TAIPEI, Taiwan — Three months after Russia invaded Ukraine, Annette Lu, the former vice president of Taiwan, came out to reporters to promote a wildly unpopular idea.
According to her, China and Taiwan should form a common economically integrated, like the European Unionbut politically separate.
He called it One Zhonghua, a word that means “Chinese” in a cultural, ethnic or literary sense, but is different from the word that refers to China in a political sense.
It was a nod to the insistence of the Communist Party of China that there is only one China and that Taiwan is an inextricable part of it.
A Zhonghua is not a new idea.
The idea of a commonwealth or federation of independent Chinese states has been touted for decades as a solution to the Taiwan dilemma by scholars, publishers and minor officials on both sides of the strait.
fears
But when the Russian troops invaded Ukraineit emerged again.
“For the first time, Taiwanese people have realized that war is real,” Andrew Hsia, vice chairman of the opposition KMT party in Taiwan, told me last month.
He had just returned from a rare and controversial visit to mainland China, an attempt to improve the quality of life of Taiwanese working in China and to meet new Chinese leaders in charge of policy towards the island.
He doubted the idea of a Commonwealth, but stated that “any idea which can maintain the existing way of life and avoid conflict is worthy of debate”.
A Zhonghua is a fantasy, of course.
The president of China, Xi Jinpingwhich regards Taiwan as a rogue province, has shown no interest in anything that would leave Taiwan’s sovereignty intact.
Indeed, China is expected to announce a crash program to forcibly reunify the island if necessary.
Across the pond, the President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wenstrongly supports the island’s right to decide its own destiny and rejects anything that smacks of union with China.
However, the quixotic campaign a zhonghua gets to the heart of the unsolved conundrum of what Taiwan’s relationship with China should be.
According to polls, the vast majority of Taiwanese want to maintain the status quo of undeclared de facto independence.
However, in a recent poll, about 40 percent of Taiwanese said they want to improve economic ties with China, while a smaller percentage said economic ties need to be curtailed.
It is estimated that between 1 and 2 million Taiwanese – almost 10% of the total population of the island – live and work on the mainland.
As the US-China rivalry heats up, many Taiwanese wonder how to preserve their incredibly innovative and thriving open society.
Should they prepare to fight like Ukraine or try to compromise to avoid conflict?
Reaction
How Taiwanese voters answer that question will determine who wins Taiwan’s presidential election in January and the fate of the island’s fledgling democracy.
For the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, the best way to avoid war is to strengthen ties with the United States and buy enough weapons to make China think twice before launching an invasion.
In these days, Joseph Wu, The foreign minister keeps a Ukrainian flag signed by Ukrainian soldiers prominently displayed in his office, along with two pairs of boxing gloves given to him by the mayor of Kiev, Ukraine.
In December, the administration announced it would extend the length of mandatory military service from four months to one year.
However, Taiwan is not Ukraine.
In political terms, it is not recognized by the United Nations as an independent country.
In practical terms, it’s an island that would run out of natural gas in about eight days if it were ever locked down.
China’s economy, despite significant challenges, is much larger, more diverse and more attractive than Russia’s.
On the eve of the invasion, the Russian army was about four times the size of the Ukrainian one.
Today, China’s military is nearly 12 times the size of Taiwan’s.
Whether the Taiwanese admit it or not, part of the country’s prosperity comes from being the gateway to the largest market in the world.
At a nightclub in Taipei, I dated a concert promoter who couldn’t wait to host another event in Shanghai, where he makes more money, and an Anglo-Nigerian rapper named Brazy who came to Taiwan to learn to rap Mandarin , hoping his songs would go viral in China.
These days, a sense of uncertainty hangs over Taipei.
Hardly anyone I spoke to was sure Taiwan could withstand an attack without the direct involvement of US soldiers.
Bill Stanton, a retired US diplomat who ran the US embassy in Taipei and also worked in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square massacre, told me he stood up to bullies as a child, which is why he defends Taiwan:
“They’re small, it’s easy to mess with them,” she said.
“I think we all have to stand up for the little guy.”
United States of America
President Joe Biden it has pledged four times in the past year to do just that, in part because defending Taiwan is seen as integral to defending Japan, South Korea, and international shipping.
But US policy has been deliberately ambiguous about what support the US would provide Taiwan in a crisis.
Social media accounts have flooded the island with warnings that Americans will eventually abandon them to their fate.
There has also been a spate of arrests of suspected spies, including a Taiwanese military officer who was allegedly paid to surrender to an order.
Recently, Matt Pottinger, a National Security Council staffer in the Trump administration, gave a pep talk in Taipei.
“An ardent determination to defend one’s homeland, family and way of life can make up for a smaller team, smaller numbers and lower quotas,” he advised in a speech he gave in Mandarin, citing lessons from Ukraine. .
“But the will must be cultivated.”
For the DPP, part of this fiery determination involves redirecting trade from China to Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, a project known as the “Southbound” policy.
It might work when it comes to computer chips, Taiwan’s most profitable industry.
But fish farmers and orchard owners are skeptical of substitution by the Chinese market, which buys about 42% of the island’s exports.
Last summer, China banned Taiwanese grouper and wax apples, prompting some farmers to switch sides.
“Obviously we want an independent Taiwan,” an orchard owner told Lung Ying-tai, a former culture minister.
“But at what price?
Taiwanese officials have vowed to find new markets for the fish or consume it at home.
During a lavish lunch in Taipei, the deputy foreign minister took the lid off a succulent dish and said:
“This is our Freedom Fish!”
Hsia, a KMT vice president, told me that he called for the grouper ban to be lifted during his recent trip to China.
He described the response from Chinese officials as cooperative and said days later they received a delegation from the Taiwan Fish Farming Association.
If China ends up lifting the ban, it would bolster the KMT’s claim that the party does it he knows how to run China.
The KMT has long advocated economic integration with China.
The party’s roots go back to the Nationalist Army which lost a civil war against the Chinese Communists in 1949 and fled to Taiwan to regroup.
The KMT officers, who initially ruled as a military dictatorship, were so committed to the dream of returning to mainland China for revenge that, a Ming Chuan University professor told me, they systematically forbade serving soldiers from marrying. turn away from their cause.
The closest Taiwan has ever come to One Zhonghua occurred between 2008 and 2016, under the administration of KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou.
Ma Ying-jeou has signed a number of deals with China, including a trade deal that allowed many Taiwanese products to be sold in China at reduced tariffs, without giving China the same access in return.
This agreement is still in effect and is considered vital to the Taiwanese economy.
But a second trade deal, focused on services, was a bridge too long.
Fearing that Taiwan was getting too close to China, protesters seized the legislative building in 2014 and helped oust the KMT from power two years later in what has been dubbed the Sunflower Movement.
Since the DPP won the 2016 election, it has announced changes emphasizing the separation of Taiwanese identity, reducing the size of the words “Republic of China” on passports and making the word “Taiwan” much more prominent.
The number of people who consider themselves Taiwanese has risen from 17.6% in 1992 to60.8% in 2022, according to Ching-hsin Yu, director of the Center for Election Studies at National Taipei Chengchi University.
The young activists are dismayed that Lu, who at the time served five years in prison under the dictatorship for trying to bring democracy to Taiwan, is selling One Zhonghua.
“Lu’s proposal is very outdated,” said Fei-fan Lin, a former protest leader who became deputy general secretary of the Taiwan Democratic Party (DPP) and is now a board member of the New Frontier Foundation, a group of reflection of the DPP.
China’s crackdown on Hong Kong since 2019 has dispelled any doubts that China would dismantle Taiwan’s political system given the chance.
“Can Chinese nationalists (or their apologists) keep quiet about Zhonghua?” headlined an article by Brian Hioe, chronicler of progressive activism in Taipei, in New Bloom magazine last August.
On Twitter, he suggested that figures like Lu, who is now 78, should be “put out to pasture”.
However, for the older generation in Taiwan, the idea of being Chinese still has profound cultural power.
Lung Ying-tai, a former minister of culture, told me that ever since the unification of China in 221 BC, many in China have harbored the idea that all Chinese should live together under the same ruler.
Those who tried to break away from the emperor never lasted long.
“In thousands of years of history, Taiwan is the first open society of Chinese,” he told me.
“It’s a miracle. How we survive will be another miracle.”
c.2023 The New York Times Society
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.