ROC President Lai Ching-te says that everyone in the Republic of China or Taiwan, whatever you want to call it, should be united in self-defense and in opposition to the Chinese Communist Party (Focus Taiwan, June 24, 2024).
Four commitments
During a recent speech, part of a series of ten planned speeches, Lai (shown above) told his audience: “You’re not a real advocate of the ROC if you don’t oppose the CCP, and you’re not a real advocate of Taiwan if you don’t safeguard Taiwan.”
Lai [cited] the “four commitments” proposed by former President Tsai Ing-wen during her National Day address in 2021: the commitment to a free and democratic constitutional system, the commitment that the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China should not be subordinate to each other, the commitment to resist annexation or encroachment upon our sovereignty, and the commitment that the future of the Republic of China (Taiwan) must be decided in accordance with the will of the Taiwanese people.
Lai said that a survey conducted by Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council in November that year found the four commitments had the backing of around 80 percent of all Taiwanese people and therefore is the “common denominator.”
“We must channel this public opinion representing 80 percent of the people, but how?” Lai asked.
“Through continuous elections and recall votes, through every single ballot cast,” he said in what was apparently an indirect reference to the mass recall votes seeking to remove 24 Kuomintang lawmakers and suspended Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao from office on July 26.
In July 2024, Mayor Kao was suspended from office for personal use of public funds while serving as a legislator from 2020 to 2022. She was also sentenced to prison time, but the fate of her appeal has not yet been decided. A deputy mayor of Hsinchu is serving as acting mayor and would presumably have to step aside in favor of Kao if her appeal succeeds and the attempt to recall her from office fails.
No Taiwan polity
“Of course Taiwan is a country,” Lai said in another talk in the series, even though “China says no, that Taiwan is not a sovereign country.”
In these pages, James Roth has discussed whether it is appropriate to call the Republic of China “Taiwan.”
President Lai says that either designation is fine; let’s just unite in self-defense.
Roth says: “There is no Taiwan polity. Within the Republic of China, there is a geographic, constitutionally defined ‘Free Area’ divided into ‘22 subnational divisions (6 special municipalities, 3 cities, and 13 counties)’ on the island of Taiwan. Whenever the ROC refers to Taiwan, it does so geographically, not politically…. The constitution of Taipei and its amendments refer to the Republic of China. Our shortcut references to ‘Taiwan’ lead us into serious analytic mistakes.”
Also see:
StoptheCCP.org: “What Is This ‘Republic of China’?”
