Clement C.P. Chang: bringing foresight to Taiwan

摘要

The future assumes a frightening poignancy from Tamsui, looking into a sunset across the Taiwan Strait. Mainland China is not visible but the Taiwanese are acutely aware of its chilling presence. It evokes mixed visions and emotions from a population of diverse ethnic origins. This very stretch of water has caused some feverish arm wrestling between the behemoth, China, and the island-nation denied statehood, Taiwan. Globally, the strait has frustrated the building of a robust diplomatic bridge between the United States of America (US), an ally of Taiwan, and the People's Republic of China (PRC)—the incumbent and the pretender in global ambition. China insists on international recognition for its "one-China policy". Yet, certain people, goods, capital and ideas move both ways between China and Taiwan. The Kuomintang (KMT), which tightly controlled Taiwan's central government for half a century, until 2000, had wanted to reunify China, also, but from the other direction. The Taiwanese have lived with deep uncertainty since Chiang Kai-Shek and his nationalist KMT government fled the mainland in 1949 after Mao Zedong's triumphant Long March. The KMT had forcibly taken command of the Republic of China (ROC) during a civil war on the mainland a few years after the republic was founded by Sun Yat-Sen in 1911, following the collapse of China's last dynasty, the Qing. Today, Taiwan tends to think of itself more as Taiwan than the ROC. Meanwhile Taiwanese opinion about its own future is fragmented. Taiwan is stuck in a diplomatic vice under a nuclear shadow. It remains in diplomatic limbo relying on the cover of trade and culture "missions".