Taiwan Independence Party

Taiwan Independence Party symbol

The Taiwan Independence Party ( TAIP , Chinese  建國 黨 , W.-G. Jiànguódǎng , English Taiwan Independence Party ) is a small political party founded in 1996 in the Republic of China in Taiwan . She advocates complete and consistent independence of Taiwan from the People's Republic of China .

Party history

The party was founded on October 6, 1996. The Chinese name of the party meant "party of national construction". Internationally, the party was known as the Taiwan Independence Party (" Taiwan Independence Party ", TAIP). Members of the Taiwan Association of University Professors (TAUP) played a decisive role in its establishment. In this academic association, Lin Shan-tien and Li Yung-chih (both professors from Taiwan National University ) and Chuang Chi-ming (from Tamkang University ) were the most prominent figures, and the former became the spokesman for the new party. Until 1995 these professors had been active supporters and members of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and had actively participated in election campaign events for it. In the first direct election of the president on March 23, 1996 , Peng Ming-min , the DPP's candidate, won a disappointing 21.1% of the vote, while Lee Teng-hui , the Kuomintang's candidate, won the election with a 54% majority. Even in the election of the Legislative Yuan in 1995 , which had taken place just under three months earlier , the DPP had gained votes, but with 33.4% of the votes it was far behind the Kuomintang, which won 46.1%. In response to the unsatisfactory election results, the DPP leadership under Shih Ming-teh and Hsu Hsin-liang took a different course. Instead of the previous rather confrontational course, the DPP now occasionally tried to conclude political alliances with its political opponents Kuomintang and Xindang. In turn, some supporters of the DPP did not want to support this policy and saw it as unprincipled tactics and as part of the goal of full independence for Taiwan. A DPP party manifesto from May 1996 stated that "Taiwan independence does not necessarily require that the state name be changed to 'Taiwan'" and that "the country name, flag and national anthem are not key objectives of the Taiwanese independence movement" . When the new DPP party leader Hsu Hsing-liang proposed the formation of a coalition government to the Kuomintang in the spring of 1996 , some DPP supporters had exceeded the tolerable limit and set up their own party, the TAIP.

Koh Se-kai , chairman of TAIP from 1997 to 1998

The TAIP took an even more consistent and uncompromising stand of independence than the DPP and justified this with the fact that Taiwan had always had a different culture from mainland China, not just since 1895 (the beginning of 50 years of Japanese rule over Taiwan ), but. The Taiwanese are an "oceanic", cosmopolitan, individualistic people, an immigrant society with a diverse culture, also influenced by the West (historically by the Portuguese, the Dutch , more recently the USA), while the mainland Chinese are comparatively conservative, collectivist and traditionally authoritarian.

In the 1998 election for the legislative yuan , the TAIP won 145,118 votes (1.45%) and thus remained below the current 5 percent hurdle, but was able to win a direct mandate and was represented by one representative in the legislative yuan in the following legislative period . After Chen Shui-bian , the DPP's candidate , had won the presidential election on April 7, 2000 , there was a wave of prominent officials leaving the TAIP. Former TAIP general secretary "Stephen" Lee Sheng-hsiung, former TAIP chairman Lee Chen-yuan and former general secretary "Ben" Wei Jui-min, among others, left the party. They justified their resignation with the fact that with the presidency of Chen Shui-bien the historical goal of the independence advocates had been reached and the party had therefore lost its livelihood. In August 2001, the Taiwan Solidarity Union was also founded, which also pursued a determined pro-independence course and gathered many supporters of independence behind it. In the following election in 2001, the TAIP only won 1,382 votes (0.1%) and won no more seats. Since then, the party has largely been politically insignificant.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Nation-building Party formed. taiwandc.org, April 7, 2000, accessed November 11, 2016 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Axel Schneider, Gunter Schubert: "Are we Chinese or Taiwanese?" Taiwan in the conflict of competing national and cultural identities . In: ASIA . tape 62 , January 1997, ISSN  0721-5231 , p. 46–67 ( sufferinguniv.nl [PDF]).
3. ^ Lin, Wen-lung Laurence: The strategic symbiosis between us Asian policy and Taiwanese nationalism. Durham University, p. 182 , accessed on November 11, 2016 (English, quotation in English: “Taiwan independence does not necessarily require changing the name of the country to 'Taiwan.' The national name, flag and anthem are not important goals of the Taiwan independence movement. " ). 
4. ^ Christian Schafferer: The 2001 National and Local Elections in Taiwan. (PDF) In: Taiwan Papers No. 4. Department of Political Science, National University of Taiwan and Ruhr University Bochum, Faculty of East Asian Studies , October 2002, accessed on November 2, 2016 (English). 
5. ^ Christian Schafferer: The Power of the Ballot Box: Political Development and Election Campaigning in Taiwan . Lexington Books, 2003, ISBN 0-7391-0481-0 , pp. 70-72 (English).