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Updated Monday, August 11, 2008 0:00 am TWN, By Joe Hung, Special to The China Post

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An ancient cure for Chinese woe - Part III

Lu De, a board member of Beijing’s semi-official China Council for Promoting Peaceful Reunification, hopes Beijing and Taipei will eventually form a confederation, which differs little from a Chinese commonwealth, to reflect the realities that now exist across the Taiwan Strait. He described his suggestion as a personal view to spark discussion and find the least costly solution for peaceful unification; but as a “princeling,” one of the privileged offspring of China’s political elite, he has close ties with Beijing’s leadership.

Laozi or Lao Tzu in his “Tao Te Ching” or “Daodejing” (“Treatise on the Tao and Its Power”) urges a great kingdom to humble itself before a small kingdom so that it may make that small kingdom “its prize.”

“And if a small kingdom humbles itself before a great kingdom, it shall win over that great kingdom,” he teaches. “Thus,” he concludes, “the one humbles itself in order to attain, the other attains because it is humble. If the great kingdom has no further desire than to bring men together and to nourish them, the small kingdom will have no further desire than to enter the service of the other. But in order that both may have their desire, the great one must learn humility.”

Beijing seems to have learned humility. It is up to Taiwan to humble itself as a small state, which it is, to win over its giant neighbor into a new Chinese commonwealth of nations.

Precis

China must know the days of empires are gone. It has been an empire since 221 B.C. What President Ronald Reagan called an evil empire of the Soviet Union crumbled with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The British Empire came to an end much earlier. In its place has evolved the British Commonwealth of Nations, which dropped the word “British” in 1949.

Taiwan has been a de facto independent, sovereign state since 1950 after Chiang Kai-shek’s defeat in the Chinese civil war. China considers Taiwan a renegade province, which has to be taken back to its fold, by force if necessary. They both want peaceful unification, however. So does the rest of the world, at least on the record.

Peaceful unification or reunification is not impossible, if the example of the British Commonwealth of Nations is followed. Just as Great Britain made Canada a dominion in 1867, the People’s Republic of China can give Taiwan dominion status now in preparation for a full-fledged Chinese commonwealth. The People’s Republic and the Republic of China in Taiwan may be united in the name of the Chinese nation. They will be equal in status and in no way subordinate to the other, albeit the People’s Republic may be the ex-officio head of the commonwealth. A dominion is recognized as a separate state entitled to have separate representation in the United Nations and other world organizations, to appoint its own ambassadors and to conclude its own treaties. At the same time, it is not considered to stand in the same relation to the People’s Republic as foreign countries.

The Chinese commonwealth, on the other hand, may help Beijing to solve the questions of Tibet, Xinjiang (Chinese Turkistan) and Hong Kong. They may join the Chinese commonwealth as dominions like Taiwan. The time may come in the not-too-distant future for Taiwan to become a dominion to keep the virtual status quo across the Taiwan Strait for the common benefit of the whole world community.

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