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Apr 9, 2010

One China, same interpretation

Please find here the translation of an article by Liu Shing-Ren (劉性仁), an NUU part-time lecturer and ROC constitutional scholar, which was featured on the President's website. I believe Professor Liu starts off presenting his views well, but degenerates into a bizarre, whiny patriotic rant.

The article and its translation are rather long, so I've just linked them above. But to sum up Professor Liu's argument:

  1. "One China, same interpretation" is a great idea if each side could accept that the ROC + PRC = One Complete China [quote: "the unified, complete China is made up of a 'Mainland China' and a 'Taiwan China' separated by civil war."]

  2. The Ma government's current position, though, is that One China = ROC.

  3. If the Ma Government tried to adopt a "One China, same interpretation" position, those pesky Greens would accuse him of preparing to surrender to the Communists. So it's politically unwise.

  4. When the election rolled around, the Blues would just fall back on China = ROC to avoid political heckling, and mainland China can't accept that, now can it?

  5. That makes "One China, same interpretation" a great ideal for the future, but impractical for now.

  6. Rather, the top priority right now is to arrive at a Blue + Green consensus -- not by compromising toward a middle ground, mind you, but by convincing the Greens to come on over to the Blue understanding.
Despite some sarcasm on my part, that's a pretty fair portrayal of the professor's argument.

Nevertheless, I find the idea of "One China, same interpretation" as defined above rather interesting, if impractical as the professor does. What do you think?

4 comments:

Robert R. said...

No time to read the article now but:

"the unified, complete China is made up of a 'Mainland China' and a 'Taiwan China' separated by civil war."

If it's separated, it's obviously not unified. On the other hand, you can consider it like an egg. Yolk + white = 1 egg... however that's a tough angle to take if you'd prefer 2 independent countries.
Or ROC+PRC = One [complete] China, similar to how ROK+DPRK= One Korea...
Except neither of those are "One". It's like the holy trinity (both one & 3), but without the theological depth of interpretation.

For point #3, it is only conceivably viable if China agreed to the same interpretation which is... unlikely.

Anonymous said...

Random thoughts while reading the piece:

Boy oh boy, Taiwan is DONE if the KMT wins the next election.

This was published on the presidential page! Taiwan is SO F...

The argument is insane, in an orwellian kind of way. Either a government controls a territory or it doesn't, plus the PRC will never admit that the ROC has ANY kind of control over the mainland.

If have to remind some of the Mongolian exchange students here, that they are considered as Chinese by the ROC constitution, guess they will love it.

How come concensus or harmony always mean that everybody who doesnt agree has to shut up for the KMT and PRC... great.

Did I mention that Taiwan is .... yeah I did.

skiingkow said...

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I'd just like to point out that Taiwan was NOT separated from China by a civil war. It was never part of China, so how can it be "separated"?

This should be called "the AP interpretation", since that's the factual error they repeat in every article about Taiwan.

The premise of this argument is as flawed as the mind-numbingly stupid interpretation that PandaMa iterates from time to time (ROC=China, which you make mention).
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Islander said...

Scary and ridiculous thought from the pro-China professor.

The whole premise of one China should be challenged. Taiwan was separated from the Manchurian Empire (Qing Dynasty) not by civil war in 1949 but by treaty with Japan in 1895.

You can argue that the Manchurians conquered the Western plains of Taiwan (the Mountains were controlled by Aborigines) but they were not considered Chinese at that time. They were considered barbarians to the North that invaded and conquered China in the 17th century. Therefore, Taiwan was part of an defunct Manchurian Empire, not China.