Understanding Taiwan: Bridging the Perception Gap

Lee Teng-hui

From Foreign Affairs, November/December 1999

Article preview: first 500 of 2,398 words total.

Summary:  China's saber-rattling over its "renegade province" ignores Taiwan's decades of democracy. If Beijing wants one China, it should conciliate, not intimidate.

Lee Teng-hui is President of the Republic of China.

The sustained economic growth, unprecedented prosperity, and full democracy recently achieved by the Republic of China has one drawback: the speed of Taiwan's progress has outstripped prevailing perceptions of what Taiwan is and how it should fit into the global order. To illustrate this, one need look no further than the attainment of full democracy on Taiwan, and the subsequent emergence of a new sense of national identity impelled by the force of the ballot box.

To convey a sense of the popular will on Taiwan today, I now refer to my fellow citizens as "New Taiwanese," meaning those who are willing to fight for the prosperity and survival of their country, regardless of when they or their forebears arrived on Taiwan and regardless of their provincial heritage or native language. This fresh national identity based on the New Taiwanese consciousness, holding that Taiwan's interests should be foremost and that the people of Taiwan all share a common destiny, has gradually harmonized the populace and provided a stable middle ground for Taiwan's political development.

This new sense of identity manifests itself in every aspect of Taiwanese social and political life, including the role that the voters of Taiwan feel is appropriate for their democracy in the world. In turn, the way that its democratic achievements are perceived elsewhere in the region -- particularly across the Taiwan Strait in Beijing -- directly affects Taiwan's security and future development in ways never anticipated by the international community. If peace and stability are to be maintained in the Taiwan Strait area, the perceptions underpinning policies involving Taipei and Beijing must be more firmly grounded in reality than in ideological wishful thinking. Only then can the international community faithfully take into account the full significance of democracy on Taiwan.

IMAGINED COMMUNITY

The people of Taiwan have long endured diplomatic isolation, which essentially began with the withdrawal of the Republic of China (R.O.C.) from the United Nations on October 25, 1971. Under pressure from Beijing, many countries were forced to switch official recognition from Taipei to Beijing. The R.O.C. was gradually excluded from most international governmental organizations and maintained formal diplomatic relations with only 22 countries.

After I became president in January 1988, the R.O.C. began to seek a role in the United Nations and other world bodies while stressing that it had no intention of challenging Beijing's status in these organizations. But to this day the authorities in Beijing continue to use every opportunity to isolate my country diplomatically in hopes of turning fiction into reality. It is fiction to claim that the Chinese nation is not divided -- and pernicious fiction to assert that the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) has any right or imperative to claim sovereignty over Taiwan. The attacks that Beijing makes on the legitimacy of the democratic government affront the people of Taiwan and the prevailing values of the international community. Such attacks also threaten world peace and stability.

This is where international perceptions of Taiwan play a ...

End of preview: first 500 of 2,398 words total.