Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
(Chinese) Hello.
It’s truly an honor to be here today.
I moved from Canada to Taiwan a little more than 11 years ago,
and ever since that time, I really have struggled as a journalist,
as a writer and as a human being
to find the proper definition
for what “peace” means in the Taiwan Strait.
Perhaps, unlike anywhere else on the planet,
the Taiwan Strait truly challenges the very definition of what “peace” means,
or at least the rather simplistic way
we oftentimes use to refer to that term.
This is the term “peace”
that politicians on both sides of the Taiwan Strait,
in Beijing and in Taipei,
have used and abused repeatedly over the years.
During the eight years of the President Ma Ying-jeou administration,
President Ma himself often told us that the Taiwan Strait,
which for decades had threatened to be a zone of conflict and perhaps even war,
was quickly being transformed into an “avenue of peace,”
or so he said.
For whatever reason, the international community,
the diplomats, the academics and the media,
also believed that peace was indeed at hand.
“Peace was good,” we were told.
It was good for business, and ultimately it was good for humanity.
For a little while, it did look like the two sides
were on the brink of resolving their differences.
Politicians from both sides of the Taiwan Strait
were meeting repeatedly.
And perhaps, even more importantly,
ordinary people, academics, journalists,
students, businessmen, investors,
were also making contact through tourism and other activities.
For many of them, this was for the first time.
The two governments did tone down the rhetoric
and they also de-emphasized
the military nature of relations in the Taiwan Strait.
And again, this is something that most people globally
did believe was indeed the case in Taiwan.
However, absence of war does not mean absence of conflict
and absence of conflict certainly does not mean “peace,”
which is the subject of our talk today.
And yes, President Ma Ying-jeou and Chinese president Xi Jinping
sat down together and toasted each other in Singapore in late 2015.
But in the end,
the very fundamentals of that conflict,
the essence of the conflict in the Taiwan Strait was never addressed.
There never was peace ever.
It was all the politics of illusion.
It was the illusion of peace.
Nevertheless, the international community
having convinced itself that peace was at hand,
attention shifted elsewhere
and the media turned to this part of the world,
which certainly offers a series of opportunities for drama,
from North Korea trying to develop nuclear weapons
to rampant human rights abuses
in places like China, Myanmar, Cambodia, and recently in the Philippines,
to war in countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Syria.
While the world was not paying attention there was a storm brewing in Taiwan,
a storm that would put the lie to the very notion
that peace was finally arriving in the Taiwan Strait.
That storm came to be known as the “Sunflower Movement,”
which occupied Parliament in Taipei for 21 days in March and April 2014
over a controversial services trade agreement with China.
Now that storm was not something sudden.
The seeds of that storm were sown throughout Taiwan’s history,
from its long, painful, traumatic history
of invasion, of colonization, of massacres,
like the “228 Massacre” of February 1947,
to authoritarian rule from the Japanese
during the “White Terror” under the KMT.
A long history of exile, imprisonment, suffering, returned to Taiwan,
and then gradually economic development, liberalization,
and in the end, during the 1990s, finally democratization.
So now, thanks to President Ma’s efforts of rapprochement with China,
all these differences, all these contradictions
really became evident to a number of Taiwanese.
They were finally forced to look through the looking glass at themselves,
and ask themselves “What is Taiwan all about?”
So at a time when people were waxing eloquent
about President Ma Ying-Jeou,
that perhaps deserving the Nobel Peace Prize
for his efforts to improve relations with China,
for the Taiwanese themselves
it was very evident that the kind of peace that was being proposed to them
was a peace of imposition.
Ultimately, that peace or the removal of a threat of war from China
was tantamount to submission;
and recent developments in Hong Kong as well
clearly demonstrated to the Taiwanese
that an imposed peace on Chinese terms
is not what they want for their own country.
That does not mean that the Taiwanese do not want peace,
but they simply do not want that to be imposed.
During that period, a lot of people would say,
“Well, then, if the two sides came to better understand each other
through contact,”
– this is something that many Chinese academics have said –
“then maybe perhaps the impediment
to peace in the Taiwan Strait and reconciliation would be removed.”
Other people argued that if and when China democratizes
then those impediments to peace in the Taiwan Strait
would finally be removed
and the Taiwanese would be perhaps more animable
to some form of unification with China.
The problem with this approach or understanding of the Taiwan Strait
is that ultimately the conflict itself
stems from much more than simply different political systems
that are either chosen
or oftentimes imposed from above on the public.
The notion of the nation itself is a matter of identity,
it’s a combination of values of history.
Yes, indeed, the political system as well
that is liberal democratic for Taiwan
and for many young Taiwanese the only political system that they know.
But again,
political systems are not the only determinants of the nation,
and if that were the case
then fellow democracies like Canada, United States, for example,
would long ago have unified,
or former members of the British Empire,
at least those that democratized over the years
would also at some point in their history
been open to redefine with the British Empire.
Now, obviously this sells rather preposterous
and my years in Taiwan have actually made it clear to me as well
through my researches and my writing
that the Chinese claims on Taiwan are themselves quite preposterous.
Now for the majority of us who live here,
this is quite self-evident.
I think ordinary Taiwanese through their everyday lives
already give voice to that separate identity,
even if they don’t exactly know how to explain it or give it a voice.
The problem is that freedom for Taiwan and Taiwan’s future
are not solely determined by the Taiwanese themselves.
This is unfair, but this is the reality.
If that were the case again,
Taiwan would long ago have become a sovereign state,
it would have established official diplomatic relations
with a number of countries
and it would be a full participant in the community of nations.
The reality is that this is about all for geopolitics.
Geopolitics is the stage where Taiwan must compete with China
to get itself known
and to earn the sympathy of the international community.
Unfortunately, this is an area
where Taiwan has not done particularly well over the years.
Despite its many selling virtues –
it is a successful democracy, it is a major economy,
and it is a precious example in post-colonialism –
Taiwan has not been able to use
all that baggage of history and success
to really tell its story to the international community
and let people known worldwide why Taiwan matters.
This is something
that the Taiwanese government itself,
including the current administration, are not very good at.
Which leads me to conclude
that it is every Taiwanese’s responsibility
to do what he or she can, using their own ways
to tell to the rest of the world what Taiwan is all about.
It is s a challenge that should also be picked up
by the Taiwanese overseas,
most of whom have rebuilt their lives,
and in many cases cut all contact with their homeland.
Unfortunately, for Taiwan,
the Chinese diaspora has been a lot more vocal and activist
in spreading China’s version of history,
thus giving Beijing a major advantage over Taipei
when it comes to public diplomacy.
Taiwan has been very successful in business,
at exporting itself and its model globally,
but in the world of public diplomacy they have not been as successful.
So now Taiwan really needs to start to stop thinking like an island
and really join the community of nations and be vocal about what it is.
It needs to learn to sell itself, not just its products.
Now, definitely,
there is a role as well for Taiwanese of all stripes again,
they need to find a language by which to explain
why Taiwan matters to the international community.
And by language, I don’t just mean the written and spoken words,
they need to find the language of emotion,
they need to use the arts, culture, tourism to attract people
and to make Taiwan better known to the international community.
Right now, academic journals,
academic conferences and volumes are adventurous
to a very narrow group of individuals who are not large enough,
or perhaps not even influential enough to make a difference in the Taiwan Strait.
So really the Taiwanese need to find new ways, new models,
to really engage the international community
in a more effective way.
It’s quite surprising, because despite all its virtues,
Taiwan is very likely the most successful
and certainly the most peaceful country on the face of the planet,
that faces an existential threat from a larger, authoritarian regime.
But despite the fact that it has the moral high ground,
oftentimes it is ignored by the international community
or sometimes it is even compared to rogue regimes
like North Korea or Zimbabwe, to use two examples.
That is unfair, but that is the reality.
Two other peoples who have been locked for several decades in the land issue
are the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Notwithstanding the fact that these two peoples have used, over the years,
kidnappings, state terror, state violence,
these two peoples have still succeeded in earning the respect
and appealing to the international community
and certainly to international sympathy.
So we really need to ask ourselves why is it that Taiwan,
democratic, peaceful Taiwan,
has not been able to earn for itself the kind of visibility and sympathy
that states, that behaves much more dangerously than Taiwan.
This is a question that I certainly would like to leave
each and every one of you today with.
Ultimately, what needs to be accomplished
is to tell the community of nations why Taiwan matters.
In a world that seems to have lost all sense in recent months,
in recent weeks, with the assassination of foreign diplomats
or entire cities being destroyed in countries like Syria,
and we will have speakers from war-torn Syria later this afternoon,
Taiwan is a shining example of an alternative,
of a different path,
of a nation that came from a very dark and painful past
and was able, without bloodshed, without destroying entire cities,
to reinvent itself and to rebuild itself
as a country, as a participant in the community of nations.
I think this is an extraordinary accomplishment
that the Taiwanese have not been vocal enough about internationally.
They have been, in my opinion, a little bit too humble
when it comes to their ability as a whole, as a people,
regardless of the political parties that they vote for,
to build a nation, to achieve something quite extraordinary and precious
in the face of immense external challenges,
not only from China but from the community of nations
that more often than not chose to ignore it.
Another reason why I believe Taiwan is very important and matters
is the fact that the matter in which conflict
in the Taiwan Strait will be resolved
will very much be a determinant of the kind of China
that the international community
will have to deal with for decades to come.
This is very, very important.
If we feed the beast by giving it what it wants,
in unjust terms for the Taiwanese,
we will be creating a monster that will cause serious trouble
for the community of nations again for decades to come.
To make sure or at least limit the possibility
that Taiwan would be annexed by China,
its best weapon is to make itself better known
and better explain itself to the community of nations.
Otherwise, if people ignore it
then China will easily get away
with what it covets, which is ultimately to annex Taiwan.
So definitely, knowledge is Taiwan’s best ally to ensure its survival,
and lack of knowledge and ignorance are its worst enemy.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
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