Taiwan's pro-China opposition party seeks makeover

TAIPEI • Driven out of China after losing a civil war, Taiwan's main opposition party faces another crisis following an election drubbing this month. It is seeking to re-invent itself and rethink its unpopular policy of trying to accommodate Beijing.

The Kuomintang (KMT), which ruled all of China until forced to flee to Taiwan in 1949, soundly lost both the presidential and parliamentary polls on Jan 11 to President Tsai Ing-wen's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), whose promises to stand up to China's threats contrasted with its own platform to be more conciliatory towards Beijing.

China claims Taiwan as its sacred territory, to be taken by force if needed, with President Xi Jinping last year once again proposing a "one country, two systems" model for the island, only to be denounced by both the DPP and KMT.

KMT chairman Wu Den-yih resigned in the aftermath of the defeat, and the party will vote for a new leader in early March.

But it is riven by disagreement over what its policy towards China should be, especially as many people, particularly the young, increasingly identify themselves as Taiwanese.

During campaigning, the KMT had proposed returning to the "92 consensus", a vague deal it struck with the Chinese Communist Party in 1992, by which both agreed there is but one China, though each can have its own interpretation of the term.

The DPP had used that proposal to drive home a message that the KMT wanted to sell out the island to the mainland's Communist Party. The KMT emphatically denied that.

"Everybody is clueless now, because the '92 consensus' is the bedrock for all of us. If we don't use it, then what?" Mr Allen Tien, head of the KMT's Youth League, told Reuters.

"In comparison, 'Resisting China and protecting Taiwan' is a fancier slogan. We need to get a new name for the '92 consensus'," he said. Beijing insists that the "92 consensus" must be the basis for any talks with Taiwan.

Meanwhile, a group of KMT members, including some lawmakers, launched a Facebook page over the weekend to canvass ideas from the public towards a China policy, saying the party had never denied China was a threat to Taiwan.

"The crux lies in what is the best choice for the attitude Taiwan takes to face mainland China," the group said in a statement.

There have even been suggestions that the party drop the China reference in its name, which translates literally as Chinese Nationalist Party, though for now that looks unlikely.

"Everybody knows we need to change," Ms Hsu Chiao-hsin, a KMT city councillor in Taipei, told Reuters, referring to the party's China policy. "But we should not make ourselves unrecognisable," she added.

REUTERS