One China

The political-saber rattling over China’s adoption of the Anti-Secession Law in 2005 is much ado about nothing. The law changed nothing. It merely re-affirmed China’s long-standing policy and the Taiwan constitution. The new legislation says that its purpose is to oppose and check “Taiwan’s secession from China.” It also says that “both the mainland and Taiwan belong to one China”, a phrase first used by Taiwan’s own Kuomintang government and repeated by both governments over the years. This was a phrase I heard uttered on numerous occasions by Taiwan government officials on my visits to Taiwan with U.S. trade delegations led by U.S. elected officials.

China’s President Hu Jintao, in his speeches supporting the adoption of the law, pointed out that “the existing regulations and documents in Taiwan” also support a “one China” principle. For example, even the additional articles in the Taiwan constitution adopted in 1991 assume that Taiwan will eventually be reunited with China. They also say that the territory of the Republic of China includes both the mainland and Taiwan. Ironically, Taiwan’s own laws do not allow secession. The National Security Law promulgated in 1987, says the public “must not violate the constitution, advocate communism or the division of the national territory”.

With more than $41 billion invested in China between 1993 and 2004 by the more than one million Taiwanese doing business there, and with $83 billion in annual China-Taiwan trade, it should not have been a surprise when Taiwanese tycoons and senior advisors to Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian, Mr. Shi Wen-long and Stan Shih, announced their public support of China’s Anti-Secession Law as Mr. Chen joined thousands to march and denounce the law. Yet the nation and its leaders were shocked.

Mr. Shi said: “We should all feel more relieved.” He said Taiwan could not do without the mainland and any independence movement would only lead to war. Mr. Shi went further. He said: “Taiwan cannot develop its economy without the mainland”. Both resigned as advisors to President Chen. If Abraham Lincoln could go to war in 1861 to prevent secession why can’t China?

The Anti-Secession Law is a catalyst for diplomacy and peace. This was confirmed two days after President Chen led protestors to denounce the law, when the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party sent a delegation to visit the memorial for martyrs of the failed 1911 uprising in the Huanghua Gang Commemoration Park, Guangzhou, China. The uprising was led by KMT founder Sun Yat-sen, the father of modern China. The 34-strong member delegation – the first to visit the mainland since the nationalists fled Taiwan in 1949 – was a giant first step towards peaceful reunification. The invitation extended by China to “all parties in Taiwan” to come to China for talks on reunification was the second step. The acceptance of the invitation by KMT chairman Lien Chan was a home run. James Soong Chu-yu, the chairman of the People First Party – Taiwan’s other opposition party – is likely to also visit the mainland. “Political development promoted by economic ties” has always been the long-term, de facto strategy for Beijing to assimilate Taiwan.

What is constantly overlooked is that China’s Communist Party and Taiwan’s KMT were once allies in the struggle to build a united China. In 1923, Sun Yat-sen, the KMT’s founding president, embraced the then much smaller communist party. Mikhail Borodin, Moscow’s emissary to China advised both parties on organizational and propaganda matters which accounts for the striking similarity in their structure. And in the same year Chiang Kai-shek, America’s darling who was to assume the mantle of KMT leadership, was shipped off to Moscow for training.