When having my pizza, neither deluxe nor supreme deluxe is on my menu. A little bit black olive, mushroom and green pepper, with occasional double cheese, are fine. But never order the cubmo just as you don't want to pick chop suey or fried rice at Chinese restaurants because it might taste like leftover. Alas! Pizza chains here in Taiwan don't serve Canadian bacon.
This is how I feel after reading the president perspective of Democratic Progressive Party (DDP), Chen Sui-Bian's Seven-Point policy toward China. Chen's speech is said to purposely integrate everything, including the view of President Lee Teng-hui and, what is most astonishing, that of Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Safeguarding the status quo is not quite enough. What is left out is his vision of Taiwan's future.
In recent years, the DPP, in its determination to take over the regime form the ruling Nationalist Party (KMT), which is understandable for an adolescent party, has made all attempts to improve its imaged supposedly tarnished by the media, including its China policy. In promising that he would not declare independence once elected, Chen is calculating to win over some fictitious median voters hidden in actually multiple issue spaces in the coming presidential election.
As a lawyer by training, Chen is in essence as pragmatic as any politician would be. However, by probing the willingness to negotiate an acceptable political arrangement of the so-called "One-China" formula thrust upon forcefully by China, Chen is actually leading Taiwan into the abyss of China. Would the Taiwanese be inclined to embrace any integration with China? Are Taiwan's quasi-allies, the US and Japan, ready to accept Taiwan's likely association with China even under the most detached Commonwealth of the Great Chinese sphere of influence?
Meanwhile, dancing with the devil, the DPP jubilantly celebrates that its has tactically thrown back the hot potato to China. However, since China has repeatedly threatened that if Taiwan declares independence, it will unwaveringly invade Taiwan, Chen's rhetoric is intrinsically the mirror opposite of the Chinese intimidation.
Recalling that Chen himself has years ago buoyantly pledged that if China attacks Taiwan, Taiwan will declare independence, all these conditionals added up can only logically come to one biconditional equivalence: "Taiwan independence is equal to Chinese invasion." In this sense, the DPP has insidiously changed its underlying orientation toward China.
Anyway, Chen has certified that he doesn't care for pizza during the 1998 Taipei mayor election campaign..
KMT's candidate Lien Chan is not faring comfortably either. As the favoritist son and heir apparent of President Lee, Lien has long been fretting over his poor performance in polls ever since the momentary ascent after the 921 earthquake. I can help thinking of the elder son of the pizzeria in Spike Lee's Academy Award nominated movie "Do the Right Thing." Struggling to walk out of the shadow of his father, he has yet to figure out what he has a mind to be.
Bounded by the underscore laid down by Lee's momentous "State-to-State" agenda, Lien once ventured out to initiate a referendum law, in short of plebiscite, in obscurely amicable efforts to woo pro-independence voters. After the Taiwan Independence Party (TAIP) failed to obtain enough signatures for its presidential nominee, and Chen's consequently assertive frog-leap in his China policy, Lien is been forced to lure James Soong's pro-unification supporters to render strategic voting. The short-lived trial balloon of a confederation of China and Taiwan is yet another undertaking to undermine Lee's legacy.
Still engulfed in the aftershock of the campaign finance scandal, the KMT defector Soong is still excessively cautious on his China policy. Although his "Quasi-state Relationship" theory has been blasted for relegating Taiwan's status to a quasi-state, the notion of "mutually exclusive sovereignty" in the form of the European Union is no more objectionable than the others'. While resolute not to deviating fundamentally from Lee's line, Soon needs to step out of his policy cloud.
I used to enjoy watching the pizza flying by the Italian-American owner of the pizzeria on High Street in Columbus, Ohio. His blonde wife would take over the flying from time to time as dazzlingly and gracefully. I never doubted the pizzas would taste different. Although Soong is precariously handicapped by his ethnic background, he is by no means forbidden to take a much more undisguised stand on his policy stand toward China.
I still miss my Canadian bacon.
¡@