Resolution of ethnic conflict seen as vital to Taiwan's security

The conference on Taiwan consciousness and national security, which was organized by the Cross-strait Interflow Prospect Foundation and included two notable American experts in Taiwan politics, also found it was important President Chen Shui-bian continue his rule in the note of ethnic and cross-strait harmony he used in his inaugural speech.

Professor Lin Wen-cheng, of the Institute of China Studies at National Sun Yat-sen University called the island’s political and ethnic divide possibly the biggest danger to Taiwan’s stability and security.

“Democracy has been the most powerful weapon to win international support for Taiwan and to fend off pressure from Beijing for unification.... however, Taiwan’s democracy has a negative side... Taiwan’s society was torn in two parts due to the election disputes ... if the rupture continues to be enlarged, it will become the biggest danger to Taiwan’s stability and security,” he said in a conference paper.

Former premier and KMT member Vincent Siew said an emerging Taiwan identity was growing, pointing to a change in the KMT’s platform in the recent presidential election. The opposition KMT was no longer advocating reunification with the mainland and only differed from the Democratic Progressive Party as it opposed independence, he said.

Siew said the mass protests against the government immediately after the presidential election were so large because, although Taiwan consciousness was becoming mainstream,

many people still identified with China, making them feel unsettled and anxious.

“These clashes and lack of trust could influence national unity and security,” he said.

Berkeley Professor Thomas Gold, an expert in Taiwan and Chinese politics, who said he was the first exchange student organized by the U.S. and Chinese government to study in Shanghai in 1979, said the rise in Taiwan identity was closely linked to Taiwan’s process of democratization.

“The struggle can be positive or can be negative,” Gold said.

Gold said it was positive when President Lee Teng-hui supported Ma Ying-jeou, now Taipei mayor and KMT deputy chairman, at a 1998 rally and said he was a “new Taiwanese”.

But he said mainlanders complained to him after the presidential election that President Chen was fanning up ethnic hatred.

“I worry that the rhetoric gets out of hand and is going to result in dangerous consequences,” he said of the year-end Legislative elections.

“In President Chen’s inauguration speech, he made a very inclusive statement about New Taiwanese, he went back to Lee Teng-hui’s position from 1998,” Gold said.

“I think he really has to build on that and find constructive ways to create this idea that we are all Taiwanese and that we all shares a similar fate.The bad blood is so deep among the mainland community.

“This place is too small and Taiwan’s international position is too fragile and tenuous for Taiwan society to be split along these kind of lines.”

Gold said Taiwan had to forget past historical conflicts.

“I would like to see a more public acknowledgement and substantive activities to build a sense of community.”

Shelley Rigger, Brown Associate Professor of Political Science, Davidson College, was one voice at the conference that partially dissented from the mainstream, saying she wondered if the social divide even existed and it was not just a superficial appearance whipped up by politicians.

“I have trouble understanding how there could be this deeply polarized society where half the people hate the other half if everyone agrees on the goal but disagrees on how to get there,” Rigger said.

“I think this hypothesis is a reasonable one to explore, that in fact the sound and fury surrounding the election is about the election and the fundamental trends of society are much more centralized,” she said.

On the topic of Taiwan’s relations with China, both Gold and Rigger said it was significant that China’s fiercely-worded warning for President Chen days before his election did not tout the “One Country Two Systems” model as a means for the island to reunify with its giant rival.

Rigger said that groups from all over the world — including the U.S. and Taiwan — had been advising China to drop it.

“That’s very exciting, that they could understand that. — it’s an inheritance from great man, Deng Xiaoping himself. It is very hard to give that up,” she said.

Rigger said U.S. support was Taiwan was firm. She said some policy makers in the U.S. had been frustrated by what appeared to be a pro-independence note in President Chen’s election campaign rhetoric, but he had made good in his inaugural speech.

“The inaugural speech really gave the U.S. a lot of things that the Bush administration wanted, the rub is will he follow through. Will these things turn out to be genuine policy changes,” she said.

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