'One China' main issue in Taipei election

The mainland is likely to dominate December's elections, reports GRAHAM REID.

TAIPEI - The illustration on Wilson Hsin Tien's wall isn't unusual - Marx and Engels grace quite a few political offices - but seems a little out of place in his surprisingly small room nine floors above the scooter-clogged streets of Taipei.

The likeable Tien is director of the department of international affairs in Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the party whose candidate, Chen Shui-bian, was elected President 17 months ago and which ever since has been involved in a political standoff with the communists across the water in mainland China.

The DPP, which believes Taiwan should remain a democracy, has been making conciliatory gestures to the powerful mainland.

And China, which maintains the "one China" principle and insists Taiwan is a breakaway province, replies with a thundering silence.

Meanwhile, the deposed Kuomintang (KMT) party - with whom China had little patience over the past 50 years although it is nominally pro-unification - is now courted by the mainland, although never quite invited to cosy up.

KMT leaders such as Vincent Siew can cross the Taiwan Strait and be welcomed but, like their DPP counterparts, can't break the stalemate on defining "one China" and what the political relationship between the two sides should be.

Cross-strait relations are full of nuances and Taiwanese politics are replete with seeming contradictions.

And Tien, whose DPP party might fairly be characterised as anti-communist, sits beneath a print of Marx and Engels, the godfathers of state socialism. "They were great thinkers," he says with a smile.

A few blocks away, imposingly set on a busy corner near the legislature, are the offices of the KMT, the powerful and endemically corrupt party which steered Taiwan's politics as a government in exile, then through years of military rule and most recently into a functioning democracy.

Tien's political counterpart, the equally likeable Jonathan Shih, sits in an equally modest office.

Tien and Shih, both of whom speak with American-tinged accents, put the spin on their parties' policies.

Shih - who previously worked for the multinational media organisation Knight-Ridder for 12 years and got his MBA degree in the US - has the harder job.

If perception is reality in politics then the DPP, which endured decades of persecution, is seen as the little battler and the KMT - which can still control Taiwan's legislature through alliances with other Opposition parties - is the businessman taking backhanders.

And you only need compare the offices of Tien and Shih. Superficially they are similar, but Tien's is rented. Shih's masters own the whole building - and then some.

The KMT is one of the world's richest political parties with net assets around $NT80 billion ($5.5 billion) and interests in real estate, tourism, newspapers and radio stations, a movie company and insurance. It has investments in Asia, Australia, parts of Africa and the United States.

The KMT, however, is also associated with "black gold", the local shorthand for corruption money. It's a fact Shih can't deny.

Every day more and more high profile figures - not all KMT members necessarily - are hauled before the courts under new anti-corruption laws.



To reposition itself before December's legislative elections the KMT - "Taiwan's newest grand old party", as it now describes itself - is disconnecting links with big business and launched a three-phase divestment plan in February when it put $NT2 billion in a trust.

The party also promised to stay away from the stock and real estate markets.

At its peak the KMT had 2.5 million members; now it numbers only around one million.

The party's long-term success bred complacency, leaders felt no need to consult beyond small cabals and the money kept coming in.



Shih acknowledges that there are still many senior KMT figures reluctant to dismantle what they spent decades building, but regaining power is a great motivator.



In many ways the KMT was the architect of its own demise.

By not listening to its members it created the opportunity for two breakaway groups - the People First Party, under former KMT stalwart James Soong, which took 37 per cent of the vote last March, and the New Party, also helmed by former KMT loyalists.

These parties split the Opposition and allowed the DPP to take control with a 39 per cent mandate.

Now these Opposition parties jostle to find accommodations but if the KMT cannot improve in December on its paltry 23 per cent it will haemorrhage more members.



Across town the DPP also has a fight for the hearts of Taiwanese voters as the economy winds down, unemployment rises, capital shifts overseas and the stalemate with China dominates headlines.

The DPP is increasingly appearing impotent and pleas for patience fall on deaf ears.

Recently, Lee Teng-hui, the former chairman of the KMT and ex-President, has regrouped his followers and entered discussions with DPP leaders, his former political foes.

Then former interior minister Huang Chu-wen, with Lee's authorisation, announced the formation of a new party. The Taiwan Solidarity Union will be the first party to have the word "Taiwan" in its Chinese name.



Lee believes this new party's alliance with the DPP could generate at least 120 seats to form a comfortable pro-DPP majority.

Recently, he criticised his former party for its increasing moves towards an accommodation with China.

Quite what the new party will mean for the DPP and Lee's former KMT colleagues makes the forthcoming elections very interesting.

Both Wilson Hsin Tien and Jonathan Shih have their work cut out putting a positive spin on things. "Yes, it's very challenging," says Shih with understatement.

* Graham Reid travelled to Taiwan on an Asia 2000 scholarship.