From Tsai Ing-wen to the current Lai Ching-te administration, the way the DPP handles national sovereignty and international status is truly incomprehensible, and it even makes people feel that they are fundamentally self-dwarfing. This is not a normal political change, but something that directly shakes the country’s legal foundation and betrays the trust of the people. Their behavior is like voluntarily discarding their own martial arts skills on the international stage; it is simply selling out the country for personal gain!
The Disappearing Legal Defense: MOFA Document Mysteriously Evaporates
The clearest evidence is that the “Position Paper on the International Legal Status of Taiwan Legally Belongs to the Republic of China” (referred to as the Position Paper on Taiwan’s International Legal Status), which firmly claims national sovereignty, has vanished into thin air from the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China.
This document, published during the previous Ma Ying-jeou administration (2008), clearly stated that Taiwan’s international legal status belongs to the Republic of China and served as an important line of defense to protect our national sovereignty.
In fact, I have always been curious whether this document would disappear under the DPP’s rule, which is why I specially reproduced the full text on the Taiwan Next website in the 105th year of the Republic of China (2016) (Link).
However, under the DPP’s control, this document underwent a suspicious process of “slow death”:
Sneaky Downgrading: I re-examined it on July 18, the 113th year of the Republic of China (at the end of Tsai Ing-wen’s administration), and the originally established “International Legal Status” category page had been silently removed. The document was downgraded and moved under the broad “Important Speeches.” This was not simple website maintenance, but an attempt to turn the national status from a “legal basis” into just “political rhetoric,” which was fundamentally preparing for its subsequent complete deletion.
Completely Gone: Historical memory was erased by December 2, the 114th year of the Republic of China (during the Lai Ching-te administration). This article can no longer be found on the official website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as if it never existed.
Caption: Cannot find the “Position Paper on the International Legal Status of Taiwan Legally Belongs to the Republic of China” on the official website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The disappearance of this document is definitely not an accident! It is obviously the DPP’s active cooperation with certain claims that “Taiwan’s status has not yet been finalized.” They are not protecting sovereignty but actively harming it. Taking down official documents is equivalent to personally creating legal loopholes and letting the position on national sovereignty collapse on its own. How is this practice different from tearing down one’s own city walls?
Later, on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, I found a response titled “Regarding a scholar’s submission to the media questioning the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ retention of the ‘Position Paper on Taiwan’s International Legal Status’ published during the Ma administration, which caused external misunderstanding of the current government’s position.” The text pointed out that a scholar named “Jiang Huang-chi” submitted an article to the media demanding the removal of the “Position Paper on Taiwan’s International Legal Status,” published on May 15, the 111th year of the Republic of China (2022).
At that time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ response was quite standard, pointing out that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs defends national sovereignty in accordance with the Constitution and laws and respects the exercise of people’s freedom of speech. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs follows the political entrustment of the people through democratic elections, exercises sovereign acts such as concluding treaties with foreign countries, issuing passports, and issuing visas… In recent years… it has continuously and repeatedly issued relevant sovereign statements in various forms and channels that “the Republic of China… is a sovereign and independent state and is not subordinate to the People’s Republic of China”… this is the current government’s position and the status quo of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. … The “News Center - Important Issues - History Section” still contains the “Position Paper on Taiwan’s International Legal Status,” which is only placed in the history section and is an undeniable part of past history. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is studying an appropriate way to avoid external misunderstanding of its position.
But only a few years later, the appropriate way of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was to casually listen to a single scholar and directly delete this historical document in private. And he is a controversial pro-Taiwan independence scholar (Reference article: Why did the dignified Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China “self-emasculate” its sovereign legal principles based on the opinion of only one controversial scholar?).
Three Means of Systematic Self-dwarfing
In addition to deleting legal documents, the DPP government has means of self-dwarfing at multiple levels, all pointing to the same mindset of “pleasing outsiders”:
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Not mentioning the national title externally, making it neither justified nor logical: They intentionally do not use “Republic of China” (ROC) on international occasions and only emphasize “Taiwan.” But “Republic of China” is the entity that inherits and owns the title in international law. Doing this blurs Taiwan’s international status and is equivalent to throwing away important legal evidence. It’s like a person having a property title deed but not taking it out and only saying they live here; isn’t that putting the incidental before the fundamental?
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Enduring insulting titles, losing all national dignity: On international occasions such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the government actually tolerates those titles with discriminatory or dwarfing implications (such as “Chinese Taipei” or worse), and has not toughened up to protect the country’s dignity. This kind of unlimited retreat from external pressure is fundamentally a public admission that we are just a secondary political group!
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Distorting history and weakening the foundation of sovereignty: They deliberately promote a single historical view, refuse to recognize the legal continuation and defensive role of the Republic of China for Taiwan’s sovereignty, and guide national identity toward a new entity lacking a basis in international law. This is equivalent to disguised weakening of the legal confidence of Taiwan in the face of external threats.
Selling Out the Country for Personal Gain, Spiritual Defeatism
The language of criticism must be sharp: these actions of the DPP authorities are already a kind of spiritual surrender! They did not work hard to strive for the maximum interest and dignity for the country in difficult situations, but instead chose to retreat and dwarf themselves in exchange for some short-lived international recognition or political “sense of security.”
A truly patriotic ruler should “not yield an inch of land, and not retreat an inch of reason.” But now, the actions are actively taking down the legal shield and dismantling the solid city walls into scattered bricks. This erosion of the country’s foundation is exactly the manifestation of the “selling out the country for personal gain” mindset—not directly ceding land, but ceding legal principles and selling out the future in exchange for the smooth progress of the ruler’s current route.
Historical lessons tell us: when a country begins to deny its own legal status and throw away its own legal evidence, it is equivalent to giving hostile forces the best excuse to attack you! When we no longer insist on the legal ownership of Taiwan’s sovereignty internationally, we are personally handing the knife handle to those who want to annex us!
We must issue a serious warning: any political operation that attempts to clear historical documents and dilute the country’s legal and principled status will be recorded by history as a major crime against national sovereignty. Such acts, with every word striking at the heart of the dark hole of flattering outsiders for personal gain, will surely be severely condemned and spurned by all those who defend the national dignity and sovereignty of the Republic of China.