Even before the smoke had cleared from the military exercises China conducted around Taiwan after US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) sent a delegation led by KMT Vice Chairman Andrew Hsia (夏立言) to China. Coinciding with Hsia’s visit, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office published a white paper titled The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era, in which it reiterated that China “will not renounce the use of force” and “Taiwan has never been a state; its status as part of China is unalterable.”

The KMT is like a chameleon. It changes color when dealing with the US, Japan, China and even Taiwan.

KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) reassembled this jigsaw puzzle on July 30, when Taiwan marked the second anniversary of the death of former president and KMT chairman Lee Teng-hui (李登輝). Chu placed Lee within a mosaic of former KMT presidents and what he described as their main achievements, saying that Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) defended Taiwan, Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) built Taiwan, Lee Teng-hui democratized Taiwan and Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) preserved peace in Taiwan.

Having recently called himself pro-US and friendly to Japan, Chu has now sent a love letter to Beijing in the form of the KMT delegation. What are Chu’s underlying thoughts and what are his core ideas?

Chu’s willingness to face history is a step forward compared with the past, for example when Ma in 2000 helped then-vice president and KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) sweep Lee out of the way.

However, there are great differences between the two Chiangs, Lee and Ma. Especially Lee does not easily fit in with the other three, as defending, building, democratizing and maintaining peace in Taiwan have different implications, and cannot be seamlessly connected.

The two Chiangs’ purpose in defending and building Taiwan was to safeguard the then-KMT regime and the party-state apparatus that they had brought to Taiwan from outside. Ma’s idea of safeguarding peace in Taiwan encompassed the so-called “1992 consensus” and the idea that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to “one China,” as well as accepting the prospect of being unified with China, while denying Taiwan’s sovereignty.

In contrast, Lee, in democratizing Taiwan, was committed to placing sovereignty in the hands of Taiwanese and turning Taiwan into a normal country. He believed Taiwanese should decide their own future. It was this irreconcilable contradiction that led Lien and Ma to sweep Lee out of the way.

At the inauguration of the Chiang Ching-kuo Presidential Library on Jan. 22, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said that “former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s firm stance on protecting Taiwan is undoubtedly still the greatest consensus among all Taiwanese at the present time, and it is an important lesson for all of us.”

Quoting remarks by Chiang Ching-kuo, Tsai said that the main reason the Republic of China still exists, has a future and has hope is that its government is a spiritual bastion in the world, that it is resolutely anti-communist and will not compromise with any communist party.

Chu responded to Tsai’s remarks by saying that “Chiang Ching-kuo’s line was against Taiwan independence,” and that was an accurate statement.

The two Chiangs in the authoritarian era, followed by Ma in the democratic era, all opposed the idea that sovereignty rests with the people and that Taiwanese should decide their own future.

The Chiangs fought to retain the right to represent China and called for “retaking the mainland.” Had they not done so, their rule in Taiwan would have lacked legitimacy and legality, as it was not approved by Taiwanese voters through free elections.

It was not until the two Chiangs had passed away that Taiwanese came to the fore, as democratic reforms promoted by Lee returned power to the people.

In contrast, Ma’s presidency marked a reversal of Lee’s line.

Taiwan’s first transfer of power from one party to another occurred in 2000, when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) succeeded Lee as president, defeating Lien, the KMT’s candidate, and former Taiwan Province governor James Soong (宋楚瑜), who ran as an independent.

Unfortunately, Chen’s eight years in office ended in electoral defeat for the DPP, allowing Ma to win by a wide margin. During Ma’s two terms in office, democracy was reduced to a tool for eventual unification, as he took the voters’ mandate as a blank check to pursue his political goals.

During Ma’s tenure, Taiwan’s economy and sovereignty became increasingly tied up with China, with extravagant promises of a “peace dividend.” Following the signing and legislative approval of the Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement in 2010, Ma’s administration negotiated and eventually signed the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement behind closed doors.

This sparked the 2014 Sunflower movement, which in turn led to a widespread awakening of civil consciousness among Taiwanese.

The KMT’s poor performance in the 2014 local elections left Ma with egg on his face and triggered a domino effect leading to the KMT’s defeat at the hands of the DPP in the 2016 legislative and presidential elections.

While Ma was in office, he proclaimed a “three noes” policy of “no unification, no independence and no use of force.”

However, after he left office, his true aims were revealed as he declared that “no unification” did not exclude unification as an option. Chu’s talk of “keeping the peace in Taiwan” used the word “peace” as a cover for agreeing that both sides of the Strait belong to “one China” that would eventually be unified.

Along with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) proposal of a Taiwan version of “one country, two systems,” this set of policy goals is a hard sell in Taiwan.

Lee’s vision of popular sovereignty can only be fully understood as meaning a democratic Taiwan that becomes a nation in its own right, and that is why the leadership in Beijing deeply loathed him.

The Chiangs thought, and Ma still thinks, that “one China means the Republic of China, including the mainland and Taiwan.”

This imported concept is different from Lee’s “Republic of China on Taiwan” and the two sides of the Strait having a “special state-to-state relationship,” just as it is from the DPP’s position that “Taiwan is a sovereign nation whose name is the Republic of China.”

The only purpose of forcibly linking Lee’s ideal of democratic Taiwan with the two Chiangs and Ma is to fool the public into thinking that the KMT without Lee also upholds the idea that sovereignty lies with the people — the people of Taiwan. The reality is that the KMT is far removed from mainstream public opinion, which wants Taiwan to be a nation, while its stance is close to the position prevailing on the other side of the Strait, which claims that Taiwan belongs to China.

Lee’s quiet revolution took the Chiangs’ view of themselves as China’s legitimate rulers who opposed a communist invasion of Taiwan and peacefully evolved it into a vision of popular sovereignty, maintaining Taiwan’s independent status and seeking to transform it into a normal nation.

Lee called himself a student of his predecessor, thus allowing Chiang Ching-kuo, the latter half of whose career was devoted to the economy and people’s livelihood, to project a warmer background in the democratic era.

This is something the KMT, which stresses unification, still cannot understand.

China’s encirclement maneuvers and missile tests after the Pelosi visit led democratic countries to accuse China of provoking Taiwan, but Ma blames Tsai and her administration for what he calls “the current crisis.”

Chu says that the DPP always seeks to gain political benefits from conflicts, whereas the KMT wants to maintain peace and stability, and does not want any more conflicts or misunderstandings to happen and does not want any political party to benefit politically from them.

Chu even sent the KMT vice chairman at the head of a delegation to China. With the enemy so close to Taiwan, if Lee were alive today, his actions would probably be different from Chu’s.

The KMT chairman says that Chiang Kai-shek defended Taiwan and Chiang Ching-kuo built Taiwan, but what would the Chiangs do if they knew how “red” the present-day KMT has become and how far it has gone in abandoning the slogan of “uniting China under the Three Principles of the People,” as well as unification under “democracy, freedom and equitable prosperity?”

If the Chiangs knew how keen the KMT’s current leaders are to defect to the “Chinese communist bandit gang,” they would probably jump out of their graves and purge them from the party.

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