• by IPS Correspondents (taipei)
• Friday, December 02, 1994
• Inter Press Service

TAIPEI, Dic 02 (IPS) - Shiao Yi-Hsiu is well aware of China's threat to invade Taiwan to force reunification with the mainland if necessary, but he says Taiwan should still declare independence from Beijing.

A recent returnee engineer from the United States, Shiao is among thousands of middle class Taiwanese rallying this week to back the opposition pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) against the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), which officially supports reunifying the island with mainland China.

"Taiwan is our country," said Shiao over the blare of campaign sloganeering at an evening political rally this week. "We are different from China and should tell the world we're different."

The Taiwanese vote Saturday in a watershed election that is another step in the island's march from orderly autocracy to chaotic democracy, and has heightened tensions with the Chinese mainland over Taiwan's growing aspirations for independence.

This week-end's islandwide vote for the influential provincial governorship of Taiwan and the mayors of its two largest cities, Taipei and Kaoshiung, underscores Taiwan's democratic experiment as an example of how a repressive government based on Chinese culture can open up politically and turn toward a multi-party system.

Taiwan's political liberalisation, launched six years ago, is viewed with increasing alarm by Beijing.

Indeed, it sees the island's recent campaign for international recognition -- including a demand to have a seat once more in the United Nations -- as a subversive force to the Chinese Communist Party's hold on power and a direct challenge to Chinese unity.

Years after the communists forced the KMT off the mainland and into Taiwan in 1949, Beijing gained the upperhand over Taipei in the international scene, successfully imposing a One China policy on other countries that has left Taiwan by the diplomatic wayside.

But growing contacts across the Formosa Straits in recent years have meant more mainland Chinese are aware that their kinfolk in Taiwan can curse their leaders, cast votes and engage in other 'mind-boggling' activities.

Taiwanese voters freely elected their legislature for the first time in 1992, and will directly choose their president in 1996.

Playing to an emerging Taiwanese nationalism, President Lee Teng-hui, a moderate and native Taiwanese, has purged the ruling KMT of hardline mainlanders who fled China with Gen Chiang Kai- shek following the communist takeover.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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