Just about any article about the future of China-Taiwan relationships is almost guaranteed to include the phrase “If Taiwan declares independence …” implying that this is a realistic possibility. In fact, for the last 6 years, the ruling DPP party has not been an advocate of a declaration of independence. Here’s a brief look at how the DPPs official position has changed over time.

Self Determination

The DPP was formed in September 1986. At that time, political parties (apart from the ruling KMT) were illegal, and the founders of the DPP risked imprisonment just for announcing the new party. As a result, they had to be careful what they announced as the goals of the new party – any mention of independence would have guaranteed they ended up in prison. In this environment, the DPP party platform restricted itself to working for self-determination: the future of Taiwan should be decided upon by the people of Taiwan.

The Independence Clause

Five years later in 1991 (after relaxation of KMT rule, including the end of martial law), the DPP added the following clause to its political platform (the wording was proposed by an up-and-coming Legislator call Chen Shui Bian):

The Democratic Progressive Party calls for the establishment of an independent and sovereign Republic of Taiwan and the enactment of a new Constitution, to be decided by the people of Taiwan in a plebiscite.

Fighting words – and ones which clearly would be met with a rather violent response from the PRC if they were acted upon.

Moderation prevails

In 1999, in preparation for the upcoming 2000 presidential elections, the DPP updated its postion by releasing a “Resolution on Taiwan’s Future”. The core part of this was:

1 Taiwan is a sovereign and independent country. Any change in the independent status quo must be decided by all the residence of Taiwan by means of plebiscite.
2 Taiwan is not a part of the People’s Republic of China. China’s unilateral advocacy of the “One China Principle” and “One Country Two Systems” is fundamentally inappropriate for Taiwan.

This was quite a change from the previous position: instead of advocating independence, the DPP was claiming that Taiwan was already independent (and so no declaration of independence was needed). There were two main reasons for this change of policy:

1. Although the principle of independence was popular, most Taiwanese voters are ultimately pragmatic – and wouldn’t vote for a position which would start a war. In the 1991 National Assembly elections (2 months after the DPP changed their position), the DPP performed very badly as a result of their too strong pro-independence stance.
2. With the arrival of full democracy in 1996, there was a growing awareness that the ROC was fast evolving into something close to the ideal ‘Republic of Taiwan’ that DPP members wanted, so obviating any need for a declaration of independence.

This position was what Chen Shui Bian ran for (and won) the presidency on the following year.

Current Position

The position of Chen since he has been President has been to consistently advocate the ‘Taiwan is already an independent country’ line that was agreed upon in 1999. He added a bit of a clarification in his National Day address in October last year:

The sovereignty of the Republic of China is vested with the 23 million people of Taiwan. The Republic of China is Taiwan, and Taiwan is the Republic of China. This is an indisputable fact.

In addition to this, he has explicitly promised not to declare independence, change the official name of the country (Republic of China) or alter the official boundaries (which include all Mainland China and Mongolia) during his presidency. Of course, these are NOT DPP policy – so there is no guarantee that a future DPP president would continue with these promises in 2008.

Future directions

Although the 1991 independence clause has been superceded by a more moderate position, it is still part of the DPPs official position. With the TSU taking up the ‘hard-core’ independence baton, there is little chance that the DPP will go back to this extreme position. Removing the clause from the official DPP position is a possibility – but would require extreme tact by the DPP officials to pull off: any suggestion of ‘giving up on independence’ or ‘caving in to PRC/KMT pressure’ would be strongly resisted by the DPP membership, while an update ‘to reflect the fact of existing independence’ would be supported.

One of the preconditions often mentioned by the PRC for talks with Chen is that the DPP gives up its policy on a declaration of independence; as you can see from the above, this isn’t such an insurmountable object. However, the bigger difficulty is the principle of ‘One China’ – which directly contradicts the DPP position; without some smart ‘reinterpretation’ of both sides positions, it makes direct talks very unlikely in the short term.

Creeping independence

The main point to make about the DPPs position is that it does not advocate any grand move to independence which would obviously cause war with China. Instead, the goal is to make many baby steps towards full independence – blurring the distinction between the ROC and Taiwan, emphasising the de-facto national boundaries over the legal ones, and searching for international recognition as ‘Taiwan’ – in the hope that each one would not be enough to trigger a response.