Context Is Open to Interpretation, Too
Taiwan is no longer ‘The Orphan of Asia’ as depicted in a 1983 mandarin Chinese pop song that gave expression to the Taiwanese’ feelings of betrayal and abandonment, after the US ‘recognize[d] the Government of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] as the sole legal Government of China’ in 1979 and withdrew its troops from the island. Today Taiwan is one of the most discussed geopolitical hotspots. In this contribution, I aim to take the discussion of Taiwan’s legal status forward in response to Wu and Lin’s outright rejection of the Resolution’s bearing on the Taiwan question, by drawing attention to the complexity of the context in which the Resolution was adopted.
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A Constitution’s Hollow Promise
On 26 November 2022, the Taiwanese people had their authentic constitutional voice heard for the first time in history by casting votes in a referendum on a constitutional amendment that would lower the age of voting from 20 to 18, and that of candidacy from 23 to 18 except as otherwise provided by the Constitution or legislation. Given that Taiwan’s current Constitution was adopted by a Constituent National Assembly in China in 1946 when Japan still held sovereignty over Taiwan de jure and all the previous constitutional amendments were adopted without receiving direct approval from the Taiwanese people, the holding of referendum itself is historic. Yet, this latest round of constitutional reform on Taiwan’s road towards an ever more democratic politics ends up as a damp squib.
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