Philstar.com - The Filipino Global Community > Taiwan is not part of China! — VP Lu

Philstar.com - The Filipino Global Community: Taiwan is not part of China! — VP Lu
BY THE WAY By Max V. Soliven
The Philippine Star 04/17/2005

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan’s outspoken and articulate Vice President Ms. Lu Hsiu-lien, better known abroad as Annette Lu, meeting with this writer in the President’s Office in downtown Taipei, deplored what she called the "myth" of the "One China" policy and said it is unjust to attempt "to force Taiwan into the arms of the People’s Republic of China."

"Taiwan is not a part of China," she stated, "but has been sovereign for many years." Looking chic in a two piece beige suit, Vice-President Lu reiterated her stand, one which has outraged Beijing for the past five years, that human society should "not be governed by the rules of the jungle, where the strong prey upon the weak to survive. In the cross-strait relationship, the PRC (China) is like a lion and Taiwan a little kitty cat. Throwing the kitty cat to the lion would no doubt result in a bloody end for the kitty cat and a small meal for the lion."

She pointed out that "if the world is to exist in peace, the large and ferocious beasts (obviously referring to China) must be kept in their cages, living their own lives while the tame and cute animals are allowed to play freely, with the birds in the sky, with the bunnies and kitty cats playing together. The sleeping lion has awakened, and the international community must help tame it to ensure peace and stability in Asia."

"Let Taiwan be Taiwan!" Lu told me. "We don’t belong to China!"

Beijing’s constant insistence is that Taiwan is "a breakaway province of China" (I remember that when I interviewed him in Beijing’s "Great Hall of the People" in October 1964, Premier Zhou En-lai had told me that he had deliberately chosen the "Fujian" (Fookien)
room as the site of our meeting, "to remind you that Taiwan is a sub-province of Fujian!"

This was repeated in 1986 when I talked with the late Chairman Deng Xiaopeng in the same Fujian Room of the Great Hall. Deng, chain-smoking as always, asked out loud why Taiwan was not willing to accept "my formula" which had already been adopted by Hong Kong of "one country, two systems," meaning that he had offered Taiwan a guaranteed fifty additional years of continuing its capitalist way of life when it "returns to China".

Much of the Taipei government’s perception problem derives from its own semantics. Owing to its previous leadership, particularly that of the post-Japanese hegemony’s "founding father," the late Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Taiwan continues to refer to itself and issue passports under the label Republic of China, or ROC.

After a brief war over the islands, the Qing (Ching) dynasty of China had ceded Taiwan to Japan in the Treaty of Simonoseki in 1985. The Japanese had set up building infrastructure and modernizing Taiwan compelling Taiwanese to become Japanese subjects, adopt Japanese names, drafting tens of thousands into the Imperial Japanese Army.

Indeed, a brother of Taiwan’s former President, Lee Teng-hui had been killed fighting as a Japanese officer in the Philippines. The bombing of Manila and Clark Field and the invasion of December 1941 in fact were mounted from Taiwan. After Japan’s surrender n World War II, it was "agreed" with the United States, Britain and other Allied countries that Nationalist Chinese leader, Chiang Kai-shek take over Taiwan as "restored to China" on October 25, 1945.

With Taiwan’s population than 6.7 million, most of the 285,000 Japanese civilians and 158,000 Japanese military personnel were evicted and sent "back" to Japan, while 12,000 Nationalist Chinese military and 200 officials arrived to assume control. The resentful native Taiwanese protested against and resisted the heavy handed methods and "plunder" of their new mainland rules, but were suppressed with a violence that ended up with the killing of about 28,000 people and the arrest of thousands.

Losing the mainland to the attacking Communists, led by Mao Zedong, Chiang himself was forced to flee to Taiwan with his Nationalist government and his remaining troops in 1949. There he ruled with an iron first, with his Kuomintang (KMT) ruling the island until his death in 1975. The KMT fully expected to be able to regroup and return in force to "liberate" the mainland from the Communists. Some of the former mainlanders I met there in 1959 still kept the keys of their apartments in Shanghai, or their homes in Beijing and other cities in their pockets – as a token, I suppose, that they would be able to re-invade the mainland soon and "recover" their lost homes and properties. This dream faded as the years went by.

Even today in Taiwan, the subtle "divide" between native Taiwanese and former mainlanders (who dominated the government for half a century!) remains. Some 85 percent of the people believe themselves native Taiwanese, calling themselves benshengren or "province people", and, along with Putonghua (mandarin), the official language, still use the Taiwanese dialect. The two million former mainlanders who came with Chiang Kai-shek in 1949, and their descendants are still referred to as daluren or "mainlanders." The aborigines belonging to eleven recognized tribes, of course, are the yuanjhumin, or "originals", but comprise a tiny 1.5 percent.

Vice-President Lu, a true native Taiwanese born on June 6, 1944, in the northern city of Taoyuan, came from a hardluck family. Her hardworking parents had twice considered giving her up for adoption, but could not bear to part with their daughter, particularly a child who made them proud by excelling in her studies. Her mother, Lu recalls traveled tirelessly around Taiwan to help her father in the family business. She asserts today: "There is not a single woman in our family who is not doing the work of men."

She rejects what she calls the myth of "maintaining the status quo" with mainland China. The real status quo the Vice-President declares is that "Taiwan is a de facto independent nation, whether or not it is recognized and despite the confusion of its official title."

She condemned the anti-secession law passed by China’s parliament unanimously in March, recalling that more than a million Taiwanese had demonstrated to protest and decry it in Taipei a few weeks ago. When Japan surrendered "unconditionally," she insists, Taiwan did not automatically go back to China, "we had been ceded by China in 1895." In the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, nothing was said, she noted, about Taiwan going to China after Japan surrendered control of the islands.

The second myth Ms. Lu rejects is the PRC’s claim that the United Nations Resolution 2758, passed in 1971, had already resolved the cross-strait issue. "This is a blatant lie. The resolution only recognized "that the representatives of the Government of the People’s Republic of China are the only lawful representatives of China to the United Nations" and the resolution simply resolved to expel "the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek from the place they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations, i.e. as representative of China."

Clearly, Vice-President Lu reminded me, the plain text of Resolution 1750 did not mention Taiwan in any way or support any claim Taiwan is part of China "or that the PRC shall have claim to Taiwan." Unfortunately, she complained, the world has been deluded by these false claims for decades "without delving deeper for the truth."

Needless to say, Lu is reviled in Beijing for her candor and fearless pugnacity. She told this writer: "There is no need for Taiwan to declare independence as Beijing keeps on warning against. Taiwan has been independent and sovereign for many years already!"

This is something for China’s President Hu Jintao to comment on when he comes to Manila on a state visit after the scheduled Bandung conference in Indonesia, which is supposed to take place on April 22. However, the volcano near the conference site has been acting up in the past few days. Will that Asian-African summit be held as calendared?

In any event, Annette Lu has already proven more than once that she is a very tough lady.

If you’ll recall, after 55 years in power, the Kuomintang (KMT)lost the Presidency in 2000 to the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party headed by Chen Shui-bian with his Vice-Presidential running mate being Ms. Lu. Both Chen and Lu were reelected to a second four-year term as President and Vice-President last year after surviving an assassination attempt. Both Chen and Lu were wounded in an attack on them by a gunman (or gunmen) but not seriously hurt.

Chen, himself was prominently featured in the special issue of TIME Magazine (April 18) just off the press, entitled The TIME 100 and subheaded: "The lives and ideas of the world’s 100 most influential people." In fact, Chen was played up on page 46 with the headline: "Taking it to the brink," while China’s Hu Jin-tao came on page 52, with a piece entitled "China’s Puzzle of a President."

Ms. Lu herself spent years in prison, arrested by the then ruling KMT government.

In what is now famous as "The Kaosiung Incident," in December 1979, she was one of the top organizers of a rally inspired by the editors of MEILIDAO (Beautiful Magazine), a liberal publication, known for being critical of the government. The demonstration was designed to celebrate Human Rights Day – but it alarmed the police and the authorities. The day before the event, two of the organizes were seized while handing out handbills and leaflets announcing the rally and badly mauled. On the day itself, policemen barricade the routes and fenced off the park forcing thousands of would-be protesters to fume in frustration on the surrounding streets. Scuffles between demonstrators and cops turned violent, and after the ensuing melee eight of the organizers were nabbed and put in jail. In the trial which followed, one of the defending lawyers was Chen Shui-ban. The "leaders" were handed down stiff prison terms of up to 12 years.

Already under "surveillance" before the incident, Annette Lu had persisted in delivering a 20-minute speech at the blocked-off rally scene, and was carted off to prison. Sentenced to 12 years for sedition and deprived of her civil rights (she was 36 at the time) she continued to read and write while in prison. After five years and four months of imprisonment, she was released owing to the stubborn efforts of her friends and Amnesty International – for medical reasons "for treatment of thyroid carcinoma." (Reminds you of Ninoy Aquino’s "release" for a heart-bypass in Texas by the Marcos dictatorship).

In any event, while her friends were saddened to see how prison life had "aged her," Lu regained her formidable energy. For five years between March 1985 when she was released in 1990 she traveled through the US and Europe speaking out boldly on the plight of Taiwan. She also spent three years in Harvard on scholarships, earning two Masters’ degrees – her English is both fluent and brilliant.

Becoming the woman to serve as Vice-President (on May 20, 2000) she has become an even more dynamic international figure. On March 20, 2004, in their reelection bid, she and President Chen got 6.47 million votes.

Since Chen, after two terms, won’t be running for reelection – who knows?