Taiwan: problem of mistaken identity

Don't try to book a China Airlines flight to Beijing because you're likely to end up in Taipei. The airline may sound like a Chinese carrier, but like Chinese Petroleum Corp, China Motor Corp and the Central Bank of China, it's actually based in Taiwan.
The problem of mistaken identity also plagues Taiwan's 23 million people whenever they go abroad, as their passports carry the island's official name, Republic of China (ROC), easily sparking mix-ups with the People's Republic of China (PRC).
"We are Taiwanese. Taiwan is our mother. We are not Chinese," said Peter Wang, a social activist who directs a league of about 130 pro-Taiwan independence groups called the Alliance to Campaign for Rectifying the Name of Taiwan.
Their aim is to get rid of the ROC name and create the Republic of Taiwan, symbolising formal independence from Beijing, which views the island as an inseparable part of its territory and vows to attack if Taipei declares statehood.
Wang is willing to risk the wrath of the world's largest army, which has deployed over 600 missiles aimed at Taiwan.
He says the ROC name was forced on the island by a foreign regime: Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalists who fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong's communists.
"We Taiwanese were forced to wear this tattered coat and now we want to take it off," said Wang, 64, a former electrical engineer who joined the independence movement in the 1980s.
"We hope to create a new constitution and change our name to Taiwan and use that title to apply to join the United Nations."
The Republic of China was founded by Sun Yat-sen in the mainland in 1912, succeeding the Qing Dynasty after a revolution brought down the corrupt, decaying Manchu empire.
The name was brought to Taiwan along with the mainland's constitution in 1949, when the defeated Nationalist government escaped to an island chain that it intended to use as a base to take back China from the communists.
Mainland China changed its name to the PRC, and in 1971 succeeded in replacing the ROC in the United Nations.
Defeat at the UN spurred a grassroots independence movement in Taiwan - raising the question of who the ROC truly represented if not China - amid growing discontent with the brutal martial-law rule of Chiang's Nationalists.
"Since the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, they have not ruled over Taiwan for a single second. We have nothing to do with them," said Wang. "It's a fact that Taiwan is independent. It's just that the legal procedure has not been completed yet."
The ROC's constitution still claims sovereignty over the mainland, and even Mongolia, just as the PRC claims Taiwan.
Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian has proposed writing and adopting a tailor-made constitution for the island by 2008, but, under pressure from China and the United States, backed down from any plans to make changes to the national title or territory.
Nonetheless, security analysts see the Taiwan Strait as among the most dangerous flash-points in Asia due to worries the Chen administration intended to turn Taiwan's de facto statehood into de jure independence - something China will not tolerate.
Professor Lin Huo-wang of National Taiwan University says pro-independence activists are not only battling the Communist Party leadership in Beijing, but also swelling nationalism among the mainland's 1.3 billion people.
"The stronger the pro-independence forces are in Taiwan, the stronger is nationalism in the mainland," said Lin. "For the mainland, peace comes only after unification."
According to a survey last month by the TVBS cable station, 45 percent of more than 1,200 respondents consider themselves to be Taiwanese, exceeding for the first time the 41 percent who consider themselves to be both Taiwanese and Chinese.
While many Taiwan people are frustrated about being barred by China from global organisations such as the UN, or at being forced to participate in the Olympics under the "Chinese Taipei" title not all agree with dropping the ROC name.
Opinion polls consistently show nearly 90 percent of people prefer to maintain the political status quo, where the government calls itself the ROC to retain the fig leaf of being Chinese.
Some oppose a name change for fear of an invasion by China. Others have fond feelings for the name, having been brought up praising the ROC in patriotic songs and saluting its flag before school starts.
Yet others object to slashing their roots to the mainland and dream of eventual unification with a democratic China.
"We can't give up the Republic of China, which was founded by our nation's father, Sun Yat Sen, with sacrifice and revolution," said Chou Ching-chuen, 61, who heads the pro-unification Concentric Patriotism Association of R.O.C.
"For Chinese people, the most important thing is history, continuity from one generation to the next. But Chen Shui-bian wants to turn his back on all of that. He wants to close the doors and become his own emperor."
Chou, who escaped to Hong Kong from China's Guangdong province during the great famine of 1959-1961 and then moved to Taiwan, argues that any push towards Taiwan independence would bring disaster.
He recalls a string of 19th century incidents when foreign powers bullied a fragmented China. Other pro-China activists say they fear allowing Taiwan to go its own way would have a domino effect in restive Tibet and the far western region of Xinjiang.
They see the 55-year separation between Taiwan and China as a blip in Chinese history, one that will eventually be erased by the swing of the pendulum.
"Just because two brothers don't like each other, they cannot change their surname and deny their joint ancestry," said Chou.