Is US derecognition Taiwan's crown of thorns or its thorn in the flesh?
Palm Sunday, 1999: Former US President Jimmy Carter prepares to enter Taiwan. At the invitation of the Institute for National Policy Research, he is scheduled to discuss his work with the Carter Center, a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting peace and human rights, and to fighting poverty, hunger and disease throughout the world. Quite understandably, however, in press conferences that take place during his short visit, attention shifts from the topic of Carter's current activities in international philanthropy to what is arguably the local population's worst recent memory: Carter's announcement in the latter days of 1978 that the United States would sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. His 1999 visit is something less than a "triumphal entry."
Carter's official statement to the American public on December 15, 1978, had indicated what was also communicated privately to ROC President Chiang Ching-kuo at his home in the wee hours of the Taipei morning: that the United States was recognizing, as of January 1, 1979, "the People's Republic of China as the sole legal government of China" and "terminating diplomatic relations and...the Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the Republic of China...in accordance with the provisions in the Treaty." In the months following that statement, the perception was fueled that adequate provisions to ensure the welfare of the people of Taiwan were being enacted only because the US Congress had forced Carter's hand to sign the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) into US law on April 10, 1979--a date that would linger in the consciousness of ROC citizens who had seen the United States as a friend and anti-communist ally.
Although he was treated to the conventional smiles, handshakes and guided tours during his Holy Week trip this past March (it was, after all, an invited visit), Carter received his share of scourging. Local media coverage of the press confer ences he gave here focused largely on his public professions of faith in the righteousness of his 1978 decision. What piqued observers here most, however, was Carter's suggestion that he himself was responsible for the good things embodied in the TRA, and his implication that Taiwan's development in the last twenty years had come as a result of his decision to derecognize the ROC--presumptions branded as "shameless" by at least one high-ranking member of the ROC diplomatic community.
How does one assess the depth of betrayal felt by "the people on Taiwan" (the preferred Carterian--and TRA--designa tion, rather than the ideologically cumbersome term "citizens of the Republic of China")? Certainly it is difficult to argue that anyone here gained anything by Carter's act, but it is fairly plain that some people suffered more than others as a result of US diplomatic derecognition. Human rights advocates who had challenged the ruling Nationalist Party (KMT) during one of its most authoritarian periods prior to derecognition have since argued that Carter's actions set the cause of democracy here back by decades and led the ruling party to a new aggressiveness in cracking down on those who advocated the formation of oppositionist political parties. For example, ROC congressional elections set to be held the week after Carter's surprise December 15, 1978, announcement, which many felt would have resulted in oppositionist gains in a period of gathering anti -statist momentum, were roundly canceled.
The ideological disparity of the four or five main factions of the leading oppositionist Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) can be inferred from the differing reactions the party's most visible figures had to Carter's visit. In a passionately worded statement to the former US president, Annette Lu, Taiwan's feminist pioneer and since 1997 Taoyuan County magis trate, blamed Carter personally for the jail term she received after speaking at an International Human Rights Day gathering the year after his derecognition announcement. She demanded that Carter apologize, saying "I did nothing but deliver a speech of twenty minutes in that evening and was eventually sentenced to twelve years." Former DPP Chairman Hsu Hsin -liang took a less vindictive position about his own prison sentence: "Carter did what he had to do.... I don't blame him for my imprisonment; I would rather say it was a failure of our government at the time." Turning the other cheek?
Each of the many Christian tropes that can be read into Carter's recent trip (Carter as the local oppositionist's scapegoat, Carter as the suffering servant of international human rights, Carter as the lamb without blemish sacrificed for long-term goals of democratizing the Chinese mainland, and so on) subsumes its own cluster of ideological assumptions about his intentions some twenty years ago, as well as about Chinese national identity. The severing of ties between the ROC and the United States was indeed a thorny event--but is it Taiwan's "crown of thorns," or its "thorn in the flesh"? If the former, then recall that the original crown of thorns was worn by one falsely accused, "in whom was no guile"; to Christians, that crown is a symbol of mockery, injustice, and undeserved pain. US derecognition has had an analogous effect here in Taiwan.
If, on the other hand, derecognition is characterized as "Taiwan's thorn in the flesh," we might recall the biblical descrip tion of such a thorn as "a messenger of Satan," sent "to buffet" the proud--and ultimately to induce humility by reminding one of one's inclination to sin. Applying this notion to Taiwan, the ruling party in its previous incarnation may have been living above its station when it claimed to be the sole legal government of China. The thorn-in-the-flesh metaphor leads to the implication that Carter's announcement was intended, among other things, to provide an opportunity for 1970s KMT leaders to reassess the basis of that claim in the light of world opinion.
Whether crown of thorns or thorn in the flesh, Carter's actions twenty years ago wounded the ROC, and left a scar. The TRA helps, but it cannot, by its very nature, cover the multitude of concerns addressed by official US recognition.