A Leader's Campaign To Break Away From China

When Chen Shui-bian gets into his campaign mode, the brilliant election machine listens to neither his foes nor friends. After severe warnings from both Beijing and, regrettably, Washington not to abolish the Unification Council and the Guidelines for National Unification in the past month, the president of Taiwan announced practically just that on Monday, the eve of the 59th anniversary of the 228 Incident - the bloody crackdown by the Chinese Kuomintang on a Taiwanese rebellion on the island on February 28, 1947.

Mr. Chen isn't running for any election - he has to step down when his second term expires in 2008. What he's campaigning for, in his remaining time in office, are two things. First, to get rid of as many outdated legacies from the KMT regime as possible. Second, to establish his own legacy as a spiritual founding father of a future republic of Taiwan.

Speaking at a national security council conference, Mr. Chen concluded, "The Unification Council will cease to function" and the "National Unification Guidelines will cease to apply." Contrary to what the critics argue as an alteration to the status quo, a grave sin in the Taiwan Straits, the scrapping of the Council and the Guidelines doesn't change anything in reality. For one thing, the NUC has largely been defunct since 2000 when Mr. Chen was first elected as president.

The NUC, established in 1990 by the Kuomintang government, issued the guidelines in the following year, calling for a phased approach toward unification. They're products of an old era when the KMT still upheld the myth that the republic of China was the legitimate government of China. At a time when the KMT was indistinguishable from the state, its party platform automatically became state doctrines. Sixteen years on, with the pro-independency Democratic Progressive Party twice winning the presidential elections, the NUC and its guidelines should be sent back to where it belongs - as the KMT's party platform and not government policy.

Removing the NUC and its Guidelines doesn't prevent the people from pursuing the ultimate goal of reuniting with China if they do choose to. Mr. Chen correctly said, "As long as the principle of democracy is honored and the free will to choose by Taiwan's 23 million people is respected, we will not exclude any possible form of future development of cross-strait relations. We are, however, adamant, that no one set preconditions or given an ultimate goal regarding the people's right to choose."

It should be pointed out that even the KMT, while maintaining that unification with China is an "ultimate goal," doesn't rule out independence altogether now. In an advertisement placed in the local press recently, the KMT clearly listed independence as one option for the people to choose from. The KMT's knee-jerk opposition to Mr. Chen's latest move, calling for his impeachment, smacks of hypocrisy.

China's reaction is well predicted. Hu Jintao, secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party on Tuesday said "This is a dangerous step on the road toward Taiwan independence. Any person who gets on the wrong side of history is doomed to failure," Mr. Hu was quoted as telling visiting Swiss Defense Minister Samuel Schmid. Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office was more explicit, saying Mr. Chen would only lead Taiwan a step closer to "disaster."

If China doesn't like where Mr. Chen is going, it's not without blame. Richard Bush, formerly chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto American Embassy, and currently director of the center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, argues in his very informative book "Untying the Knot: Making Peace in the Taiwan Strait" that Beijing has repeatedly misinterpreted intentions of the Taiwan leadership. Mr. Bush wrote, "Taipei's goal has not been to avoid being a part of China, as Beijing sought to frame it. Rather, the issue was how Taiwan might be part of China - or more precisely, how the governing authority in Taipei would be part of the state called China."

"If we are to learn why the Taiwan knot is tied, we must look for explanations other than [former president Lee Teng-hui's and Mr. Chen's] alleged separatism," he said. Mr. Bush assesses the situation accurately and fairly. The first obstacle is the precondition that Beijing has set on any dialogue with Taipei: the one-China principle. Mr. Chen's reluctance to meet this precondition, Mr. Bush believes, makes sense because "there is no way of knowing in advance what Beijing is offering in terms of either substance or process in return for such a concession."

The fundamental reason why Taiwan is rightfully skeptical of China is that the communist regime remains a dictatorship that threatens to use force against the island. Ten years ago, Beijing launched several waves of military exercises, with missiles landing very close to Taiwan's shoreline, aimed at halting and undermining Taiwan's first democratic presidential election. Then-President Clinton was forced to dispatch two aircraft carriers to the Taiwan Strait to prevent any war from breaking out. Let's see whether Beijing will back up its harsh words with any military deeds this time.

When Mr. Chen pledged, in his inaugural speech in 2000, that he wouldn't abolish the NUC and its guidelines, the crucial precondition was "as long as the CCP regime has no intention to use military force against Taiwan." Not only has China not shown any goodwill to talk to the elected government in Taipei, but it also has been adding missiles pointed at Taiwan, more than 800 of them at last count. As long as China doesn't rule out swallowing Taiwan by overwhelming force, it is pushing the island further and further away.

Mr. Liu is a former Washington-based columnist of Hong Kong's Apple Daily.