Asia Times: Barrier to rapprochement falls


	October 23, 2001	atimes.com

China

Barrier to rapprochement falls
By Laurence Eyton

TAIPEI - An obscure procedural move taken by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) at a party congress meeting at the weekend marks a major realignment of policy of Taiwan's ruling party and promises a tectonic shift in the island's political geography.

The actual move approved by the congress was to raise the level of party resolutions to the same level of importance as clauses in the party's charter. But if that looks like an inconsequential piece of procedural trivia, it constitutes, however, nothing more nor less than the party's abandonment of de jure Taiwan independence as a future goal.

In 1991, the DPP adopted as part of its party platform a clause claiming that Taiwan was an independent sovereign state and mandated the party to seek the formal establishment of this status in the eyes of the world. This so-called "independence clause" has proved to be a burden for the party, if only because, like the British Labour Party's erstwhile commitment to public ownership of "the means of production", it far exceeded, in its quest for radical change, the wishes of the electorate that it was trying to woo.

Taiwanese seeking the island's de jure independence and the establishment of a Republic of Taiwan - and the cutting of any umbilical cord between Taiwan and China - are very much a minority, perhaps no more than 15 percent of the population. The majority of Taiwanese do not want to risk armed conflict with China over the assertion of a legal status which can have little impact on their day-to-day lives.

What they want, of course, is the status quo, in which Taiwan enjoys de facto independence and, as long as it does not try to push this any further, the protection of the United States against revanchist zealots across the Taiwan Strait.

The DPP's commitment to de jure independence has, therefore, proved to be something of a damper on the party's electoral chances. Most Taiwanese - by and large a cautious bunch - have tended to see the party as composed of hot-headed ideologues who might lead the territory into trouble. That the DPP won the presidential election last year was only in very small part due to a lessening of this distrust. Far more influential was the fact that the anti-DPP camp disastrously split its vote between two rival candidates.

Interestingly, the DPP did not adopt the independence clause at the time of its founding in 1986. It had more important things to do then, such as campaigning for the democratization of Taiwan's political institutions. Only when this had been firmly set in motion in the early 1990s did it need another major issue with which to define itself.

That it chose independence as its key note was far more to do the early DPP cadres' vision of themselves as social revolutionaries radicalizing a population frozen in political hibernation. This idea of consciousness-raising proved a failure, being repudiated in legislative elections in 1995 and 1998. Ironically, the DPP understood how to effect radical political change in a closed society, but not how to win elections in a democratic one.

The party's acknowledgment of this came in 1999 when its congress tried to change the independence clause. The problem was that to make such a change required the approval of 75 percent of the delegates to the congress, and pro-independence fundamentalism was simply too strong for this majority to be reached. Instead, a party resolution was adopted that acknowledged Taiwan's current status and committed the DPP to not changing that status without the approval, through a referendum, of the people of Taiwan.

The adoption of the idea of a referendum as essential to a change in status went some way to alleviating voter wariness of the DPP. Certainly it offered Taiwanese more of a say in their eventual destiny than the then-governing Kuomintang (KMT), which even now will not endorse a referendum. But the presence of the independence clause still worked to the party's disadvantage.

A clause in the party charter was seen to outrank a resolution of the party congress, which meant that the party was still vulnerable to its rivals and the overwhelmingly hostile Taiwanese media as espousing a doctrine too radical for the taste of most voters, and something which tended to weaken the party's attempt to find a "new middle way" through the minefield of the independence/reunification debate, nourished as it was with bitter ethnic prejudice.

Saturday's decision to raise resolutions to the same level as charter clauses constitutes the party's final turning away from the advocacy of formal independence.

"As a new law supersedes an old one," said party Chairman Frank Hsieh, "the [1999] resolution on Taiwan's future [instead of the independence clause in the party platform] now serves as the basis for the DPP's fundamental policy vis-a-vis cross-Taiwan Strait issues. The change reflects Taiwan's public opinion and is in line with political realities. We are more flexible," Hsieh said.

The impact of the decision is two-fold. In Taiwan it allows the DPP to move more into the middle ground of Taiwan politics, by bringing party policy more closely into line with mainstream opinion. It is not, of course, accidental that this change should happen five weeks before a legislative election.

Parties mellowing in radical ideology once they achieve office is, of course, a cliche of democratic politics. The DPP's move, however, has been generally welcomed by Taiwan's commentators as marking the party's adjustment to the realities and constraints of power.

The DPP's embrace of the status quo vacates a swath of its old pro-independence support, which is now likely to be picked up by the new Taiwan Solidarity Union built around the radical Taiwan-centrism and anti-China stance of ex-president Lee Teng-hui.

This development, unfolding over the past three months, has confounded pundits - including this one - who said that Lee's party, when it was established, was likely to pursue middle-of-the-road voters wary of the DPP. On the contrary, it is the DPP that has moved to the middle of the road, while Lee has become the pied piper for the radical fringe. It is almost impossible to predict ahead of the elections on December 1 how successful this might be.

Elsewhere, the DPP's move can only bring benefits. The United States, which sees Taiwan independence rhetoric as inherently "trouble-making" while of no practical value, will be pleased that Taiwan's ruling party seems more ready to embrace reality.

The DPP's change also removes an obstacle that has stood in the way of rapprochement between Taipei and Beijing, since China has simply refused outright to talk to any party that advocates Taiwan's de jure independence or any government formed by such a party.

In the immediate future this will not mean much. Cross-Strait relations are so bitter in the wake of China's refusal to invite Taiwan to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' summit at the weekend and the consequent Taiwan walkout from the meeting that the DPP's change of policy will go largely unnoticed.

Add to this a Chinese misperception that economic weakness will force Taiwan to make concessions, and a change in the current standoff seems unlikely for a while.

But if the US economy recovers next year, taking Taiwan with it, while the competition resulting from entering the World Trade Organization nest causes China's economy to implode, as some predict, some essential political architecture for a restructuring of the cross-Strait economic relationship is now in place.

((c)2001 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)