Principles come before alliances - TW

[dArKeR]

The Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) Strategy and Discourse Unit has been meeting over the past week, intensively discussing the adoption of nativized concepts as the party's central ideology. Meanwhile, Ting Shou-chung (???), director of the KMT's Organization and Development Affairs Committee, claimed on Thursday that the proposed merger between the KMT and the People First Party (PFP) will be addressed soon. Evidently, the rivalry between the two KMT camps -- supporters of the conservative "Great China" ideology and those who back a nativized "Taiwan consciousness" -- is still very much alive.

Some of the topics raised and discussed by the Strategy and Discourse Unit are a pleasant surprise. The panel is co-chaired by two leading figures of the nativization camp, Deputy Chairman Vincent Siew (???) and Wang Jin-pyng (???). The most impressive topic is the rejection of the "one China" ideology and the incorporation of some Taiwan independence concepts. This echoes Wang's statement before the presidential election that the KMT does not rule out the Taiwan independence option.

As for how that goal is to be accomplished, the KMT panel discussed various ideas. One was the idea of "diplomatic neutrality" by Taiwan; that is, for Taiwan to maintain an equal distance from both China and the US. However, as much as it may be an improvement over the party's current "Great China" dogma, "diplomatic neutrality" does not help the KMT circumvent the sovereignty issue. Is Taiwan a diplomatically neutral "country" or "region?" The most obvious answer is of course the former, but that would be going further than merely "not ruling out the possibility of Taiwan independence." If the answer is the latter, then the KMT would face the same ambiguity about the status of Taiwan.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/05/30/2003157544

'Principles' is not a word in the Repuke vocabulary.