Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Cheng Li-wun/Facebook
RECENT COMMENTS in an online interview by KMT chair Cheng Li-wun, shortly after her travels to the US and China, prove bizarre. Specifically, Cheng doubled down on the view that Taiwan and China both belong to “One China.” Cheng claimed that this is the “status quo” and that the DPP is seeking to establish a “new ‘two-state’ theory,” while suggesting that there was no other alternative to her view. Otherwise, Cheng continued to double down on the 1992 Consensus as the bedrock for cross-strait relations.
A substrate of Cheng’s comments was that she was responding to comments by American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) director Raymond Greene emphasizing that the majority of Taiwanese support the status quo. Greene cited polling that 70% of Taiwanese support the status quo. Though Cheng claimed her views to also be in line with the status quo, she claimed this to be a different status quo than what Greene was describing.
What surprises, in part, is that Cheng’s comments seem to play unusually into the DPP’s criticisms of her. The DPP has continually argued that Cheng and the KMT have dropped the “respective interpretations” part of the 1992 Consensus and now instead only adhere to China’s “One China Principle.” In this sense, Cheng’s comments give the DPP ammunition in criticisms of the KMT.
In the course of her meeting with Xi Jinping in Beijing in April, Cheng attempted to emphasize opposition to Taiwanese independence as the basis for unity between the KMT and CPP. However, it would still be a shift for Cheng to double down on “One China,” which has the risk of being perceived in Taiwan as an accommodation to the CCP’s discourse on Taiwan.
The 1992 Consensus has become increasingly contentious for the KMT in past election cycles. In the 2024 election cycle, KMT candidate Hou You-yi was initially reluctant to embrace the 1992 Consensus, stating that he respected former president Ma Ying-jeou’s advocacy of the 1992 Consensus, but only later stating that he himself supported it.
In particular, the KMT has been at odds to distinguish the 1992 Consensus and its “One China, respective interpretations” formula from “One Country, Two Systems”. Even if the CCP has continued to affirm “One Country, Two Systems” as its preferred rubric for unification, “One Country, Two Systems” is a toxic brand in Taiwan, Taiwanese society having seen the fate of Hong Kong under it.
Cheng may think that she will be able to associate “One China” with the status quo that Taiwanese are known to support. It is hard to imagine that this will be the case when it is clear that Taiwanese do not live under “One China” and in an era in which identity polling continually shows that Chinese identity is on the decline in Taiwan.
Yet if Cheng thinks that “One China” is sufficiently different from “One Country” for the Taiwanese public to accept, she may be very mistaken. One notes that her predecessor as a hardliner leader of the KMT, Hung Hsiu-chu, herself proposed replacing the 1992 Consensus’ “One China, respective interpretations” with something she termed to be an “advanced version” of the 1992 Consensus, which would consist of “One China, same interpretations.” Cheng’s emphasis on “One China” runs into political territory similar to that of Hung. Hung was, of course, considered a disastrous candidate for the KMT and was eventually replaced as presidential candidate by Eric Chu.
Either way, that Cheng feels the need to differentiate her stance from Raymond Greene shows that the spat between AIT and the KMT continues. Cheng’s deputy chair, Hsiao Hsu-tsen, previously attacked Greene over Greene’s advocacy for increased defense spending in Taiwan, claiming that Greene held no higher position than a section chief. It is possible that Cheng was denied meetings with higher-level officials in DC from AIT, as compared to previous visits by other KMT politicians, because of this slight directed at Greene. In this sense, Cheng’s trip to the US did not mend splits between the KMT and the US political establishment.