TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — Since running for Taipei Mayor in 2014, and especially after forming the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in 2019, people have wondered where Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) stands on Taiwan-China relations.
His answers sometimes sounded pan-green, other times pan-blue, and at other times simply confused.
His most famous statement on the subject was to say several times “both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family." He is now distancing himself from that line, especially since Chinese Communist Party Secretary-General Xi Jinping (習近平) used it.
Ko by his own admission was too distracted as Taipei mayor to do a good job running the TPP. Since stepping down last December he has been full-time TPP chair, and with the aid of a new party think tank, is finally formulating policies and platforms to carve out a distinct niche among Taiwan’s political parties.
While the think tank white paper is not out yet, Ko has been speaking extensively on several policy fronts and it is clear that, unlike in the past, this time the contents are well thought out. He is also sticking to his talking points, a discipline he previously lacked.
In Taiwan’s politics, the big defining issues in national elections relate to China, Taiwan’s sovereignty and Taiwanese versus Chinese identity. There is no left-right or conservative-liberal divide between the major parties, only within them internally.
I’ve been following his comments closely and in recent months I haven’t seen him make even a single reference to the Republic of China (ROC). He only refers to the nation as Taiwan.
Mainstream stance
On the other hand, when referring to China he will use “mainland,” “mainland China” and "China" interchangeably. This only tells us he is not deep green but not much else, it is common for people of his generation to use “mainland.”
He said explicitly in the past that Taiwanese are Chinese culturally, and only a small minority would disagree with that statement. President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has said similar things in the past. He also recently said “nobody in the world thinks there are two Chinas.”
His recent comments sound like he is right in the mainstream of public opinion, or even a little light green. He was associated with being more pan-green than pan-blue when he was running for Taipei mayor in 2014, though since he’s sounded more pan-blue at times.
I have a theory that Ko has a contrarian streak and when the Kuomintang’s (KMT) Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was in power he gravitated towards the pan-green opposition. However, when the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Tsai took power he took the opposite tack. I have no proof, but the pattern is there.
Now that he is at this full-time and appears to be working with better thought-out policy stances, he might have considered more carefully where he actually stands, rather than taking knee-jerk positions against the party in power. Time will tell.
So, where does he stand on the big dividing line between the DPP and KMT? Does he agree with the KMT’s stance that Taiwan is a province of China and that unification is the eventual goal, or does he agree with the DPP that Taiwan is an independent state and that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has no legitimate claim?
TPP's 'one China' stance
On his current trip to the United States, on being asked “are both sides of the Strait one China” he commented that in culture, religion and history there definitely are things in common, and economically one can consider how much the two sides should be interlinked, but (in English) he said: "But when it comes to the political level, I'm sorry, at this stage 'one China' is impossible."
This was put with his typical blunt directness, but substantively President Tsai has said the same things. It is unclear if Ko is as cautious about economic ties with China as Tsai.
By ruling out political unification, it logically follows that he wouldn’t support the “1992 consensus” in either the PRC variant of “there is only one China of which Taiwan is an unalienable part” or the KMT version which adds “with both sides of the strait having their own interpretation” to the China version. The DPP, of course, does not accept the concept of “one China” and won’t accept the “1992 consensus.”
Ko indeed follows the logic through, saying “Taiwan has no '1992 consensus,' only a '1996 consensus.’” He went on to explain the thinking of the TPP on the issue, which is that it is a cutoff point.
Ko pointed out that after the KMT retreated from China, their party-state disseminated “greater China unification” but clashed with those outside of the party. After 1987, when Taiwanese were allowed to visit China, they discovered that there were big discrepancies between the two sides, which deepened the self-conceptualization and created a sense of agency as Taiwanese.
TPP's Taiwanese identity
Ko went on to explain that the first free presidential election in 1996 confirmed Taiwan's agency, and this began the first phase. He said by voting every four years, “the concept ‘I am Taiwanese' grew stronger and stronger.”
He then identified phase two as having begun in 2016, when the DPP took power. Presumably, he’s referring to that being the first time the DPP managed to win a majority in the legislature as well as the presidency.
He made clear this was the TPP’s consensus view. I suspect this is the simplified version and the upcoming white paper will be more detailed, but Ko was on a talk show so, he had to keep it simple.
So far, everything we have examined is pretty close to mainstream public opinion, which has since the Sunflower movement moved into the light-green camp. The DPP would phrase things differently in most cases, but aside from deep-greens, there is not anything here for them to attack the TPP with.
Furthermore, the KMT will not because Chair Eric Chu (朱立倫) is smart enough to know his own party’s positions on these issues are unpopular.
We will dig a little deeper into the details of what Ko and the TPP are saying, when some telling differences between the TPP and DPP start to emerge.
