Taiwanese Question Independence Push

January 20, 2008

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 1:08 p.m. ET

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Disgruntled voters gave the thumbs-down to President Chen Shui-bian’s vision of an independent Taiwan this month, propelling the opposition Nationalist Party to a landslide victory in legislative elections.

People like 32-year-old Daphne Hwang are a big part of the reason.

Hwang is one of many Taiwanese who feel that Chen is pushing too hard, too fast, for formal and permanent separation from China — a move Beijing says would compel it to attack. The island of Taiwan already enjoys de facto independence, and most of its 23 million people don’t want to antagonize their militarily powerful neighbor.

Moreover, with the local economy struggling, Taiwanese such as Hwang are cashing in on the mainland’s economic boom, moving away to China to try to further their careers.

”Working (on the mainland) allows me to understand the greater China market and compete more successfully,” said Hwang, a marketing specialist for an American technology company in Shanghai. ”It’s better than staying in Taiwan.”

Chen’s contentious independence push, which includes restricting Taiwanese investment in China, will be put to the test in a March 22 presidential election to select his successor. A victory for Nationalist candidate Ma Ying-jeou, who favors closer economic ties with China, would almost certainly put Chen’s independence dream on ice for years to come.

That would delight not only China, but also the United States, which worries about the Chinese threat of attack.

Ma enjoys a big lead in opinion polls over Frank Hsieh, the candidate of Chen’s Democratic Progressive Party. The Nationalists’ big win on Jan. 12, when they took 81 of the 113 seats in the legislature, gave him a further boost, according to polls.

Nearly 60 years after Taiwan split from China, most Taiwanese favor a continuation of the ambivalent status quo, in which Taiwan operates independently but holds out the possibility of unification with China sometime in the future. In government surveys over the past six years, the status quo option consistently outpolls the independence-now option by at least a 5-1 margin.

The Democratic Progressive Party’s defeat resulted partly from an electoral system reform, and from disgust with corruption in Chen’s inner circle. But the key element, analysts say, was the Nationalists’ success in connecting Chen’s pro-independence push with Taiwan’s economic woes.

A December survey by Taipei-based CommonWealth Magazine put Taiwan’s economic dissatisfaction level at 72 percent. The telephone survey of 1,090 people gave a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Taiwan’s economy is growing at about half the rate of China’s, which has more than tripled in size since Chen took office. The economic dissatisfaction fed directly into Hwang’s decision to move to Shanghai in 2005.

”There are fewer and fewer good positions in Taiwan,” she said. ”The Taiwanese market is just too limited for me.”

The talent drain, numbering tens of thousands of Taiwanese, is a big challenge to Chen. He fears the communist government could leverage Taiwan’s estimated $100 billion in mainland investments, and China’s growing trade surplus with Taiwan, to dictate terms in any future confrontation.

Chen has tried to slow the trend by imposing restrictions on investment in China and encouraging Taiwanese to seek business in Vietnam, India and elsewhere.

He has also tried to promote a Taiwanese identity with its own traditions and history.

References to Taiwan as part of China have been toned down in school curricula, and ”China” has been removed from a slew of government company names.

All that represents a fundamental departure from previous government policy — first enunciated in the days after Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek arrived on the island in 1949 — that Taiwan and China are a single country, destined for eventual unification.

Until martial law was lifted in 1987 and Taiwan began embracing democracy, even talking about independence could mean a prison sentence.

In a December interview with The Associated Press, Chen defended his policies, pointing to polls showing that about two-thirds of the island’s people identify themselves first as Taiwanese, rather than Chinese — twice as many as when he first came to power in 2000.

But Yeh Yuan-chih, a 33-year-old manager at a Taipei electronics company, is among those who see no reason to push independence. Most Taiwanese are proud of China’s 5,000 year history, he said. They write in the same language, celebrate the same holidays, and ”There is no need to distinguish Taiwan and China.”

But Pan Yu-hsin, a 29-year-old graduate student from Taipei, said Chen’s campaign reinforces Taiwan’s freedoms.

”I can criticize Taiwanese leaders now without any problem. But if we unite with China, what will happen if I criticize officials then?” he asked. ”I do not want to be arrested for speaking my mind.”

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Associated Press Writer Debby Wu contributed to this report.