How does this keep sailing under the radar?
President Ma Ying-jeou just reiterated, without mincing words, the KMT position that Taiwan and "the mainland" are both part of the same country, the ROC. This is in line with the Chinese position that Taiwan and "the mainland"belong to the same "One China."
Ma stated that the first set of ROC constitutional amendments defined the relationship as "the free area" (Taiwan) and "the mainland area," and that this definition remains the one the KMT is constitutionally obligated to respect.
What is remarkable is how Ma's archaic definition of an ROC encompassing both Taiwan and China would be wildly unpopular if people knew about it, yet despite repeated public statements and subsequent newspaper articles, the KMT position continues to escape most people's attention.
And yet we see with every passing day that the nebulous status quo is increasingly defined as the "One China" framework and all the agreements that rest on it.
5 comments:
I've heard Ma say things like this before. Utterly ridiculous. After so many years, how could anyone claim that Beijing is part of the R.O.C.?
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It pleases China because of the bottom line and it undermines the credibility of Taiwan -- for such a ridiculous claim -- a KMT objective, IMO.
Not surprising.
But you're right. I'm not sure if it "falls under the radar" as much as it is "swept under the rug".
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What color is the sky in your world?
What is remarkable is how Ma's archaic definition of an ROC encompassing both Taiwan and China would be wildly unpopular if people knew about it...
Why do you keep making completely insane comments like this about "the people"? The only remarkable thing here is your ability to stick your head in the sand.
Funny when some ugly Kweilou said Taiwan is independence, they said it's perfectly ok.
When the President of Taiwan said both PRC and Taiwan are of same country, it's ridiculous claim.
I wonder what qualification is all these Kweilou. Are they the President of Taiwan, or have anything related to Taiwan.
Natives
Anonymous,
I'm not sticking my head in the sand by thinking Taiwanese strongly object to Ma's "One China" definition.
As with everything on the topic, your result depends on how you ask the question.
If you say, "Do you believe Taiwan and the mainland are the same country?" I'm sure you know how you'd get a resounding "No" in your survey. Probably 80-90% of respondents would answer thus.
However, if you ask "Do you support talking with the mainland under the 'One China, two interpretations' framework?" you're going to get 70%+ support.
I think this is because people like to think of 'One China, two interpretations' as an equal footing and a theory accepted by both sides (we know it's not accepted by China at all, of course, even though they don't say so in public too frequently any more). It's very much a "we agree to disagree" formula.
On the other hand, people rightly see a "Taiwan and China are both part of a single China" as a formula that makes Taiwan subservient to both nebulous "China" and the actual PRC.
The most recent evidence I have that people would strongly reject the formulation of China and Taiwan being part of a single China comes from a 2007 SEF survey [.doc], where 65% disagreed with that formulation and 25% agreed.
In the same survey, 75% opposed the idea that Taiwan's future should be decided by all 1.3 billion Chinese people [including Taiwan, in the survey's formulation, since it was using Hu's formulation as the basis for the questions].
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