Quotes of the Day
At 22, John Wong is eager to begin his working life. First, however, the newly minted university graduate must spend another 18 months in a military uniform. Like all males in Taiwan over the age of 18, he's required by law to do national service. After three months of boot camp, there's a good chance he'll be sent to one of Taiwan's heavily fortified outlying islands, located just kilometers off the coast of mainland China. He doesn't relish the prospect. "You just do drills and sit in bunkers, day after day," he sighs. "I'll be miserable—and bored."
Or perhaps not. Taiwan's tensions with China are once again reaching boiling point, raising the distant but real possibility that Wong's stint in the army might be anything but dull. Last week, a People's Liberation Army general, Peng Guangqian, warned that China is willing to wage war with Taiwan to prevent it from declaring independence—whatever the cost. Writing in a Beijing journal controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, Peng said China would brave a boycott of the Olympic Games, a drop in foreign investment, an economic downturn, even regional instability in order "to uphold national unity and territorial integrity." Like all Taiwanese, Wong has heard similar strident threats from China before. This time, however, he blames his own President, Chen Shui-bian, for deliberately baiting Beijing by stirring the pot of independence at home in a crude attempt to boost his re-election chances next March. "I suspect all he cares about is staying in power," says Wong, who until recently counted himself among Chen's supporters.
Chen, 52, is taking the biggest gamble of his political career and, in the process, whipping up an international storm. At issue is his surprise announcement on Nov. 29 that he intended to use powers afforded him under a new referendum law to hold a popular vote to "protect our country's sovereignty." Many interpreted that to mean Chen was flirting with the idea of a referendum on independence—an action that China has consistently threatened would lead to war.
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To pressure Chen to step back, Washington last week dispatched its top National Security Council official for Asia, James Moriarty, to Taipei to ask Chen to cool it over the sovereignty issue and, according to a senior official in Chen's administration, "urge us not to miss the sense of urgency" in Beijing's reaction. "The U.S. conveyed a message to us that had come directly from China," says the official. The warning worked—to a degree. Chen reiterated a commitment made at his inauguration in 2000 to not change Taiwan's status and vowed that any referendum would not touch on "independence or reunification." Instead, he told the New York Times, he'd organize a plebiscite that calls on China to remove the nearly 500 missiles aimed at Taiwan and demand that Beijing renounce the use of force against the island.
Chen might never have won the presidency in 2000 if China had not branded him a "dangerous separatist" whose election would bring war to the Taiwan Strait. Taiwanese, tired of China's bellicose rhetoric, rallied around him. But this time, until the referendum issue erupted, Beijing had deliberately held its fire. That, coupled with a steady drop in Chen's popularity over the years, apparently forced the President to seek a fresh squabble with China. "China is a useful enemy for Chen," says Su Chi, a senior policy adviser to the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party. "It's a scarecrow he can point at to mobilize many people in Taiwan who resent China trying to influence our democracy."
Replaying the China card may not be enough to get Chen elected again, however. In 2000, the opposition was divided. For the coming election, the KMT and the other major opposition group, the People First Party, are fielding a joint candidate, KMT chairman Lien Chan, so as not to split the vote. The opposition has attacked Chen's administrative performance, blaming frequent policy flip-flops in the past few years for having aggravated Taiwan's poor economy. Still, by harping on the referendum issue, Chen has managed to achieve two key election objectives: telegraphing to his hard-core supporters, who want independence, that he has not forgotten about protecting the island's sovereignty, and belatedly provoking an irate reaction from Beijing. His critics in Taiwan fear he has gone too far. "He has put his own interests above those of national security," says Sisy Chen, a former staffer of Chen's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and now an independent legislator. "He's playing a very dangerous game."
Just how dangerous might be revealed this week during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's first official trip to the U.S. Wen's visit was meant to cement the warming ties between the two countries, with trade the only real point of contention. Now, laments a senior U.S. State Department official, "the Taiwan issue is going to be high on the agenda." Wen is likely to push U.S. President George W. Bush's Administration to make clear its opposition to Taiwan's independence. That's something Washington has so far refused to do, maintaining instead that it "does not support" independence.
Chen may be refraining from calling a referendum on sovereignty, but that's unlikely to appease China. Not lost on Beijing is the message implicit in Chen's Nov. 29 announcement to call a referendum: in the face of Chinese aggression, Taiwan—for the first time since it split with China in 1949—has the legal means by which to hold a nationwide vote on independence. "It's a powerful weapon for mustering emotional support from the international community should any threat be made by China to Taiwan's sovereignty," says a DPP official. "It's precisely the kind of tool China did not want us to have."
For Beijing, the Taiwan problem comes amid a growing clamor for more democracy in Hong Kong. Faced with these twin challenges, China is unlikely to back down. Indeed, last week Chinese legal experts warned that there could be no further moves toward democracy in Hong Kong without Beijing's approval—a hard-line approach that China would dearly love to apply to Taiwan, too. Unhappily for the Communists, Taiwan—with its own army, constitution and democratically elected government—has a proud history of remaining defiant in the face of threats from Beijing. China's reaction to how Taiwan runs its affairs, says the secretary-general of the President's office, Chiou I-jen, "is not our concern." Brave—but perhaps unrealistic—words.
- Andrew Perrin | Taipei
- Seeking to strengthen his re-election bid, President Chen hints at independence—enraging China and causing headaches for the U.S.