By Katherine Wang
Reprinted from the April 4, 2006 Issue of Stanford Daily
Mayor of Taipei and chairman of the Kuomintang (KMT) party Ma Ying-jeou avoided taking a stance on Taiwanese independence as he shared his thoughts on the future of cross-strait relations between China and its island neighbor, as well as the party’s historical ties with Taiwan, during a talk at the Hoover Institution on March 24.
Mayor of Taipei and chairman of the Kuomingtang party Ma Ying-jeou spoke at the Hoover Institution as part of the think tank's unveiling of Chiang Kai-shek's diaries.
Ma’s address was part of the Institution’s unveiling of the diaries of Chiang Kai-shek, the military and political leader of the KMT and the Chinese during World War II. Chiang later became Taiwan’s first constitutional president when KMT revolutionaries were defeated by the Communists during the Chinese civil war and forced to retreat to the island.
The mayor’s comments on Taiwanese independence were notable, as he is considered the likely KMT candidate for Taiwan’s 2008 presidential election. His popularity in Taiwan suggests that he may be in a position to define key aspects of the country’s relationship with China in the next decade.
Despite Chiang’s longstanding dream for the KMT party to recapture the mainland, the chairman did not advocate autonomy for Taiwan.
“We would like to improve relations [between Taiwan and China], but that does not mean unification,” Ma explained. He suggested that unification of the “two Chinas” was not unforeseeable in the future, although he emphasized that it may be decades before the time is right. In the meantime, he contends that the primary goal of the KMT party on this matter is to “negotiate a settlement that will benefit the people of Taiwan.”
But Ma also asserted the necessity for Taiwan to be recognized by the world community. It lost its official nation status in 1979 when member countries of the United Nations — including the United States — voted to acknowledge the People’s Republic of China as the official nation. Since then, Taiwan has failed to qualify for membership in the world’s most prominent international organizations, including the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). According to Ma, Taiwan’s efforts to establish an international identity “should not be seen as Taiwan seeking de jure independence.”
As the current leader of the KMT, Ma said that his goal is to rebuild and reform the party along with its new generation of members, most of whom possess less of the political baggage resulting from the Communist takeover of China. His hope is that the party can eventually facilitate a type of reconciliation between the Communist party and Taiwan, he said.
The Chiang family provided the handwritten diaries of Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo to the Hoover Institution in 2005. This event marks the first time large portions of the generalissimo’s memoirs will be made available for public scholarly use. Due to the uninhibited nature of the writing, the Chiang family has chosen to keep some passages private, though all redacted parts will be released by 2035.
The transfer of the Chiang diaries to Hoover represents another step in the collaboration between the KMT party and the Stanford think tank. Since 2003, the Hoover Institution has assisted the KMT party in microfilming the official historical records of the party’s archives in Taipei. Of the three million that have been microfilmed, 500,000 pages thus far are available for use at Hoover, but the project of scanning and cataloguing the documents is expected to continue for at least six more years.
The diaries will be on loan by the Chiang family until a suitable repository is determined on Chinese territory. The Hoover Institution will retain photocopies of the archives if they are eventually relocated.
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Ma spoke at the Hoover Institution
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Hoover Fellow Dr. Ramon Myers introduced Ma.
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