Easy referenda
Being that Taiwan’s political status is so volatile on the island and off and how the polarization of national identities has obscured real socioeconomic issues, can’t we just have easy referenda to solidify that we agree to disagree? Here are two such low-hanging fruit that can be easily picked.
Issue: The Republic of China is the current legal government of Taiwan.
[Yes] [No]
Why is this even being asked? Because even though the Cairo Declaration stated that the Allies intended to hand Taiwan to the Republic of China at the end of World War II, the Chinese Civil War prevented the ROC from being present at the Treaty of San Francisco where Japan renounced all rights to Taiwan. As a result, some Taiwanese activists say this lapse in the ROC’s acceptance nullifies the ROC government’s jurisdiction over Taiwan.
As it is, not many people dispute that the ROC is the government of Taiwan, as the ROC has been co-opted by the mostly native-Taiwanese Democratic Progressives and Taiwan Solidarity Union. These parties have elected officials and sent them to participate in the ROC government; the DPP has even had a member become ROC president! These facts alone should testify to the ROC’s legitimacy to Taiwan, but to make it official, why not have the referendum? We know how the results will turn out, and it will solidify the ROC’s legitimacy.
Issue: Taiwan shall maintain the status quo for the next 20 years, status quo being defined as not changing the legal name of the country to move towards either unification or independence. At the end of 20 years, the issue will be reopened for debate.
[Yes] [No]
This is a slightly different take of Sun Bin’s Pinning Taiwan. While Sun Bin’s referendum plan is a vote on unification vs. independence that is deliberately set up to lapse into status quo, this setup is pretty straightforward. Agree to keep the status quo or keep debating in polarizing nationalistic circles as we do now. Considering the high support for maintaining the status quo, this again, should be another easy pass. According to the linked poll, “keep status quo indefinitely” and “keep status quo, decide later” together are already at 63.5%. Throw in “status quo now, unification later,” the figure goes up to 74.0%, and “status quo, independence later” bumps up the figure again to 91.1%
Granted, if such a vote were to take place, the vote totals for “yes” may not be a whopping 91%, but it could easily pass 50% or even 75%.
Solidifying the status quo would also be another means of getting Beijing to remove the missiles currently pointed at Taiwan. If Taiwan has no intention to declare independence for 20 years, then the missiles have no need to be there. Don’t be fooled by the warmongers who say that Beijing will launch a preemptive strike for unification. Beijing is not stupid; without Taiwan declaring independence, the Communists will not sacrifice their revenue-generating coastal cities whose wealth keeps the Communists in power. Stop the flow of money into China (because all the ports are destroyed and foreign companies see both sides of the strait as too unstable to outsource to) and the Communists lose their legitimacy. A Pyrrhic victory for the CCP would be no victory at all.
The added bonus of the 20-year status quo freeze period co-existing with cross-strait disarmament is that it provides a stable framework (at least, more stable than currently) for both sides of the strait to repair official relations, facilitate greater cultural exchanges, and bring about better mutual understanding.
The Pan-Blue camp needs to stop being afraid of referenda and use them for their political ends, as the Pan-Green camp has done. Beijing and Washington would have no reason to be concerned because 1) Beijing has learned that interfering only backfires and 2) they’d know what the results would be anyway — a solidification of the status quo. We already know what the referenda results will be, so isn’t that all the more reason to do it?
