By a strange confluence of events, the day after I spoke with Chen Shui-bian, I attended a conference by Ma and shook hands with him afterwards. At Ma's conference on ECFA, In an effort to get him on record, I had asked him about the boundaries of the ROC as he saw them.
I have also added at the end what I found as Article 4 of the Constitution; but I could not find the Article 10 of the amendments that he spoke of; it was something different in my copy. I didn't want to presume to talk for Ma.
My question: "You have stated that Taiwan is an independent country and you often refer to the 1947 Constitution. Under your opinion does . . . what are the boundaries of this Taiwan as an independent country under the 1947 Constitution? Do they include any land on continental Asia or are the boundaries of Taiwan limited to the island?"
Ma's answer: According to the 1947 Constitution of the Republic of China which of course is a sovereign country, our experienced (?) territories include not just Taiwan but also Mainland China, but in Mainland China we don't have any effective control; that is why we have to make a special revision for our Contitution; that is Article 10 of the amendments to accomodate that; so this special arrangement for our dealings with the people and governing authorities on the Chinese Mainland for this is the situation which is very different than other countries.
But there are some similarities, the 2 Germanys in the last century but still there are a lot of differences; so what I am trying to do, this is also true in the Mainland.
In their Constitution they also have Taiwan as their territory, but they have no effective control of Taiwan either. That is the very strange situation but this is the reality in this part of the world. Because the territory of the Republic of China is prescribed in Article 4 of our Constitution, and I still have to follow that, when I was sworn in 2 years ago as President of the Republic of China, I made it very clear, I will abide by the Constitution so we will continue to use that formula.
That doesn't effect our dealings with the Mainland because as early as almost 20 years ago when we end this temporary provision for a special situation in Taiwan and in the Taiwan Strait, we have already made those changes in our Constitution in order to accomodate our new situation. This can't be more realistic but this is the political situation and the two sides all claim that they represent the whole of China but effectively their control is only limited to what they are now. **end**
My reading of the Constitution. Article 4 of the Constitution: The territory of the Republic of China according to its existing national boundaries shall not be altered except by resolution of the National Assembly.
Under Chapter 3 on the National Assembly they speak of Mongolian and Tibetan delegates etc. but a lot of that was made defunct when the National Assembly was eliminated. In my book from the GIO, the amendments are introduced by this
"To meet the requisites of the nation prior to national unification, the following articles of the ROC Constitution are added or amended to the ROC Constitiution in accordance with Article 27, Paragraph 1, Item 3; and Article 174, Item 1":
At this point, I leave it to the Constitutional experts as to how this all falls out, but supposedly this is what Ma claims to be operating under. Has Ma ever said to the PRC that we are an independent country? Reunification anyone?
Source: Jerome F. Keating's writings
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