Can Tsai Ing-wen Turn Back the Clock?

A Commentary

Can Tsai Ing-wen Turn Back the Clock?

Source: United Daily News
May 2, 2010

The core concept of the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) political narrative is “turn back the clock!”

The DPP is longing to turn the clock back to the 2/28 Incident of 1947, leaving Taiwan eternally soaked in bloody communal clashes. Furthermore, the DPP exerts all its strength to try to turn the clock back to “Taiwan’s undetermined status,” as if every strenuous effort made by the Republic of China government for Taiwan over the past sixty years could be erased once at all. The DPP also does its utmost to turn the clock back to the White Terror period. It seems that the DPP has been frozen in the White Terror period all these decades!  

Two years ago, Tsai Ing-wen vowed to lead the DPP toward “a new era without Chen Shui-bian.” However, right after losing an ECFA debate with President Ma, Tsai started to play the same trick by attempting to “turn the clock back.” She said that if Taiwan signed an ECFA with (Mainland) China, it would allow (Mainland) China to become the de facto leading power in East Asia with the United States being weakened and marginalized. Following this argument, doesn’t that mean that Tsai wants to set the clock back to the era when Taiwan remained a pawn in the US anti-Communist strategy in East Asia?

Unfortunately, immediately after Tsai warned of danger of the US “being marginalized” as a result of a cross-Strait ECFA at an international press conference, the Taipei Office of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) announced that the US would be glad to see Taiwan conclude an ECFA with (Mainland) China. It was thus clear that when Chairwoman Tsai attempted to pull the US back into the era of its containment policy, the US had already abandoned its “Cold-War thinking.” With such a backlash from the US, one may want to ask Tsai if she “felt truly frustrated.”

Taiwan used to adopt a cross-Strait strategy of “allying itself with the US against (Mainland) China,” which was obviously a product of the Cold War era. However, if Tsai Ing-wen still decides to turn her back on today’s globalized world and the existence of G2, and insists on pursuing cross-Strait strategies where the “rise of China” should be contained, East Asia should never become “China-centered,” and the US should avoid “being marginalized” by China, then one may ask if there really is any difference between her rhetoric and Chen Shui-bian’s advocacy of ceding Taiwan to the US [as demonstrated in his recent lawsuit filed with a US court asking for reinstatement of the US military government in Taiwan of August 1945] and the laughingstock of “Club 51”, a tiny organization in Taiwan promoting Taiwan to become the United States’ 51st state.

Now the issue that the people of Taiwan are mostly concerned about is how to ensure that Taiwan is not marginalized, while Tsai Ing-wen is concerned about how to ensure that the US is not marginalized in East Aisa. The US has already answered her concerns. “Don’t worry, Chairwoman Tsai. The US is glad to see both sides across that Strait sign an ECFA!”  

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