Chen Shui-bian's Explanation Looks Pale

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, August 08, 2002

Chen Shui-bian's Explanation Looks Pale

Amidst the overwhelming inquiries of and condemnation upon his speech that "each side (across the Taiwan Straits) is a country", Taiwan political leader Chen Shui-bian is attempting to explain something. But if Chen's remarks of "each side is a country" have made all Chinese on the two sides of the Taiwan Straits feel raged, then his new explanation simply sounds ridiculous.

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Amidst the overwhelming inquiries of and condemnation upon his speech that "each side (across the Taiwan Straits) is a country", Taiwan political leader Chen Shui-bian is wielding a new trick.

After excusing that his comments might be oversimplified and might have caused misunderstanding, Chen said he is giving a "statement of sovereignty and parity", and that Taiwan is a sovereign country called the Republic of China.

If Chen's remarks of "each side is a country" have made all Chinese on the two sides of the Taiwan Straits feel raged, then his new explanation simply sounds ridiculous.

In the common sense, a sovereign country has to satisfy at least the following conditions: Being recognized by other sovereign countries; being allowed into international institutions composed of sovereign nations; and having the right and capacity to establish with other sovereignties formal treaties or similar legal documents.

Unfortunately, of the three Taiwan conforms to none.

In Chinese history, there is a country named the Republic of China which was founded in 1912 and was reigned by the Kuomintang under the leadership first of Sun Yat-sen and then Chiang Kai-shek. But this regime had already passed into history when Mao Zedong and his communist forces overturned Chiang's reign and drove him to the small island Taiwan.

Since then, the People's Republic of China has taken over the Republic of China, because the latter's corrupt regime cannot offer Chinese a true national liberation.

It's in this sense that we say there is only one China, whose sole legitimate central government is that of the People's Republic of China.

As for the Republic of China, it is simply a vestige of the civil war 53 years ago.

The reason why the central government has been leaving it there and advocated a peaceful reunification is mainly out of a consideration of the utmost interests of all Chinese across the Straits.

Chen should be cautious enough not to translate the central government's restraint and pursuit of a peaceful resolution of Taiwan issue as the military impotency and weakness of mind.

In today's world, only those who hold a prejudice against China and who are reluctant to see China's rise hope to watch a war among Chinese.

They have invented first the phantom of "China Threat" and then the alarm of "China collapse".

Time and again, Chen has said he loves Taiwan, maintaining that he wants Taiwan's dignity and safeguards the Taiwan people's interests.

But if he blindly heads for an independence and forces the central government to take a military take-back of Taiwan, how can he convince the 23 million Taiwanese of his loyalty in speaking for them?

Stop, Chen. Don't be the lackey of China-haters any more.

By PD Online staff Allan Tsui

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