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TOKYO -- The realization has already set in across Asia that the
Taiwan Presidential election campaign is more fun than its counterpart
in the United States.
Further, presidential candidates Lien Chan (KMT, Kuomintang),
James Soong
(Independent), and Chen Shui-bian (DPP, Democratic Progressive
Party), will be carrying the message of democracy to a large
constituency--China's 1.2 billion people who don't have a vote--that
is barely interested in whether George Bush beats Al Gore.
In the U.S., the system is set no matter who wins. Think of the 1.2
billion as "election observers."
Are they seeing in Taiwan the kind of politics that they might be
experiencing 10 or 20 years later?
In a relatively short time, Taiwan has come to the point where it
doesn't really matter which candidate wins.
Any of the three candidates, backed by a plurality of support, can do a
credible job.
That's democracy, which will be the big winner in the March 18 election.
Sure Taiwan's democracy has some rough edges, but mainly it works.
Informal street theater, color and enthusiasm are part of the fun of
elections in Taiwan.
So are instances like the e-mail I received last week from a man who
describes himself as "Kaohsiung's Leading Phrenologist."
He sent me the name of the winner of the coming election, based on the
shape of each candidate's head. I cannot reveal the name of the winner as
I might be accused of unduly influencing the election outcome. So I will
wait and tell you in a future column, after seeing if the man is right or
wrong.
By the way, you can discount the frenzy about Beijing launching an
allout attack on Taiwan; it won't happen. Careful reading of the statements
show that China intends to use just enough bluster to get Taiwan to the
table again.
On February 21, the People's Republic of China State Council and
Taiwan Affairs
Office released "The One China Principle and the Taiwan Issue," a
lengthy expositon of Beijing's views.
By way of background, there is the Chinese fondness for expressing
conflicts through numerology. Thus we have from Beijing one China, two
systems, and three nos (no two Chinas, no one China-one
Taiwan, no independent Taiwan). From Taipei comes one
country, two states or political entities negotiating on one
equal basis. The U.S. offers three communiques and one act
(the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979). Beijing has now added
to this list the "three ifs," conditions that would trigger
PRC military action. These are worth analyzing to see
whether they represent something new rather than just
something provocative.
Through the verbosity, Beijing's new condition is a careful aim at
"stalling." The authors of the
White Paper use "three ifs," a paragraph that lists the triggers for war: if
Taiwan is separated from China "in any name" (presumably a
declaration of independence); if Taiwan is invaded or
occupied by foreign countries; "or if the Taiwan authorities
refuse, sine die, the peaceful settlement of cross-strait
reunification through negotiations." In those
eventualities, China "will be forced to adopt all drastic
measures possible, including the use of force to safeguard
China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and fulfill
the great cause of reunification."
Strangely enough, the key phrase is written neither in Chinese or
English, but Latin. "Sine die" means "without a date." This shows
Beijing's seriousness. and insistence that negotiations over
unification have a deadline, which sounded perilously close
to an ultimatum. But just as Washington was on the verge of going
"ballistic," in a manner of speaking, a senior Chinese diplomat hastened
to explain that the Chinese word, translated as "sine die,"
means "indefinitely," not "without a date." The difference?
Beijing was merely insisting that negotiations should
commence and could not be put off indefinitely, not that a
date certain for unification had to be fixed at the start of talks.
Edward Neilan (eneilan@crisscross.com) is a veteran journalist, based in Tokyo, who covers East Asia and writes weekly for World Tribune.com.