of Beijing’s grasp. “Taiwan is not a second Hong Kong,” Hsu added. “I would say [the status quo] will become more stable. Even if ‘one country, two systems’ goes well in Hong Kong, that doesn’t mean Taiwan has to accept it.”

The key debate within Taiwan is between those who favor Lee’s approach of affirming support for ultimate reunification while taking practical steps to reinforce Taiwan’s de facto independence and those in the Democratic Progressive Party who want to stop talking about reunification and concentrate on building an independent Taiwanese nation with a name and constitution to fit.

Public opinion polls generally show more than 60% favoring the status quo, between 20% and 30% favoring Taiwan independence and about 10% favoring greater efforts at reunification.

While almost all of Taiwan’s people are ethnic Chinese, about 85% have ancestral roots here dating back a century or more, as the island was populated primarily by immigrants from Fujian province, located about 90 miles across the Taiwan Strait. Most of the remaining 15% either fled the Communists in the late 1940s or are the children of such refugees.

For decades, the Nationalist government and army were dominated by mainlanders, but under Taiwan-born Lee, their character has shifted to be more Taiwanese.

As once politically powerful refugees from the mainland fade from the scene, a key question for Taiwan’s future is whether people here consider themselves primarily Chinese or Taiwanese--and how they assess the costs and benefits of remaining a small island state under constant pressure from Beijing versus becoming part of the most populous country.

“To be frank, now as a citizen of the ROC, we sometimes have to suffer humiliating treatment abroad,” said Chang Ping-nan, 55, son of a Taiwanese farmer and now deputy director general of the Government Information Office. “The country as a whole has not been treated fairly and with dignity. . . . I think it’s good for all the people on both sides of the strait if we can be unified peacefully, not by force.”

Peng Ming-min, 73, the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party candidate who ran second to Lee in last year’s presidential election, garnering 21% of the vote to Lee’s 54%, admitted that “even among Taiwanese, some people say, ‘Hong Kong is gone, Macao is going to go, maybe next is our turn.’

“This kind of psychology is defeatist,” he declared. “We want to tell the world that drawing parallels between Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan is wrong. The geography is different. The history is different. . . . We are gone for good from China. There is absolutely no reason for us to accept Chinese rule.”

Holley was recently on assignment in Taipei.