Deng’s proposal to Taiwan in 1982

Then, on Feb. 22, 1984, Deng declared that his “one country, two systems” approach, the one to be applied to Hong Kong after 1997, would also be applicable to Taiwan. Margaret Thatcher, British prime minister at the time, signed an agreement in Beijing in 1984 to return Hong Kong, ceded in perpetuity under the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, would be returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. In exchange, China promised no change for 50 years in all socioeconomic systems in the British crown colony to be returned. It would be made a special administrative region of China with a “basic law,” a downgraded equivalent of the constitution. The way Hong Kong would be treated after 1997 is known as Deng’s “one country (China), two systems (China’s communist system coexisting with a capitalist system in Hong Kong)” principle. Beijing also promised to treat Taiwan “better” than Hong Kong, if it agreed to be reunified.

Less than three years later, in October 1987, Beijing called on Taipei to start negotiations for reunification under the four cardinal principles of the “social path,” “Communist Party leadership,” a “proletarian dictatorship,” and “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist thought.” Mao Zedong died in 1976, but his dicta were adhered to by the Chinese Communists along with those of Karl Marx and Nikolai Lenin, the father of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics whose real name is Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov. China wanted a reunified Taiwan to adhere to these dicta, adopt “socialism (which is the name of the communism China practices),” accept the supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party, and follow “the dictatorship of the great mass of people.” In other words, Taiwan would remain a dwarfed version of Communist China. No dialogue between Taipei and Beijing under the four terms was possible.

Chiang Ching-kuo’s response to Beijing’s peace overtures was a counteroffer to reunify China under Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People. Dr. Sun, considered father of the Chinese republic, was the founder of the Kuomintang, which toppled the Manchu empire in the Chinese Revolution of 1911. The three principles are Chinese nationalism, democracy, and promotion of the people’s livelihood. As a result, a Great Alliance for Chinese Unification under the Three Principles of the People was founded with Mah Soo-lay as its chairman. Better known by its abbreviated name of the Chinese Reunification Alliance, Mah’s is a private, non-profit organization, subsidized by the government. It advocates unification of a democratic China with an equitable distribution of wealth among the Chinese people. It still exists, but does not function.

Even without Ye Jiangying’s exhortation, Chiang Ching-kuo would never think of giving up the “one-China” policy of his father’s, although he had tacitly discarded the latter’s unrealistic “sacred mission” to recover the mainland of China. But the son never uttered the father’s anti-communist and anti-Russia mantra, the purpose being not to stroke China the wrong way to destabilize cross-strait relations. Peace across the strait was needed for Chiang Ching-kuo to modernize Taiwan. Taipei did not declare a “two-China” policy, arguing instead for temporary separation of Taiwan and China until the time would come for reunification.

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