Word: dpp
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...million people determine its future, not Beijing or London or Lisbon. A sizeable portion of the population - some estimates put it at as high as a third - opposes Ma's overtures to China. It's this constituency that nurtures former President Chen's pro-independence opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Even those who favor eventual unification with China embrace a strong sense of Taiwan identity. (Read "China and Taiwan Draw Closer, Amid Protests...
...growing numbers of tourists, scholars, journalists, businesspeople and even senior officials crossing the Strait in both directions have enabled China to better understand what makes Taiwan tick. Now Beijing's strategy is more nuanced. That's partly tactical: the hard-line approach was driving people to the DPP. But it's also an effort to win Taiwan hearts and minds and to show that China, too, is more complex than a caricature of a totalitarian state...
...Take the Dalai Lama episode. The opposition DPP invited him to Taiwan in order to put Ma in a spot - he'd be damned by his own people as a mainland lackey if he did not okay the visit and condemned by Beijing if he did. Ma took a gamble: he approved the trip - and bet on China's leaders appreciating his dilemma. They did. Their censure was directed solely at the DPP, with no mention of Ma whatsoever. Far from harming cross-strait relations, the Dalai Lama's visit revealed how mature those relations have become...
...home over the hurting economy and, more recently, over his government's less-than-stellar Morakot relief efforts. While Beijing has a big stake in Ma's political survival, it should start looking beyond the current President and the KMT and build bridges certainly to moderate DPP politicians. After all, the party could come back to power. As for those in Taiwan who still believe they can live apart from China - well, they need to get real. In today's world, no place can flourish without having a meaningful relationship with China, least of all Taiwan. In today's world...
...Chen was the first politician in Taiwan to work his way up from poverty to the country's highest office. Before entering politics, he was a maritime lawyer who defended Taiwan's democracy activists. After Taiwan formed its first opposition party, the DPP, in 1986, he was the first DPP politician to be elected president. During his two terms as president from 2000-2008, he promoted greater autonomy from China for the self-ruling island, but never declared de jure independence. In remarks published Thursday in Neo Formosa Weekly, a pro-independence web magazine, Chen asserted that...