The Rising East
Lee Teng-hui, the former president of Taiwan who has a penchant for shaking things up, has done it again. He has allied himself with his successor, President Chen Shui-bian, even though Chen is of a competing political party, and has thus rearranged the island's political landscape and hardened its relations with mainland China. Alliance of rivals raises
stakes in Taiwan's move
away from ChinaFor Americans, a Lee-Chen alliance means that Taiwan has taken another step toward genuine, formal independence, which China has vowed to prevent with military force if necessary -- even at the risk of war with the United States. The chances for miscalculation in Beijing, Taipei and Washington have gone up another notch.
In mid-June, Lee appeared in public with Chen to appeal to his own political followers to lend a hand to the president, who has had a rough first year in office after narrowly winning election last year. Lee's Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, has opposed Chen on nearly every issue regardless of its merit.
Lee again appealed for help for Chen last week during a visit to his alma mater, Cornell University in New York. "Give him some time," he was reported as saying. "You can't ask an inexperienced child to run before he learns to walk.
What this adds up to is another move in a process known by the awkward term "Taiwanization." It means people like Lee and Chen, whose families have been in Taiwan for generations, have been taking control of the island from the Chinese who came from the mainland whence Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek fled in 1949.
Over the years, Taiwanese have gained one foothold after another. Economic reforms in the 1950s gave them entry into business. Then Taiwanese moved into the lower ranks of the government bureaucracy and the military services. They became professors, newspaper editors and TV producers.
Politically, some, like Lee, joined the ruling Kuomintang, or KMT. Others, like Chen, joined the Democratic People's Party or similar groups that advocated greater political freedom under the KMT -- and self-determination or independence for Taiwan. In the last decade, these Taiwanese have risen to the top of the political, economic, and social order.
On the issue of relations with the mainland, Lee and Chen have been running on parallel tracks for several years. Both have asserted that Taiwan is a sovereign nation that need not declare formal independence from mainland China, which demands that Taiwan submit to its rule.
Lee really riled up the Chinese two years ago by saying that China and Taiwan should have state-to-state relations, meaning that Beijing should recognize Taiwan as a separate entity. Chen has not been so explicit but his public statements from the day of his inauguration in May 2000, have made clear that he thinks the same thing.
Now they have joined forces and come out into the open. Neither has called for a declaration of independence because they know that would provoke a military response from Beijing. They also know that President Bush, who has said the United States would do "whatever it takes" to help to defend Taiwan, would promptly back off if Taiwan deliberately threw down the gauntlet to Beijing.
A real question, however, is what nationalistic forces have Lee and Chen loosed in Taiwan. Surely, their alliance will stimulate a greater sense of Taiwanese identity, something both have underscored while in office. With democracy having taken hold, at least in an embryonic form, what people will demand in the future is unclear.
As a well-informed Western diplomat said in Taipei several years ago: "The most important thing you must understand is that the Taiwanese now control their own destiny for the first time ever." Reflecting Taiwan's long domination by China and shorter occupation by Japan from 1895 to 1945, he repeated: "For the first time ever."
Therein lies an increasingly tricky issue for President Bush, who has said that any solution to the Taiwan question must have the assent of the Taiwanese. He and his advisers must navigate between a Taiwan that may become more insistent on recognition of its national identity and right to international space and a China that is already more demanding that the United States stay out of what it calls an internal affair.
The Lee-Chen alliance has narrowed the passage through those swirling waters and made a firm hand on the tiller all the more imperative.
Richard Halloran is editorial director of the Star-Bulletin.
He can be reached by e-mail at rhalloran@starbulletin.com