Denial is Best

23 August 2004



Singapore Wouldn’t Back Taiwan Independence

Lee Hsien Loong, the new prime minister of Singapore, said over the week-end that his nation would not back Taiwan if the Taipei government opted to declare itself independent from the People’s Republic of China. Bearing in mind that Singapore’s army trains on occasion in Taiwan, this is a fairly good assessment of the way the wind is blowing on Taiwanese independence. When a situation is de facto what one wants, there is little point in going to war to win it de jure. Yet that is precisely what the pro-independence forces in Taiwan would do.

Singapore, like the United States and other nations that do business on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, has a One China policy. This is a legalistic mumbo jumbo that maintains there is only One China, and that Taiwan (the island of Formosa if one prefers) is an integral part of that One China. When Chairman Mao and the Communists won the Chinese Civil War following World War II, Chang Kai Shek and this Kuomintang Party of nationalists fled to the island and set up their operations. The government in Beijing declared that Taiwan was a rebel province, but still very much a part of China. At the same time, the generalissimo and his people said that they were the true government of China and were on Taiwan only until they could re-establish their seat of government in Beijing. Thus, both sides could claim to follow a One China policy while meaning diametrically opposed things when they invoked that language.

Unfortunately, there are those on the island of Taiwan who have never lived as part of China for real, and they want to declare their independence. The People’s Republic has said that it will fight (that is invade and destroy) if Taipei declares itself independent. The Kuomintang Party resists this because it would make a return to Beijing impossible (not that it is possible now, but the pretense would vanish).

Mr. Lee’s statement should remind those in Taiwan that the entire world has a vested interest in Chinese economic growth, Taiwanese economic operations and in preventing the general war in east Asia that would certainly follow a Chinese attack on its rebel province. A similar statement from the US would be useful, but it is unlikely to happen during an election campaign.

Taiwan is in reality a separate nation, with its own currency, stock market, and social programs. It has not been a genuine part of China for fifty years. Peace will reign so long as no one mentions the 800-gorilla at the table – Taiwan is independent.


© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


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