Views and Confusions Across the Taiwan Strait
The difference of political belief and the often mis-used and mis-interpreted terms
Chinese views:
- Taiwan is part of China because of its ethnical, linguistic, and historical ties between mainland and Taiwan.
- Taiwan is an inalienable part of China.
- Taiwan belongs to all Chinese. People in Taiwan can not decide the future of Taiwan alone.
- While China is not perfect today, it can be tomorrow. Taiwan should wait.
- Taiwan can become a highly autonomous region in China. The one country, two systems policy.
- If Taiwan "declares independence" from China, it is necessary and justified to invade Taiwan by force.
Three major views in Taiwan:
- Eventual unification with China.
- Taiwan is part of "China" because of its ethnical, linguistic, and historical ties between mainland and Taiwan.
- Taiwan is part of "China", though not part of today's People's Republic of China.
- China will become strong some day. If unified in the future, Taiwan can be a part of the strong country.
- If Taiwan "declares independence" today, it will risk war and decrease the probabilty of joining a great China in the future.
- Pursue "Independence".
- In the past 100 years, Taiwan was part of different Chinas (Ching, ROC, PRC) for only 4 years. The historical tie is weak.
- Taiwan has never been governed by People's Republic of China. The political tie is non-existent.
- People in Taiwan has the right to decide their own future, unification or independence.
- Taiwan's economy policy, industry policy and monetary policy, are greatly different from China due to its distinct economic characteristics.
- Maintain status quo.
- It's a bad idea to unify with China for the cultural, political, and economic disaffinity.
- It is too risky to "declare independence" for the possible Chinese military invasion.
- Wait when China becomes more democratic and reasonable. Then it would be easier to choose a comfortable unification or safe "independence".
Misused term: Independence
Taiwan is by definition independent of People's Republic of China. Whether Taiwan wants to be independent of a future China is up to the people in Taiwan, and how that right of self-determination can be respected and preserved by all the involving powers.
"Declaring independence", not like unification, is not a change of current political structure, but more like a declaration of future policy towards China. If there would be ever a declaration of independence, it would be to those who favor eventual unification, not to the world, as a statement of its semi-permanent policy. The world already knows people in Taiwan do not pay tax to the Beijing government, do not abide by Beijing's law, and do not use PRC's passport. Actually many people out of Taiwan and China think Taiwan is an independent country.
When I visited the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, the tour guide asked us how many countries were not in the UN. The tour guide's answer was four, not including Taiwan. (Actually UNPO, Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, had 43 members in 1995). She thought Taiwan was a country and thus a member of UN. No matter it's called ROC or Taiwan, Taiwan is well known as not part of today's China.
Taiwan (ROC) had a seat in the UN and was well recognized in the cold war era, but that did not imply PRC was not independent, either. Today's Taiwan is not recognized by most of the countries, partially due to its untruthful claim of sovereignty over China, Mongolia, Tibet, and East Turkistan, and its disputable official name Republic of China.
Mis-used and mis-interpreted terms: China and Chinese
Eventual-unification supporters in Taiwan are often mis-interpreted, by China and the rest of the world, as supporting unification with today's China. Only very few people actually think so in Taiwan. The "China" implied by the eventual-unificationists is non-existent, yet. Whether a statement of "independence" or a seat in the UN will hurt the chance of unification in the next generation, if ever, is debatable.
The term Chinese means both Chinese nationals and ethnic Chinese. Its often mixed usage makes most of the debates turned into a poor form. If Taiwan changes its official name in the constitution to Taiwan, people in Taiwan can be called Taiwanese or Chinese Taiwanese. The concept of nationality is not well developed in Chinese culture. You can hear some people from Hong Kong or Singapore call themselves Chinese even though they are not holding a Chinese passport.