Taiwan And Mainland China

Contemporary Review, June, 2001 by Peter Kien-hong Yu

RELATIONS between Taiwan and mainland China began to change substantially in August 1958, when the Republic of China (ROC) President Chiang Kai-shek and U.S. Secretary of State John F. Dulles in their joint communique declared that the ROC Government would not use force to free the people on mainland China from the Communist yoke. Chiang had been forced to abandon the mainland and retreat to the island of Taiwan in 1949. By the agreement with Dulles, Chiang reluctantly settled for a political recovery of the mainland by peaceful means.

Chiang's son, Chiang Ching-kuo, knew that the Taiwanization of the ROC was inevitable. Given that the ruling mainlanders were a minority, they would someday have to transfer their political power to the native Taiwanese, so as to prolong the survival of the ROC on Taiwan. An assassination attempt by a native Taiwanese in April 1970 on him when he visited New York City woke up Chiang Ching-kuo. He began to realize that his ruling party, Kuomintang (KMT), must have done something wrong which prompted the assassin.

When Lee Teng-hui succeeded Chiang in January 1988, most politically conscious native Taiwanese felt that they were finally being able to be masters. By February 1990, the KMT was already deeply divided into two major factions: mainstream and non-mainstream. The former supported Lee and, therefore, was for accelerating the execution of the Taiwanization policy, and the latter, worried about the Taiwan independence movement, was against it. Lee's new presidential term began in May 1990, symbolizing the beginning of the native Taiwanese era. In other words, the Taiwan people have finally stood up, because emigre regimes, Chinese and non-Chinese, had taken them for granted since August 1683 when the Qing Dynasty incorporated Taiwan as a part of China and then as a province in October 1885. As pointed out by a professor of mainland origin in Taiwan, in the last few hundred years, Taiwan Province had suffered more emigre regimes than the rest of China. In other words, the Taiwan people, invaded 16 times by outsid ers, for the last several hundred years did not have a say in their destiny. Such a resentment can be seen in the heated, lively debates on the issue of reunification or independence since the early 1990s. A related, central issue in the debate is that of oppressor and the oppressed. To prevent oppression by emigre regimes in the future, Taiwanization is a must. Of course, some political figures capitalized on Taiwanization by promoting the creation of the Taiwan State (Taiwan Guo) or the Republic of Taiwan (ROT).

There are at least six needs for executing the Taiwanization policy. The foremost need is to resist absorption by the People's Republic of China (PRC) and to prevent the Communist Party of China (CPC) to plunder the wealth of Taiwan. Taiwan was forced to withdraw from the United Nations (UN) and thus Chinese representation shifted from Taipei to Beijing. So, many native Taiwanese political figures fear that someday Taiwan would become a province of totalitarian or authoritarian Communist China or the PRC, and most Taiwanese political figures cannot tolerate that.

One solution would be an eventual political separation of Taiwan from the PRC (as opposed to China as a country). So, most political figures think that the bottom line is that they must be able to chose their masters in Taiwan, so that they would no longer be Asia's orphan, as depicted by a native Taiwanese novelist, Wu Zhuoliu, before the end of World War II. On the other hand, native Taiwanese hold the consensus that the CPC should not be allowed to take away, if not communize, the wealth of Taiwan. Imperial Japan plundered the Taiwan resources, so did the KMT after World War II, when it was fighting against the CPC on the mainland.

The second one is that some political figures believe that Taiwanization can help to preserve the sovereign status of the ROC, if not Taiwan State or the ROT as well, given the opportunity. The PRC is simply too powerful now, especially after the American President Richard Nixon's trip to mainland China in February 1972. Thus, it is a mistake for Taipei to challenge Beijing head on. In September 1987, Lee Huan, the then protege of Chiang Ching-kuo, for the first time said in Kaohsiung that the KMT does not intend to replace the CPC as the ruling party on mainland China. What the KMT wants is to make the mainland politically democratic, to have press freedom, and to open up its economy.

In January 1995, the then ROC President Lee Teng-hui put forward a new slogan of malting Taiwan the neo-Zhongyuan (new central plain of China), a melting pot of Chinese culture from all provinces. He thinks that Taiwan is qualified to be called a neo-Zhongyuan, because Taiwan is ahead of the mainland in almost every aspect of life.

To be sure, Zhongyuan is a place where traditionally Chinese heroes want to get. If one can get it, one is considered the number one ruler in China. So, Zhongyuan or, for that matter, neo-Zhongyuan, has a symbolic meaning and importance. The native Taiwanese certainly know about the traditional concept. However, in putting forward the concept neo-Zhongyuan, it reflects that many native Taiwanese at this stage want to ward off the central plain's hegemony. It also means that the native Taiwanese are proud of their economic and political achievements in the last several decades. For example, the native Taiwanese believe that a regime in Taiwan that had been smoothly transferred from the KMT to the opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on May 20, 2000 certainly had a great impact on the hearts and minds of many people living on mainland China.