Article #5
The Political
Independence of the Taiwanese People, 2000-Present
Given the aggressive and illogical claims of the
regime that maintains control in China, the people of Taiwan have thus far been
satisfied with de facto independence, continuing to operate under the outdated
and always fanciful official appellation, Republic of China.
But Taiwan has never been the Republic of China. That term was brought from China as part of
the baggage carried by the Guomindang, the loser of a territory that it aspired
to regain. Until the 1990s, the
Guomindang maintained a “provincial” government for Taiwan and even a
“provincial” legislature based in Taizhong that was officially separate from
the “national” government in Taibei. Among
the reforms of the Lee Teng-hui era was the elimination of the Taizhong
governments.[xi] With Chen Shuibian’s tenure came the adoption
of the name “Taiwan” for many central government journals and the abiding
assumption that any reference to the “Republic of China” was a convenient
fiction.
Indeed, Taiwan has never been China, and only briefly
in the long scope of history even under the sway of any government that
actually exercised control over all of China. And no government has
simultaneously controlled Taiwan and all of China for the last 116 years. Only during the Dutch, Zheng, and Qing
periods did Han Chinese people begin immigration into Taiwan in significant
numbers. Until the 17th
century, Taiwan was an island on which the stock of people who had conducted
themselves freely across the island for about 5,600 years still had the island
to themselves. Taiwan’s populace then
endured a succession of periods during which outsiders controlled the
island: the periods of Dutch
(1624-1661); Zheng family
(1661-1683); Qing Dynasty
(1683-1895); Japanese (1895-1945); and Guomindang (1945-1987) control. Only as the Dutch, Zheng, and Qing periods
ensued did Han Chinese people from Fujian and Guangdong come to the island in
significant numbers, eventually overwhelming in sheer size the aboriginal
population. During the Guomindang era,
people with ancestral roots across China followed the Guomindang across the
Taiwan Stratit. Thus today the Taiwanese
population consists of a small aboriginal population, a sizable minority
population of Han Chinese whose ancestral roots lie outside Fujian and
Guangdong, and a majority population of Han Chinese people with ancestral ties
to Fujian and Guangdong whose forebears have resided on Taiwan for about 400
years.
In the momentous year of 2000, the same year that a
non-Guomindang political actor was elected to the presidency, an exhibition at
the Taibei Fine Arts Museum highlighted the four prime contemporary cultural
influences on Taiwan: aboriginal
culture; traditional Chinese
culture; the cultural legacy of the
Japanese period, and the manifestations of Western cultures (especially that of
the United States) that have significantly affected Taiwan in contemporary
times. These are the Taiwanese people.
These are the influences that have shaped a unique and independent
political entity.
Taiwan features a thoroughly industrialized and
post-industrialized economy with a high per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
of $35,100 (#36 in the world). The
People’s Republic of China features a rapidly growing economy but has a low per
capita GDP of $7,400 (#127 in the world).[xii] Taiwan underwent a political transition
beginning in 1987 that resulted in full-blown democracy by the late 1990s. The government of the People’s Republic of
China unleashed troops on its people at Tiananmen in 1989 and maintains tight
political and military control.[xiii] Taiwan’s wealth is well-dispersed throughout
the island, which has a very natural politico-territorial integrity. The People’s Republic of China features a
dynamic economy, the benefits of which are unevenly dispersed; it is an empire, rather than a nation proper,
that exercises dominance over restive and unwilling peoples, most especially
those of Tibet and Xinjiang. The
People’s Republic of China extends its claim to Taiwan on the basis of that
imperial thrust, not on the basis of any logic found in history.
Empires and nations usually control territory based on original thrusts of martial force. The leadership of the People’s Republic of China could opt to make such a move on Taiwan in an effort to make the island an addition to the empire of China. Taiwan, though, is currently an independent political entity with a history mostly separate from the great unfolding of events in China. Its history has been one of outsider seizures of power from which the people broke free beginning in 1987. The great bulk of the Taiwanese people recognize the substantial difference between their own polity and that which prevails in China. They want the independence that remains theirs to maintain and, if they so chose, to formally proclaim. If the Taiwanese people should ever declare that independence, such a declaration could only be dishonored through force of arms, under the watchful eye of an international community that chooses to side with military might over historical right.
No comments:
Post a Comment