What consensus?
[quote]Lee denies existence of ‘1992 consensus’
Published: November 8, 2001
Source: The China Post
Former President Lee Teng-hui said Wednesday that the “1992 consensus” never existed and demanded that those backing it produce proof that an agreement was really reached between Taipei and Beijing.[/quote]
Which if you read the speech closely, you will see that he is not going to agree to anything of the sort. He agreed to negotiate on the basis of the 1992 talks, not the alleged consensus. The speech was very carefully crafted–remember Chen is a very smart lawyer despite his cultivated hayseed act.
LTH’s reaction today was interesting. He said that in Taiwan the president has to say things that he doesn’t really mean and that there things that the president can do but no talk about. Contrary to the impression given in some of the media today, Lee was actually pretty supportive.
Great thread by the way. This was the kind of thing I was hoping for when the board opened.
[quote=“wolf_reinhold”]What consensus?
[quote]Lee denies existence of ‘1992 consensus’
Published: November 8, 2001
Source: The China Post
Former President Lee Teng-hui said Wednesday that the “1992 consensus” never existed and demanded that those backing it produce proof that an agreement was really reached between Taipei and Beijing.[/quote][/quote]
Yes… sorry… I forgot that… but in the stock brokerage, we always talked about the agreement to let that sleeping dog lie as the “1992 consensus”.
According to Mr. Koo, it was unwritten… Like… pushing it aside for now, and get on with something of more immediate relevance.
taipeitimes.com/News/feat/ar … 2003206371
Quite a good write up by my old friend Dave Momphard about Taiwan’s thickle friend which was published in the 10/10 edition of the Taipei Times.
Cheers!
Speech won’t change anything. Cross-straight relations will remain the same, at least until the PRC has the political capital or military capability to retake it, or if the Taidu dogs ever work up the cajones to declare independence.
In regards to Lee Teng Hui, he isn’t so much of a Taiwanese “patriot” as he is a fifth-columnist Japanese rightist. His interests are more in severing Taiwan from mainland China than in anything else. Anything he says over the Taiwan issue is regarded among mainlanders as complete and wholesale crap.
I would certainly hope that the TSU can draw away more members from the DPP. It may mean a repeat of the 2000 election except in reverse where the greens are divided leaving the united blues the majority.
The Taipei Times is also a peice of crap. Most of you are already aware of this, but the recent few days have just reinforced it. I can’t believe they are putting up random unattributed editorials. Why does this garbage even classify as journalism. Even better, their editorial section is still a haven for quislings who still assert the illegitimacy of the Republic of China. I know some of you here feel the same, but I assure you that you are equally stupid. There have been 3 presidential elections already, where the vote was democratic and (argueably) fair. That in itself confers the legitimacy of the RoC. If people really regarded the RoC as illegitimate, then stop voting for it.
[quote=“cmdjing”]Speech won’t change anything. Cross-straight relations will remain the same, at least until the PRC has the political capital or military capability to retake it, or if the Taidu dogs ever work up the cajones to declare independence.
In regards to Lee Teng Hui, he isn’t so much of a Taiwanese “patriot” as he is a fifth-columnist Japanese rightist. His interests are more in severing Taiwan from mainland China than in anything else. Anything he says over the Taiwan issue is regarded among mainlanders as complete and wholesale crap.
I would certainly hope that the TSU can draw away more members from the DPP. It may mean a repeat of the 2000 election except in reverse where the greens are divided leaving the united blues the majority.
The Taipei Times is also a peice of crap. Most of you are already aware of this, but the recent few days have just reinforced it. I can’t believe they are putting up random unattributed editorials. Why does this garbage even classify as journalism. Even better, their editorial section is still a haven for quislings who still assert the illegitimacy of the Republic of China. I know some of you here feel the same, but I assure you that you are equally stupid. There have been 3 presidential elections already, where the vote was democratic and (argueably) fair. That in itself confers the legitimacy of the RoC. If people really regarded the RoC as illegitimate, then stop voting for it.[/quote]
I agree with your first sentence, if viewed narrowly in terms of the relationship to Beijing, but not when it comes the the possible impact of the Taiwanese election and Taiwan’s relationship to the US.
As regard to the rest? :loco:
You think Pres. Kerry will care about CSB 10/10 speech?
Surprise, surprise…AC globule taking the thread off-topic again!
I agree. His words are deliberately vague, but at most can be pinned down to mean that the two sides can approach negotiations in the same spirit in which they approached negotiations through the Koo-Wang talks in 1992 – i.e., agreeing to disagree on and put aside fundamental, insoluble political issues, and simply focusing on finding constructive solutions to practical problems. Whether or not there was ever a “1992 consensus”, and whatever it might be said to have been, are another matter altogether.
One intriguing point.
If you look back at what Beijing has been saying so far, you would assume that Beijing does not accept the KMT’s version of the 1992 consensus, which is “one China, with each side making its own interpretation.”
BUT, so far Beijing has not rejected it explicitly. It just keeps babbling about “one China” without the “each side making …” part. One gets a strong suspicion that Beijing is leaving some room for the blue camp to play its proxy in Taiwan for now, while also leaving some room for itself to turn the tables on the blues later, I mean if the blues don’t kiss up to them entirely.
But the blues oblige. They keep avoiding the question of whether or not Beijing accepts their version of the 1992 consensus. It’s a childish “Let’s pretend” game and it’s the most awful part of the blues’ behavior when it comes to their China policy (if we can call it a policy).
And yet they accuse Chen Shui-bian of duplicity. A good example of a Freudian projection. In a way Lee Teng-hui’s denial of the 1992 consensus should force the blues to stop playing that kidding game and give some explanation, but so far it hasn’t. I suspect they simply have no explanation.
Well… Yes… But.
That was the idea of the 1992 spirit, consensus, or whatever. Taiwan had their interpretation, and Beijing had theirs, but the matter was put aside.
Another reason for Beijing vagueness is also present. If the need arises, the Chinese side can change positions without the need to spell it out.
In this case there was no agreement to disagree. It was plain disagreement. And obviously Beijing has not and will not put the matter aside. If Taiwan does so, then Beijing has its way.
Sorry, but no.
They agreed not to discuss the matter or touch on it during the 1992 talks.
That’s an agreement of sorts in my my book.
Well, I should have said, whatever good faith that led to that consensus was destroyed long ago and it can no longer be used as a basis for future negotiations. You can blame either side for destroying it, but the fact is that they will have to build another consensus from scratch.
Probably true, but it’s worth trying - after all he promised to try to open discussions. One point about raising 1992 is that there clearly wasn’t any agreement before those discussions, and it’s debatable whether there was afterwards, but the two sides still managed to sit down and talk … so what’s stopping discussions now?
I disagree completely about the KMT: what you said is true of KMT politicians, but not of KMT voters. I suspect there are huge numbers of people who voted KMT who think the KMT leaders are corrupt idiots - but think the DPP are about to lead them into a disastrous war. Those are precisely the people that Chen has to convince if he wants to see a pan-Green majority in the legislature. Hence this speech and other recent comments (‘no war during my presidency’) are aimed at moderate KMT voters.
If they agree to put the matter aside this time too, then there should be a basis for talks. They could then get direct links etc. sorted, and at least learn to communicate.
The amount of good faith in 1992 was not stunningly great, btw.
China did posture as much as they do now, but well… they bombed Jinmen until not too long before the talks were held - not the most apt godwill building gesture imaginable.
Also, it would appear that China has turned Chen’s offer down, wanting him to spell out his commitment to the “one China principle”. Therefore, the impact of his speech on cross strait relations is exactly zero.
China is clearly holding out for more - after all, they have little to loose by waiting.
An excellent analysis of Chen’s speech in today’s Asian Wall Street Journal:
There are no illusions, either here or in Beijing, about the poor state of cross-Strait relations. So when Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian delivered a National Day speech Sunday that was widely misread by the international media as being “conciliatory,” the real story was all about appearances – appearing presidential and appearing to offer an olive branch.
Mr. Chen, who won a razor-thin majority in Taiwan’s March presidential elections, has every reason to offer such appearances right now. Not only is he still smarting from opposition claims that his re-election in March’s presidential polls should be annulled due to a suspicious assassination attempt on the eve of voting; his China-bashing tactics led even friends in the Bush administration to criticize him. From Washington to Beijing, many have come to see Mr. Chen as a populist rabble rouser who will willingly sacrifice the fragile balance of power in the Taiwan Strait if it serves his domestic political interests to do so.
Whether Mr. Chen represents only political expediency or is engaged in writing a far grander historical narrative, as he claims, is fiercely contested. But there is little dispute that Mr. Chen is part of forces that are irrevocably changing Taiwan’s political, cultural and social landscape. Having beaten what was heralded as an invincible ticket of Kuomintang Chairman Lien Chan and People First Party Chairman James Soong in the presidential polls, Mr. Chen’s coalition of the pro-Taiwan Democratic Progressive Party and the radically pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union now looks set to win the December legislative elections. That will complete the revolution that began when Mr. Chen was first elected president in 2000, ending more than half a century of Kuomintang one-party rule in Taiwan. And, when that revolution is complete, as far as those who have inherited the island are concerned, the fiction of a Taiwan destined to be politically subsumed under a greater China will be at an end.
The key players in this drama – both the Taiwanese and the Chinese – know exactly what has come to pass, even if the outside world clings to the idea that Taiwan and China still have some common ground for negotiation. Little over a week ago, Kuomintang elder Wang Tso-jung told local television media bluntly, “The Kuomintang has lost power and the Republic of China exists in name only.” That’s important because, although Taiwan has existed as a separate entity for the past half century, its official description of itself as the Republic of China indicated a belief in one China, and an interest in eventual unification with mainland China. Beijing knows that, once that title is gone, so too is any prospect of such unification.
In this light the description of Sunday’s speech as “conciliatory” deserves closer scrutiny than it has received so far. That description hinges on Mr. Chen’s call for arms control across the Taiwan Strait, and his suggestion that Beijing’s talks with Taiwanese representatives in Hong Kong in 1992 – the first time high-level representatives from both sides have ever sat down together for discussions – form the basis for a resumption of dialogue. Both initiatives are, from China’s perspective, disingenuous. Mr. Chen has made much political capital out of China’s bellicose military posturing, first insisting that Taiwan had the right to hold a so-called “defensive referendum” and then calling one in tandem with the March elections, in a thinly veiled warning to China that Taiwan could vote for self-determination if it chose. His reference to the 1992 Hong Kong talks was quickly seized on by the international media as a conciliatory reference to what is called the “1992 consensus.” That’s the consensus which preceded the 1992 talks, when both sides agreed in principle on the existence of “one China,” while agreeing to disagree on precisely what that concept meant.
No doubt Mr. Chen would like the world to believe that this was intended as a conciliatory gesture, if only to defuse some of his critics in Washington. But the truth is that he was careful only to refer to the 1992 talks, and not the consensus that China insists preceded them. That “1992 consensus,” of “one China subject to different interpretations,” has no currency in today’s Taiwan, where even the idea of “one China” has become politically unsound. Instead Mr. Chen’s real message was that any negotiations would have to be with his government, a government that proclaims a Taiwanese – rather than Chinese – identity.
Sunday’s National Day celebrations were the most Taiwanese in history. From the gold-winning members of the island’s Olympic taekwondo team singing the national anthem to use of the term “Republic of China (Taiwan)” – which represents a subtle, but crucial, shift away from the previous use of the term “Republic of China” – the public was reminded in countless details that this National Day was Taiwan’s and not the Republic of China’s. For the most part, the world failed to notice, and even the most powerful symbol of what has come to pass – the cancellation of what the New York Times called “rows of soldiers shouting martial slogans about retaking the mainland” – was misinterpreted by some Western analysts as an olive branch to China. In fact, it was the opposite because dreams about retaking the mainland – however ludicrous they may sound – are part of the “one China” ideology that Mr. Chen’s government is seeking to abandon.
While the world is looking elsewhere, a quiet revolution is underway in Taiwan and will be cemented if, as expected, Mr. Chen’s government wins a majority in December’s legislative elections. In that sense Mr. Chen’s Sunday oration was a victory speech, and his message to China was unambiguous: if war across the Strait is to be avoided, the will of 23 million Taiwanese have to play a part in the negotiations.
It’s not a message Beijing wants to hear, as shown by the swift rejection of Sunday’s speech by China’s state-run media. Nor is it a message that the world has heard as yet. But the momentum behind Mr. Chen and his pro-independence supporters is now so strong that, if conflict across the Strait is to be avoided, both China and the world will eventually have no choice but to listen.
Mr. Taylor is editor-in-chief of English programming at Formosa Television in Taipei.
A series of articles covering China’s strong negative reaction to the Chen speech today. A few points.
I’ve been thinking a bit more about the Taiwan is the ROC and Taiwan is the ROC. It seems to me that this is a kind of corollary to the ‘two countries on the two sides of the straits’. That formulation did not specify which side the ROC belonged to. Now he has said that ROC/Taiwan is on this side and the PRC is on the other side. In other words, he has repudiated the constitutionally mandated fiction that the territory of the ROC includes China and Mongolia. China has said that they would not tolerate any changes to the ROC’s territorial scope–it looks like Chen has tested another one of China’s lines in the sand.
But this isn’t new is it? It’s exactly what he’s been saying for a while now. For example this interview with the BBC in March:
You can’t really get much blunter than that. The only ‘line in the sand’ which hasn’t already been crossed is to actually change the constitution to reflect this (which he has ‘proposed’ not to do).
You’re probably right. But the current formulation has a bit more rhetorical flair to it. Also, saying at the ROC’s National Day is probably also a bit more symbolically forceful than saying it to the foreign media.