The Ma's Taiwan I saw last week is still rather Green.
All the peoples whom I spoke to last week in Taiwan were lamenting about the economic rues and against the Ma's administration.
One was telling me that the flour price has gone up so much and it led to the closure of more than thousand of bakeries. The mother of this evil is none other than the gasoline price. Ma was singled out for not stemming the price hike on gasoline that led to the price hike on every sundry items.
The lamenting continued that following the drop of gasoline price, there ought to be a corresponding fall of food prices. Yet, the prices were quick to rise but slow to fall. Apparently, the accusation is that many of the food commodity companies are related to KMT.
I have no time to do investigation if this is true. What I can tell is that there are many peoples on the ground who are yet to be won over by Ma and many more remain sympathethic of Chen Sui-bian.
One taxi driver who fethed me to the airport believed that the Chen's prosecution is politically motivated. His logic was simple - why Ah-Bian when the KMT peoples accused of "black gold" are not prosecuted.
There is a perceived unfairness by the pan green even though they are not convinced of Ah-bian's innoncence.
Further, there were concerns that Ma's pro-mainland policy is leading to the erosion of a separate Taiwanese identify forged over the years under the Lee and Chen's administrations. It is a proud identity they are not willing to let go.
I have always believed that with China becoming democratic and liberal one day, the case for reunification would be irresistable. The truth is more likely to be otherwise.
At this juncture, I would like to borrow some examples from the American's context to explain the cross strait relationship.
The cross-strait relationship since 1949 is a little similar to that of Cuban-American relationship, hostile and confrontational.
What the mainland hope for is more of American-Hawaii, all united in one country.
What the pan-green can accept is an independent country with perhaps a special relationship with her former master sharing a common heritage like the US and UK.
What the Ma's administration is working for, I speculate, is perhaps that of Puerto Rico vis-a-vis the USA, with the option for Taiwan to be reunited with China. We all know how the Puerto Rican voted for its separate identity in spite of USA's strength, power and democracy.
It therefore follows that the democratization of mainland China is just a pre-condition of but not the condition for, the peaceful reunification. There are the wishes of the peoples in Taiwan that cannot be ignored.
The task for reunification is thus enormous as it is not about China becoming democratic but also that Taiwan accepting being part of China. No doubt the onus is on the mainland to take the lead. However the Ma's adminstration has a challenging task to undo all the damage done by the Lee and Chen's administations in de-sinifying the Taiwanese in the last 20 years.
What's more, a democratic China, like the democratic America with Puerto Rico, will most likely no longer compell but rather leave it to Taiwan to choose whether to be part of her. In which case, the reunification will cease to be a key issue of the cross strait relationship.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Bro, Good access to the internet at last! First a comment or two and more posts to follow once I get back to New York on CNY Day.
Another analogy is probably the US and Canada. Both used to part of the same bunch of British Colonies. Of course the French and Spanish had their colonies too, but French Quebec was conquered during the Seven Years War preceding the US Revolution; French Louisiana and Missisippi were acquired under the Lousiana Purchase; while Spanish and Mexican territories were more the result of war and conquest by the US against those countries. But I digress. The Canadian provinces were "Tory" colonies which did not join the "rebellion". In fact, they nurtured a seperate identity although they have much more similarities with the US than differences. In fact, some states for example, Northern California, Oregon and Washington have more in common with British Columbia than with say, Alabama or Arizona. The New England States have more in common with Newfoundland or Ontario than say Oklahoma. Nonetheless, many people were expecting that once the British lose control the Canadian provinces would eventually join the US. That did not happen even after Canadian got the dominion in 1900. But at the end of the day, it (almost) cease to matter. It's an immigration union (you can travel without a passport), an economic union (NAFTA) and military union (NATO). The countrie hold similar outlooks and views on most issues with Canada having a more liberal twist. In fact, to imagine Barack Obama's vision for America, just look at Canada. They co-exist as siblings not one-and-the-same and not even father-son. In the end, there is more than one definition for belonging in the same family.
Post a Comment