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彭明敏為「一中一台」理念奮鬥

彭明敏為「一中一台」理念奮鬥

  A taste for freedom Peng Ming-min fought for the idea of “one China and one Formosa” A leading advocate of Taiwan’s independence, he died on April 8th, aged 98 Apr 21st 2022   When he was a boy, few would have singled out Peng Ming-min as a future firebrand. Born in 1923 in Taiwan, then widely known as Formosa, he was bookish and other-worldly, with his main extra-curricular passion being baseball not politics. But by the time he had become a successful academic, four decades later, Taiwan’s peculiar and unhappy international position had virtually forced him into taking a political stand—one that was to lead him to jail, escape into exile and, eventually, a job as a presidential adviser, after a failed run at the top job himself. In 1895 Taiwan had been ceded “in perpetuity” to Japan by decaying imperial China, in an effort to placate Japanese expansionism. Mr Peng’s father, the fourth generation of the family on the island, was a successful doctor and set great store by academic success. Ming-min did not disappoint. He was a school star, one of the few Formosans of his generation able to compete at the highest level with Japanese students, winning a place at university in Japan itself. To his father’s disappointment, he did not want to study medicine. To his relief, his son relented over his first love, French literature and philosophy, compromising on law and political science. He became a respected authority on international law, especially in the new fields of the law of the air and, later, space. He was lucky to survive Japan. In an American air-raid on a ferry in 1945, he lost his left arm (this had one accidental benefit in later life, rescuing him from an unpromising career in banking, where new recruits had to count banknotes), and was close enough to Nagasaki on August 9th to see the mushroom cloud. Japan’s defeat meant the end of its occupation of his homeland. At the Cairo conference in 1943, China’s leader, Chiang Kai-shek, secured the agreement of Churchill and Roosevelt that after the war Taiwan would be returned to China. Just as in 1895, the views of the island’s inhabitants were not thought worth considering. On going home Mr Peng found Taiwan not so much liberated as under a reign of terror. Chiang’s Nationalist troops were “a rabble of scavengers”, for whom the native Formosans were a “conquered people”. In February 1947, after the police beat up an old woman selling cigarettes without a licence, local resentment boiled over into an island-wide insurrection, put down at the cost of thousands of lives, including many members of the local social and intellectual elite. For the next four decades, Taiwan was to be ruled as a harsh, one-party dictatorship, with the Nationalists’ rule bolstered by the arrival of 1.5m-2m refugees from mainland China as the civil war there ended in their defeat in 1949. The Nationalists continued to claim sovereignty over all of China (and Mongolia). But Mr Peng was doing well. He had married and had a son. He completed his studies in Taipei and went on to Montreal and Paris, gaining promotions at home, a growing international reputation, and even a job advising Taiwan’s—ie, in those days, “China’s”—delegation at the United Nations. He also earned the envy of some of his colleagues that a mere Formosan should be doing so well. Gradually he began to suspect that part of the secret of his success might be to show that “Formosans were being given their proper place”. But he still shunned politics, writing in 1972 in his memoir, “A Taste of Freedom”, that he thought of himself “only as a member of an academic elite, removed from active political affairs”. This became untenable. An authority on international law, how could he lend his prestige to the government’s nonsense about recovering the mainland, and connive in its discrimination against Formosans like himself? In 1964 he and two friends drafted a “Declaration of Formosan Self-Salvation” insisting that the world must recognise the truth “that there is one China and one Formosa”. It is as simple as that: Taiwan is its own country. But it was a fairly efficient police state. The knock on the door came before the manifesto was distributed. He was sentenced to eight years in prison. His international fame and contacts must have been a help. He was not tortured, and was freed to house arrest the following year, from where he achieved an elaborate escape in 1970 via Hong Kong to Sweden, disguised as a “goofy-looking beatnik” and carrying a guitar case. This was a huge embarrassment to the authorities, who suspected, wrongly, that the cia had spirited Mr Peng out. China was also suspicious that America was trying to foster Taiwan independence, and Zhou Enlai raised the case with Henry Kissinger on his secret visit to Beijing in 1971. But Mr Peng did move to America, taking up a professorship at the University of Michigan, from where he became a prominent international spokesman for Taiwan’s opposition, and in 1981 was one of the founders of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, which remains an influential pro-Taiwan lobby. His next homecoming was a happier one. He had spurned an invitation from Chiang Kai-shek’s son and successor, Chiang Ching-kuo, to come back as a free man, provided he accepted the dogma about regaining the mainland. But martial law had been lifted in 1987 and opposition parties legalised. So in November 1992 a crowd greeted him at Taipei airport. In 1994 he joined the most important of these, the Democratic Progressive Party (dpp), and such was his prestige that he became its candidate in the country’s first free presidential elections in 1996. He made a point by speaking Taiwanese, not the mainlanders’ Mandarin, in a televised debate, but was trounced by the Nationalist incumbent, Lee Teng-hui, himself a native of the island. Four years later, the dpp did win the presidency, as it did again in 2020. Of the “three principal objectives” outlined in Mr Peng’s manifesto in 1964, two had been achieved: nobody now disagreed with the acknowledgment that “return to the mainland is absolutely impossible”; and the constitution has been rewritten to that of a functioning democracy. The third, that Taiwan should participate in the un, however, is more remote than ever, and the threat of violent Chinese intervention to end its de facto independence does not diminish. Mr Peng’s ideas, once so seditious, have become mainstream. But no more achievable. ■   自由的滋味 彭明敏為「一中一台」理念奮鬥 經濟學人2022-04-21   當彭明敏還是孩子的時候,很少有人會挑他當未來的反對派領袖。彭明敏,1923年出生於台灣(當時更為人知的名稱是福爾摩沙),他鑽研學問、氣質超凡脫俗,主要的課外愛好是棒球,而非政治。但當彭明敏在四十載後成為一名成功的學者時,台灣獨特、令人不快的國際地位,讓他對政治立場表態 — 而這使得他入獄、逃亡,並流亡海外。最後,在他自身競選總統失敗之後,最終成為總統府的資政。 1895年,衰弱的中華帝國為了安撫日本的擴張主義,將台灣「永久」割讓給日本。彭明敏的父親,是來台的第四代人,是位成功的醫師,同時也認為學業非常重要。彭明敏沒有令人失望,他是學校的明星,是他那世代台灣人中,少數能與日本學生在最高學術殿堂競爭的佼佼者,在日本大學取得一席之地。讓父親失望的是,彭明敏並沒有選擇習醫。但他父親同時也為了彭明敏沒有選擇最想念的法國文學與哲學而鬆了一口氣,最後彭明敏妥協選了法學部政治科。他之後成為國際法的權威,尤其是在航空法跟太空法等嶄新的法學領域。 他很幸運地在日本生還。1945年,美國一場轟炸船隻的行動中,他喪失了左臂(這帶給彭明敏一個意外的好處,讓他不用進毫無未來的銀行業,因為新進行員都必須數鈔票),而他當時也離被丟核彈的長崎夠近,見證慘況。日本戰敗,代表結束了對他母國的佔領。1943年的開羅會議,當時中國的領導人蔣介石與邱吉爾、羅斯福議定,戰後台灣將返還中國。跟1895年一樣的是,台灣住民的想法完全不重要。 回到台灣之後,彭明敏發現,與其說是從殖民主手中解放出來,更像是在恐怖統治中。蔣介石的國民黨軍是「一群土匪」,對他們來說,台灣人是「被征服的民族」。1947年2月,警察毆打販賣私菸的女性,地方不滿的情緒,演變成全台爆發。最終以成千上萬人的性命作為鎮壓的代價,而之中有許多是台灣的社會菁英。隨著1949年國民黨在內戰戰敗,約一百五十萬至兩百萬的難民到來,更鞏固了國民黨的統治,接下來的四十年中,台灣處在嚴酷的一黨獨裁專政之下。而國民黨持續宣稱擁有全中國(以及蒙古)的主權。 但彭明敏過得不錯。他結婚,並育有一子。他在台北完成學業,並前往蒙特婁跟巴黎進修,在母國升遷順利,也享有國際聲譽,甚至成為台灣 — 嗯,在當時,是「中國」— 在聯合國的顧問。他也引起同儕的忌妒,很少有本省人達到那樣成功的地位。慢慢地,他開始懷疑他的成功是否只是一種「本省人樣板」。但他仍遠離政治,在他1972年出版的自傳《自由的滋味》中寫道,他認為自己「只是學術菁英的一份子,離政治還很遠。」 這個想法變得難以說服自己了。一位國際法的權威,怎能將自己的名聲,借給一個宣稱要反攻大陸的胡說八道政府,並忍受政府歧視台灣人呢? 1964年,彭明敏與兩位友人起草「台灣人民自救宣言」,堅稱世界應認明「一個中國、一個台灣」的事實。簡單來說,台灣是個國家。 但當時的台灣,是個很有效率的警察國家。宣言發放出去之前,就有人來敲門了。他被判八年徒刑。他的國際知名度跟人脈,還是有幫助。他並沒有受到酷刑,也在隔年被釋放,在家軟禁。1970年他精心策畫,蓄鬍、穿著大衣的嬉皮樣,提著吉他盒,經由香港逃往瑞典。這對國民黨政府來說是個莫大的侮辱,他們錯誤地猜測是CIA讓彭明敏成功逃亡。同時,中國也懷疑美國協助台灣獨立,周恩來在季辛吉1971年秘密訪問北京時也提到此事。但彭明敏的確搬到美國,在密西根大學當教授。在那,他成為台灣反對派主要的國際發言人,1981年與其他人共同創辦台灣人公共事務會,這個團體至今仍是重要的挺台遊說團體。 相較於初次返國,第二次的返國比較開心。他拒絕了蔣介石之子蔣經國返國的邀請;蔣經國當時開出的條件是,只要認可反攻大陸的說法,就可以自由人的身分返台。戒嚴一直持續到1987年,反對黨才得以合法成立。所以1992年11月,彭明敏在群眾擁簇下回台了。1994年他加入了民進黨,他的聲望使得他成為該黨首次總統大選(1996年)的候選人。他在辯論會上,藉由台語來闡述自己的觀點,而非北京話。但最後輸給了競選連任,同為本省人的李登輝。四年後的2000年,民進黨贏得總統大選,正如2020年一般。 彭明敏1964年的「台灣人民自救宣言」中有三個主張,已有兩個達成:現在沒有人會反對「反攻大陸絕不可能」的想法;而台灣也經歷修憲,進行有效的民主。但第三點,台灣應該要加入聯合國的目標,則比以往更遙遠,且中國武力犯台,終結台灣事實上獨立的情況,也未消失。彭明敏的主張,曾經被視為叛亂想法,現在已是主流;但不再是可實現的。  
經濟學人 2022-04-21