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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Now Is Not the Time for a Referendum on Taiwanese Independence |
| 2019-02-20 |
| [The National Interest] Led by Formosa TV (FTV) chairman Kuo Pei-hung’s Formosa Alliance, pro-independence advocates in Taiwan have recently sparked controversy with a call for a referendum on whether the democratic island-nation should declare de jure independence. Deeply unsatisfied with what they regard as President Tsai Ing-wen’s far too cautious, if not "concessionary," approach to China, the Alliance, along with like-minded members within Taiwan’s deep-green camp, is likely to field its own candidate in next January’s general elections and has pressured Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to select someone else for the race. Through their calls for a more muscular response to Chinese encroachment and for a referendum on sovereignty, the Alliance has attracted firm responses from a number of American academics (among them Richard Bush of the Brookings Institution) as well as the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the United States’ de facto embassy in the absence of official diplomatic ties‐and those responses have been highly unfavorable to the referendum cause. In both cases, the principal source of concern is the belief that a unilateral change to the "status quo" in the Taiwan Strait, such as could occur should a referendum be passed, would be both potentially destabilizing and contravene the United States’ longstanding "one China" policy. Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) has also indicated it would deal "carefully" with the referendum issue, adding that "as a responsible government, the administration has to take into consideration Taiwan's role in maintaining peace and stability in the region." Revisions to referendum laws enacted by the Tsai administration, which have lowered the thresholds for the initiation and passage of referenda, have strategically left out plebiscites on constitutional change and anything that touches on the Republic of China’s (Taiwan’s official designation) sovereignty. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #2 Thanks for that background and insight, 3dc! |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2019-02-20 15:39 |
| #1 It's much more complicated in Taiwan than external viewers understand. First never forget the high high high illegal alien contingent who can't vote. These are in the main ChiCom tourist who just stayed for various reasons. In the small nation these folks are not included in the census counts but likely number between 10 to 12 million out of an population of 23.5 million. That makes the real population closer to 35 million with 1/3 illegals. The Taiwanese native populations and tribes tend to be pro-independence as they were ruled by non-Chinese for most of their history and see no special relationship with China. The Nationalist (KMT) and others came over under the US 7th Fleet protection when the KMT lost the civil war in China to the communists. At this point in time Taiwan was only under Chinese rule for 4 years. The people in Taiwan tended to see the KMT and Nationalist refugees as invaders. My parents saw this directly in their first landlord when they went to Taiwan. He had been an iron and steel kingpin under the Japanese rule. The KMT came over starving poor and with weapons. Generals took his iron and steel factories for themselves and treated him like a war criminal when he complained. Secret police, shakedowns, beating theft the whole nine yards. He had an antique hobby and gold so he would buy, likely looted, antiques from the same KMT refugees with gold so they could eat. He moved the antiques out of the region. Eventually, my parents helped him buy his way out of the country with bribes. He ended his life an old man in Cleveland painting endless works of pigs representing the KMT and Chinese refugees. His kids did fine here with PHDs from MIT. The dislike between the two groups is intense enough that many of the Chinese who came with the civil war or their children have moved elsewhere. The Taiwanese background are now strongest in the south half of the nation and have no longing to be part of China. This division is on glaring display in their Whitehouse. It was the Japanese Governor's palace when it was part of Japan. The US and the English bombed it. They have exhibits of the wartime bombing and display them as war crimes by America. Of course most KMT don't see it that way but were not the population bombed. The displays exist for internal political reasons. I was pretty disgusted when I saw them. Tourism: For China, Taiwan is their Florida in the wintertime. A place for Chinese Snowbirds where the food and written language are culturally similar and all the people can speak Mandarin. (It doesn't mean all will speak Mandarin to the ChiComs and the written language is Classical Chinese characters and not the simplified stuff Mao forced on China) |
| Posted by: 3dc 2019-02-20 14:40 |