WSJ: Taiwanese Remain Wary of China -- Political Divide Broadens

[Merlin]

This was written by a close friend of mine who is stationed in Taiwan. It will not please the Chinese government.

Sorry the WSJ is a subscription site. I am permitted to send a link to the full article by email. If you'd like it, please pm me.

Some background on Taiwan: Japan gained control of the island in 1895 after defeating China's Qing Dynasty in a war. At the end of World War II, Japan ceded Taiwan back to the Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party). Taiwan has been ruled independently since 1949, when the Kuomintang ("KMT") fled to the island after losing the civil war to Mao Tse-Tung's Communists.

Taiwanese Remain Wary of China
Political Divide Broadens
Between Mainland, Island
Even as Business Ties Rise

By JASON DEAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 22, 2005

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- ...More than two decades ago, leaders in Beijing embraced the idea that economic ties with Taiwan's people would lure needed capital and help bring about one of their most treasured national aspirations: unifying the mainland with an island Beijing sees as its rightful territory. During the past 15 years, as Taiwan's government has loosened its own restrictions, economic ties between the two sides have exploded. Hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese now live and work in China, where the island's companies have invested an estimated US$100 billion. Two-way trade has grown more than tenfold, to $61 billion last year, and China is now Taiwan's biggest export destination.

But hearts haven't all followed pocketbooks. Even as China has pulled Taiwan closer into its orbit economically, the political divide between the two has grown wider. Polls show that a steadily shrinking number of Taiwan's people favor unification with China, and a growing share identify themselves as Taiwanese, rather than Chinese -- shifts in public opinion that coincide with the cross-strait economic boom.

The percentage of people in Taiwan who support unification with China, now or in the future, has fallen to less than 13% from twice that a decade ago, according to one long-running poll by Taiwan's National Chengchi University. Other polls show broad resentment at China's efforts to assert sovereignty over Taiwan, such as an "antisecession law" adopted by the Chinese legislature this month.
...

Most Taiwanese today don't support radical changes to the island's status. There is broad agreement that war with China would be disastrous, a concern that makes even some of President Chen's supporters wary of pushing independence too far too quickly. While Taiwan's voters have twice elected the independence-minded Mr. Chen president -- giving him a much larger share of the vote in his re-election a year ago than they did in 2000 -- they also voted in December to keep parties that generally oppose independence in control of Taiwan's legislature. Despite such fears, a growing sense of separate identity in Taiwan is making China's hopes of unification ever more distant...

more:

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111143304807685340-search,00.html?collection=wsjie%2F30day&vql_string=jason+dean%3Cin%3E%28article%2Dbody%29