<html><body>Taiwan: Implications of the March 20 Vote March 22, 2004 Unedited transcript prepared from a tape recording <TABLE width="100%" border=0> <TBODY> <TR> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="25%"> 4:45 p.m.</TD> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="75%" colSpan=2> Registration</TD></TR> <TR> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="25%">  </TD> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="25%">  </TD> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="50%">  </TD></TR> <TR> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="25%"> 5:00</TD> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="25%"> Panelists:</TD> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="50%"> Natale Bellocchi, former U.S. ambassador and former director of the American Institute in Taiwan</TD></TR> <TR> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="25%">  </TD> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="25%">  </TD> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="50%"> Thomas Donnelly, AEI</TD></TR> <TR> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="25%">  </TD> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="25%">  </TD> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="50%"> <DIV class=BodyText>Samantha Ravich, Long Term Strategy Group </DIV></TD></TR> <TR> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="25%">  </TD> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="25%"> Moderator:</TD> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="50%"> Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, AEI</TD></TR> <TR> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="25%">  </TD> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="25%">  </TD> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="50%">  </TD></TR> <TR> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="25%"> 6:15</TD> <TD vAlign=top align=left width="75%" colSpan=2> Adjournment</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE> Proceedings: MS. KIRKPATRICK:  It is my pleasure to introduce you to the panel this afternoon and get our discussion under way.  We're here, as everyone understands, to talk about the elections in Taiwan, the implications of the vote and all of its aspects, both process and outcome.  And our panel I think I will introduce in turn. I'm Jeane Kirkpatrick, and I'm a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.  And I'm pleased to be here.  I'm, among other things, a very serious lifelong student of democracy and the development of democratic institutions.  One of the most striking aspects of the vote that's just taken place in Taiwan is, of course, the second vote whose outcome, in principle, will determine the next government, which could be a change of incumbents, but could also not be a change of incumbents.  But it is, in any case, the second democratically planned and carried out elections for president of the Republican of China.  That alone makes it an exciting and significant event. I was in Taiwan for the previous presidential election, but alas, not these elections.  However, we have a member of the panel who has just arrived and is so jet-lagged, he tells me he may fall asleep.  But if he does, we will all wake him up so that he can tell us about his adventures. We all know that President Chen Shui-bian and Vice President Annette Lu won a razor-thin victory in last week's election.  That election had some curious aspects, but one of those curious aspects was not the narrow, narrow margin of victory.  They won by 51.1 percent of the presidential vote to his opponent's, Lien Chan, 49.9 percent of the vote.  You know, it sounded a bit like the last Florida elections. A close election does not mean an invalid election or a crooked election.  It just means a close election.  But close elections do have some interesting aspects, and these elections had more interesting aspects than most. One of the most interesting aspects was, surely, the strange assassination attempt which took place on the eve of the election.  Both the presidential and the vice presidential candidates were presumably, apparently targets of assassination attempts.  And what made that assassination attempt particularly interesting and, from the point of view of their opponents, suspicious, was the fact that it was such a narrow margin and that before the assassination attempt the KMT, the Nationalist Party, was presumably leading in the election, and after the assassination attempt, immediately after, the DPP, Democratic People's Party, and their candidates came from behind to win the election.  It was very exciting, like a horse race in which the winner comes from several horses back.  The assassination attempt itself seems to have turned the tables in favor of the DPP candidates. That is curious, but it's not suspicious for that reason.  I would like to say that I see and I have read nothing that leads me to feel that these assassination attempts were not authentic assassination attempts.  Nor has there been any evidence, I think, presented by anyone anywhere to suggest that they are not authentic assassination attempts.  But they did turn the tables for the election outcome.  And in an election outcome which is won by so narrow a margin--29,000 in a total race of nearly 13 million; that's a very narrow margin--that's shocking, really, in many ways. There are some other quite curious aspects of the election outcome, I think.  Another curious outcome was the fact that some 337,297 ballots were thrown out, declared invalid.  That's twice the number of ballots that were declared invalid in the previous election in Taiwan.  That's curious.  It's a very large number of ballots to be declared invalid.  But it was--these ballots were declared invalidated, and this, of course, led quite reasonably to a demand by the opposition party, the KMT, that the court seize and seal the ballots to prepare them for a recount.  And there is an outstanding request for a recount. A third somewhat unusual aspect of the elections was that the demonstrations after the election returns were announced very quickly became very rowdy and even downright violent.  They skirted violence.  They didn't become very violent, they skirted violence.  So they left people feeling that they were about to turn violent. Still another aspect of the elections which strike me, at least, as somewhat curious was the fact that the referendum, which had been one of the most controversial aspects of the election, failed for lack of participants.  The election laws require that 50 percent of eligible voters must participate in a valid referendum, and only 45 percent of the eligible voters participated in this referendum, which was short, of course, of the majority of voters that was required.  So the referendum, which did not pass, did not pass for two reasons.  But it principally did not pass because it did not have the required number of participants. Some people look at each of these curious aspects of the election outcome and say "very suspicious."  There was still another curious aspect of the outcome which was the only one that struck me as perhaps a little peculiar--maybe even a little suspicious, but probably not.  It is the fact that was pointed to by the KMT candidate after the results were announced that, because an alert had been declared in Taiwan--and many alerts are declared in Taiwan, by the way, and an alert was declared--and some 200,000 military personnel and police did not participate in the elections for this reason.  Since it is widely believed that the military and police are more likely to vote for the KMT, the Nationalists, than the DPP, that was regarded as somewhat strange.  And it certainly affected the outcome, when there were only, you know, 39,000 votes margin between the two. So it was a close election, it was an exciting election.  The outcome will have not only important national but international--likely international consequences and repercussions as well. Everyone understands that the Chinese and the People's Republic of China and the government of the People's Republic of China have been watching this election with avid interest, and, as usual, tended to fall into threats before the election actually took place.  But the threats were not terribly threatening.  No one dares simply shrug off the threats of the Chinese People's Republic, I might say, who today has problems of various kinds with countries around its border, peoples around its border who not only would like to remain independent or become independent, restore independence, as in the case of Hong Kong, but are determined to do so. And then we have the Chinese People's Republic who would like to have them all be part of a Greater China.  And the implications to the Greater China are almost as interesting, and certainly as potentially important, as those for Taiwan itself. With no further comment from me, I will introduce the first speaker on this panel.  I will call on our participant who is just back from Taipei and who's assured me that he's quite sleepy and jet-lagged.  So we want to get his comments while he's as fresh as possible.  And please, this is Nat Bellocchi, who is chairman of the Bellocchi & Company; who writes a column for the Taipei Times and consults regularly for the State Department.  Mr. Bellocchi. MR. BELLOCCHI:  Thank you very much.  I didn't expect a crowd.  I thought this was going to be sort of a talk session. I'm going to stick with, I understand, the domestic area because we're going to have someone talk about cross-straits relations and someone talk about U.S.-Taiwan relations.  And I'll try to keep to the election, which is what everyone seems to be most interested in in any event.  And then I will be more historic than speculative, because there's just an infinite number of possibilities of what could or couldn't happen, and I think we could all get into discussions that would never wind up.  So I will stick with what has happened recently that built up to what we see today. Clearly, we know, when the DPP administration began in the year 2000, it was a difficult time, mainly because this is the first time another party had been able to take control and power in Taiwan.  And the KMT, when they splinter parties together, have been the majority in the legislature again, which has been able to thwart much of what the new administration wanted to do.  And at the same time, you had a party that didn't really have much in the way of experienced talent for governing and could never really find a way of coping with the media, of which there are many here.  But also, the fact that they inherited a government with a bureaucracy that was born and raised for umpteen years in a period when the party and the government were the same thing, the KMT.  So it was a very difficult four years for a new administration to take hold in Taiwan. But I'll start, though, with what we're most interested in, is with the present election.  We go back to, say, the year 2003, a year ago, when they really started a campaign very much like we do here.  They may have an official time for campaigning, but they really start almost from the time they get elected the first time, they start working on the second one.  And that's what they had done there. During the year 2003, for example, the way, as I see it, that the KMT saw how they were going to regain power was to focus on the economy.  Everyone knows, as we did, it's the economy, stupid; that's the most important issue in which the voters are concerned about.  And they thought they had a pretty good issue there to pursue.  They are, by all means, much more talented in the economic sphere.  And so I think in some ways, including even within the KMT membership there were those who were thinking that the KMT was beginning to be too complacent.  The polls indicated that the KMT had a reasonably good number ahead of the DPP, and that was most of 2003, most of the media had the winners being the KMT. The fact is that the economy was very important for both sides.  It was very important for the Chen Shui-bian people as well.  But they, again, didn't have all of the talent that the KMT had.  So that's where the KMT put all of its energy and put all of its planning was in pursuing a target, which would be to explain why they should be back in power, because DPP had not been able to carry the economy. On the other hand, in the DPP side, they also were beginning to make their strategies on what issues were they going to use for the coming campaign.  And they chose the national identity issue.  It's not unusual, not surprising.  The national identity issue in Taiwan has been all along an albatross on the government in Taiwan in that they find it so difficult to come to a consensus on so many different issues, and all because of the lack of consensus on just what is Taiwan, where is Taiwan going, what is in fact the national identity. Now, some people thought that was quite a gamble.  It's an issue and a subject that in previous administrations they'd been very careful with, because there was disagreement--and not just disagreement with Beijing.  There were also internal domestic differences over that, and they were important. But what had been happening is something that nobody had paying too much attention to, certainly we haven't been paying much attention to, and that is the perceptions of the people in Taiwan on just is it that they are.  And the government had used the [inaudible], I believe it was, one of the big universities in Taiwan who has an election section of some kind that deals with developing polls and developing what is taking place in the country in terms of activities and issues.  They had been taking polls since 1992 on the subject of what do the voters perceive they are--are they Taiwanese, are they Chinese, or are they both?  And it was sort of a soft start.  I remember when we used to see occasional references to it.  Nobody paid too much attention because it was too far off. But slowly, and during the course of the years, that has changed.  And it has dramatically changed.  The government, the DPP government saw this as an opportunity.  In 1992, for example, somewhere around 10 percent of the people responded that they were Taiwanese.  Forty percent responded they were both.  And another 20 to 30 percent, somewhere in that vicinity, responded they were Chinese. Today, that poll has 40 percent of the people claiming they are Taiwanese only, 40 percent saying both Taiwanese and Chinese, and less than 10 percent say they are Chinese.  And that, when you digest that and think about it, there has been some real change in Taiwan among the people in their thinking and in their perception of what they are.  And therefore, the DPP, with more than just gambling, it was fairly certain that they were going to take on an issue that was going to be very, very interesting and perhaps successful.  Not guaranteed, by any means, but successful. One of the things we also have to understand is the poll-taking in Taiwan.  We have to follow how are things going in Taiwan by the polls.  And every newspaper has polls and every television station has polls and whatever.  But very few of them can really be considered reliable, nonpartisan polls of what is going on, very few.  So it's been very difficult. During the year 2003, the KMT, for example, seemed to be leading in the polls quite consistently throughout most of the year 2003.  But it's not really sure that that's the case, given that most of that is coming from the media and the television, not the real professional poll-takers.  And even some the professional ones are biased in one way or the other.  So when this year started, there was somewhat a higher number for the KMT at the beginning, but slowly the DPP support began to grow, and you could see that in the numbers during a week-by-week in the press and in the media and in the television. But the climax really came when they started the super rallies that they had.  The first one was held by the DPP.  It was really done by Lee Teng Hui and his group and it was taken with the help and support of DPP, but eventually it became more of a DPP project.  And in the February 2nd--the memorial day for [inaudible], which was the 28th of February--it was a time when years ago they began the slaughter of Taiwanese by Chinese soldiers and police from the mainland--they had what they called 1 million hand-to-hand rally around the entire island.  It was very impressive.  Here is an island, quite a large island, and they had people holding hand-to-hand throughout the entire island and calling for, you know, Taiwan First and Taiwan Yes.  And so it was a pro-independence group.  Very effective.  Chen Shui-bian's support in the polls started to go up very quickly, and he came and in some cases overcame the lead at that time.  The KMT, seeing how successful this was, also decided on a rally later on, the 13th of March, as a matter of fact. Now, in the meantime, the KMT had changed its color very, very substantially.  I think the KMT understood the basis for the DPP using this issue, that the polls they were taking were showing there was such a change in the perceptions of the voters.  So the DPP gave up much of its ideology in the course of this campaign.  They are no longer are the one-China policy party.  They no longer support the idea of the 1992 consensus on one China.  They do not want to be the reunification party.  They even went so far as to say that independence is an option--a totally different ideology than the KMT has pursued in the past.  That took place at that time, and then with their rally on top of that, which was very successful also, changed and the [inaudible] name went higher and the Chen name went down again in the polls. So we were getting very close, then, to the end, the actual election day.  And there are those who say, on Friday, the day before the election, that it seemed that the KMT had again regained, at least in the polls, regained the higher amount, and some even as much as 9 percent, but I think I would take that with a grain of salt.  They have a law in Taiwan that prohibits poll-taking 10 days before the election.  Ten days before the election, they stop poll-taking.  There's a lot of private poll-taking, of course, that goes on, and in that way people were saying that the KMT had again regained the lead. Then came the shock.  And I must say, I was in Taiwan the day that President Kennedy was shot here in our country, and it was shocking.  And I think that was the immediate reaction in Taiwan.  It was really amazing.  Everyone said they just can't believe this.  They couldn't believe it, that something like this could happen in Taiwan. Well, most people, once they settled down a little bit, thought, yes, that was going to be a great boon to Chen Shui-bian.  The next day there was going to be the election, and there would be a lot of sympathy votes for Chen Shui-bian.  I got up early in the morning and we started, and on the television they started the numbers game and it kept, all day long, going up and up and up as the votes came in.  And the KMT was still leading.  It was leading well up into, well, I would say if you're an early eater for dinner, it was still the KMT was ahead. So people were beginning to think, well, maybe there wasn't such a sympathy vote after all, that things hadn't changed that much.  But then, slowly, at the very--the voting shuts down at 4 o'clock in Taiwan, which was very early.  So by 7, about 7 o'clock, you could see it start to change, and Chen Shui-bian went up over the top and just barely stayed up over the top during the rest of the evening, which was about 30 or 40 minutes.  And after that time, the chairman of the election council, who has the authority, made the announcement that the winner was Chen Shui-bian. So people all watching their televisions all over the country waited for the loser to come forward and concede.  Well, he came forward, finally, and began.  And I know Lien Chan for many years, have traveled with him many times.  He's not an emotional man.  But he clearly was very, very tense and uptight and had a very difficult time just starting his speech.  He was clearly--they had worked very hard, just as the other side had, and it was very difficult for him to stand up and say that they had this problem. But in a very good way, he said in fact it was very close race, they were going to ask for a recount, and that he told the people they should go by the law in doing so.  But he kept getting sort of more and more flushed up.  And I think toward the middle part of his speech was really unfortunately, because he got very emotional and talking about things were unfair and things were not done right and things--it was almost a call to put the people on the streets.  And that you don't do in Taiwan.  That's a dangerous thing to be doing in Taiwan.  Here's a country that's at war with a giant right next door, and they're going through that.  It was very bad. But of course, the people that were with him, the support of the KMT people, also had been working so hard to try to work for-- So they exploded and they had what we would call riots.  But it was very well managed.  I was very impressed with the government's ability to keep things reasonable.  They had groups of one charging the fence that was blocking the roadway and the police on the other side pushing them back.  But even where some of the rioters were going over too far and grabbing sticks and trying to hit the police, the police would not hit back.  I think they really had the instructions to don't get anybody hurt in this kind of situation.  And they were wise in doing so. So, yes, the riots went on, especially in front of the president's house, during the course of that night.  They spent the whole night there.  Lien Chan and [inaudible] joined them in this.  But it was clear that things were beginning to slow down.  And then Sunday there were still some not really riots, but they were rough demonstrations--let's put it that way, it's a better way of describing it--rough demonstrations carried on, but to a lesser degree, and until today that it really looks like it's going to calm down. Everyone is agreed that the KMT has asked for a recount, they've asked for the votes to be sealed.  The judge, the Grand Justice, I guess it is, has ruled, first of all, he's appointed three justices to decide whether or not there could be a recount.  Apparently the law in Taiwan is that there has to be a reasonable indication that there was fraud before the court will permit a recount.  And so there are going to be three judges who are going to have to make that decision.  In the meantime, the Grand Justice can unilaterally say he wants all of the boxes frozen that have all of the whatever, [inaudible], whatever we call it in English. And so that's taking place now, and it looks to me as though, as things settle down, that's what they will pursue.  They will pursue the law as it's written.  As you can imagine, both parties have a whole bevy of lawyers right now poring through all the law books, trying to figure out exactly what it is they can do and what they can't do.  How long it's going to take is very uncertain.  The Justice, apparently, said just getting the three to decide whether or not there was any fraud involved in this may take as long as two or three months.  Well, the inauguration is May 20th, so I think that there's still an effort to try to find some way to get this thing settled before the May 20th timeframe.  But it's not clear whether that's going to be possible. So I'm going to stop here and will answer questions. MS. KIRKPATRICK:  Thank you very much.  That was very interesting.  I will call now on Samantha Ravich, who is vice president for proliferation studies at the Long Term Strategy project. MS. RAVICH:  Thank you.  I was asked to speak about the ramifications on U.S. policy from the Taiwan elections.  And when I began to think about it, it seemed to me that the results could be treated almost as a Rorschach Test for the U.S. policy making establishment--whatever preconceived notions one had prior to the elections, the results seem to confirm that view. For those who believe that Taiwan is moving ever closer towards independence, President Chen's apparent victory confirms this.  And even more so, that Chen's share of the vote increased to 50.1 percent from 39 percent in the year 2000. For those who praise the virtues of Taiwan as a true democracy, there was plenty to celebrate.  Although the referendum failed to secure enough votes to be legitimate, the idea of taking a measure directly to the people seems to be catching hold.  I read even among some KMT supporters who are clamoring for a referendum demanding a recount--so even amongst them, the idea of going directly to the people. The fact that Lien Chan said he would respect whatever decision might be reached by the Council of Grand Justices, Taiwan's high court, also heartened supporters of Taiwan's democracy. And for those who want to believe that China is evolving as a responsible international actor, they point to China's restrained comments on the elections so far. But on the other hand, for those who think that Taiwan is not a fully formed democracy, at least not one that the United States should risk a confrontation with China over, they point to the street politics going on and some of the more irresponsible statements coming from both sides. And for those whose views on Beijing are more critical, they caution that, while the statements so far have been cautious, China actually might be sizing up the situation to take advantage of the crisis in terms of "ensuring stability in our prefecture" or saying that "we must protect the interests of the people of Taiwan from their own instability that is being created." And finally, for those in the U.S. policy establishment, who have been urging for years that the inability for the United States to have qualitative dialogues with Taiwan officials has serious security ramifications, the events over the weekend, I think, bolster that case.  You know, it does seem absurd that in a situation like this, that could have led to a significant crisis; or like the 1996 missile crisis or even the 1999 state-to-state speech, the president of the United States or the secretary of state cannot call their counterparts in Taiwan.  The United States is Taiwan's main protector, and yet our commander in chief must rely on lower-level intermediaries to communicate with the island.  So this became very apparent over the weekend, as it has been. So, what does the election mean in the short term and in the longer term for U.S. policy on the cross-strait issue and Taiwan in general? I think in the short term, the U.S. policy making establishment will do what it does best, which is find a reason to kick the issue down the road.  I think when we finally do recognize Chen as the winner, which may be, I understand, as early as March 26th, when the election committee will certify the vote, I think we will pressure Chen to make some conciliatory remarks prior to his inaugural speech.  I think we then will coax China into seeing a silver lining, to say, you know, well, at least the vote was close, you know, you still have a chance, the KMT could come back, don't pull your punches, don't give up hope that you can still win the hearts and minds. We'll push China, on the other hand, to be responsible prior to the December legislative vote, and on the other hand we'll ask China to consider withdrawing their objection to Taiwan to enter the WHO, the World Health Organization, as a health entity, which is akin to how the Vatican, the Knights of Malta, and even the PLO were allowed entry.  So we'll try to find a nuanced, balanced way to urge caution, move steps ahead, try to find a way to push international space for Taiwan, don't cause a dust-up on the strait, coax China into doing at least nothing incredibly damaging in the near term. But assuming that neither China nor Chen takes some bold action in the near term, fortunately or not, I think the United States policy making establishment will essentially continue ignoring the serious questions for U.S. policy that revolve around the Taiwan issue.  And so I'm going to briefly describe those--briefly, so we can get into questions. The first is, how does the United States reconcile our promotion of democracy, sovereignty, and freedom throughout the world with our policies towards maintaining that Taiwan is still a part of China? Second, can we, the United States and the world at large, continue to stand, really, against what is a historical tide, that borders are always evolving, borders are always shifting?  We've convinced ourselves that the borders that exist today, that what we said, you know, 20, 30 years ago, are somehow immutable, it can't be changed; when, if you look into the history, this is never the way things have been.  Borders have always shifted. How do we intend to position the United States in Asia vis-a-vis an expanding, more powerful China?  For instance, how should the United States perceive China's increased role in Southeast Asia--as a threat to the United States, as not something we can work with, something we can't?  Chinese investment in Southeast Asia is growing at an annual rate of 20 percent, up to 40 percent in some countries.  Last fall, China and Southeast Asia declared a strategic partnership for peace and prosperity, and China's trade with the 10 ASEAN nations could soon come close to or surpass trade between the United States and ASEAN, which was $120 billion last year. Fourth, how do we, the United States, intend to manage our role as the world's only superpower and really keep all the balls in the air?  How does our battle against global terror affect our resources, and how should we consider the Taiwan Strait in the context of these constraints? And finally--and I think all of those previous questions impact specifically on Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait--how, when, what factors will we use to decide what is in the best interests of the United States--a Taiwan more aligned and integrated with a rising China, or one that is more independent? I do not think that we have taken on these difficult questions, and there are lots of reasons why we haven't taken on these difficult questions.  They're difficult.  A lot of them don't have any good answers.  The options that we could lay out when we analyzed all these things, some of them don't have any good options.  But there are trends that are moving economically, politically, militarily for Taiwan, for the mainland, for China's role in the world and in Southeast Asia that might force us, before too long, to look at these issues and come to a firm position on where the United States has its interests. But in terms of the short term, as I said, unless China or the mainland make a significant move--and neither one I can discount from happening in the next six months--I think the United States will try to hold the course steady in the near term, unfortunately without undertaking the type of review needed to assess the real interests of the United States vis-a-vis Taiwan. I'll leave it there, and we can go on to questions. MS. KIRKPATRICK:  All right, and I will call now on Tom Donnelly, who is a resident fellow here at the American Enterprise Institute, the author of AEI's National Security Outlook.  Before coming to AEI, he served as director of strategic communications at Lockheed-Martin and deputy executive director of the Project for a New American Century, which is also published in this building.  You can read other aspects of Tom Donnelly's career for yourself.  But I will call on him now to comment on our subject at hand. MR. DONNELLY:  Thank you, Jeane, and thanks to my colleagues.  I will try to be very brief so we can get to questions as soon as possible.  But there are some themes that I would like to tease out, really briefly, for the purpose of trying to elaborate on what the outcome of the election means to us.  It's very nice about the Taiwanese, but what does it mean to us Americans? I think the simple message, to me, is that we will look back on this as one of the moments where American policy makers finally recognized that the one-China policy is pretty moribund.  The statistics that Nat cited about how the Taiwanese people identify themselves either as Taiwanese, hyphenated Taiwanese-Chinese, and sort of one Chinese reflect trends that have been going on on Taiwan for some time.  And I would basically agree with his numbers.  But the underlying reality for that is that only a small fraction of the Taiwanese people accept the reality of the old one-China fiction.  The only people who continue to believe in that fiction are, A, the Chinese Communists themselves and the foreign policy mandarins here in the United States, not least among the senior leadership of the Bush administration. And if there's one thing that, regardless of how the numbers are finally added up--and that was also quite right, that the character of the KMT has changed pretty profoundly over the last couple of years.  It is no longer the reunification party and it is certainly no longer the simple one-China part that it was 10 or 15 years ago. But again, regardless of how the numbers are actually counted or what the courts in Taiwan finally rule, again, the hope most recently among the senior officials of the Bush administration that they could roll back the clock by pressuring--curiously enough, sort of standing in for the role of the mainland Chinese in trying to intervene in a Taiwanese election simply by saying nasty things about President Chen, which clearly affected people in Taiwan.  When your primary sponsor, as others have said, begins to speak with disfavor upon your president, that's something that's taken seriously. But again, when the Taiwanese people, essentially, said that's very nice, Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell, but we prefer to choose our own leaders absent your interference, again, whether we in the short term sort of kick the can down the road, as Samantha described, or face the reality that our own policy no longer makes any strategic sense and certainly is no longer agreed to by the folks who are supposed to be our allies, then, again, I would say that at some point in time we will look back on this election as certainly one of the punctuation marks or the moments in which the sort of outmoded one-China policy finally begins to bite the dust. So I will stop there and try to get forward to the question and answer session. MS. KIRKPATRICK:  Well, I guess I should ask the other panelists if they have questions they would like to pose.  Or shall we just go directly to the audience. MR. BELLOCCHI:  I've got one.  I very much agree with your thought that perhaps we ought to be helping more in getting Taiwan involved in the international community, in some way--in participation, not necessarily membership, perhaps observers, whatever.  It's a great target, it's a great objective, but my experience over these many years is that it's also very difficult.  It's very difficult to get the rest of the world to support what you're trying to do. So while we should continue to pursue that--I think it's absolutely essential--Taiwan is a country or whatever you may want to call it, it deals in international affairs very, very much, especially its economy.  It's their lifeline.  And their inability to be able to share that hurts Taiwan very much. I'll give you a very quick example.  Every country, almost, in this world has a fund or a means of tapping into some money when their economy is in really bad shape.  Taiwan does not.  Therefore, it's got to keep a lot of foreign exchange reserves on the side, unable to be used, because in any event they have an economic crisis, they're going to have to dip into it.  So they're being disadvantaged very much in this inability to get them in some way to be a participant.  But we have to be more innovative, I guess, trying to find-- [Tape change.] MS. KIRKPATRICK:  --issue of China participating.  Our playing a larger in assisting Taiwan to gain greater access to international bodies and, clearly, to fiscal institutions.  Obviously that's very important to Taiwan. It's also true that the institution that Taiwan has in many ways been most concerned about, at least the DPP has from time to time been most concerned about, is admission to the U.N.  And I know this because when I have gone to Taiwan in years since I was the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, I have been asked again and again and again about what Taiwan can do to gain admission to the United Nations.  And I have a single answer for them, because I think there is a single answer, and that answer is to win China's approval or forget it. Because the fact is that China, as a permanent member of the United Nations, has a veto on admission of any country who is not a member state of the United Nations.  And China has--you know, it's a very intolerant country and it's very immovable in many domains.  And it's immovable with regard to Taiwan's access to international agencies. So I think that Taiwan has done remarkably well and I expect that it will go on doing remarkably well, but I do not think there's much of anything the United States could do if we tried hard, even, which I don't think we have tried hard enough.  But if we tried a lot harder than we ever had, I don't think there's much we could do successfully, frankly. Questions? QUESTION:  I'm Ellen Bork from the Project for the New American Century.  I wonder if Mr. Bellocchi in particular, but anyone else who'd like to, could comment on the implications of the failure to meet the threshold for the defense referendum.  After all, we've been focused on this for so long, and how provocative it is according to some, or how necessary it is according to others.  What does this mean? MR. BELLOCCHI:  Well, I think a couple of things on why.  Number one is the threshold, the number of votes that were needed were not the percentage of those who voted, it's the percentage of the voting community in Taiwan.  Therefore, it's a very, very difficult threshold to reach.  You've got to have 50 percent of eligible voters, not those who actually vote.  So that was one cause. The other is that there's some, I think, misunderstanding sometimes that the opposition was against what was being done in the referendum and what was being said in the referendum.  Of course they criticized; they had other ideas.  But the main reason they encouraged their people not to vote for the referendum was the date, because they saw very clearly and rightly that that was going to help Chen Shui-bian by having the referendum voted on at the same time that the election took place. So if it were held at a different time, that also may have been a different--it might have been a different result. MR. DONNELLY:  I'd just like to make a real swift comment.  There's something curiously and schizophrenically Taiwanese about the outcome, in that getting especially the DPP-led government to address issues of national security, not simply the issue of the threat but what the Taiwanese response ought to be in terms of increasing defense spending or taking steps to respond to the immediate threat of a Chinese missile buildup across the strait, has always been very difficult to do.  And again, the reasons are complex, as you know, Ellen. But again, there's just something in the response, in Chen's apparent victory, and the failure to meet the referendum threshold that is just kind of uniquely and paradoxically Taiwanese, and suggests that, at least from an American standpoint, there's a long way to go.  Again, even if our president, our secretary of state were allowed to engage in a dialogue in times of crisis, the Taiwanese end of the equation is still a complex one, and the public opinion in Taiwan about defense preparedness is a complex one. QUESTION:  My name is Jay Chen [ph], Central News Agency of Taiwan.  In a statement issued by the U.S. State Department on Saturday after the election, the U.S. government congratulated the people of Taiwan for having conducted another democratic election, without mentioning--you know, without extending congratulations to the declared winner of the election.  And Mr. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, basically did it again today.  The reason he gave for not extending congratulations to the declared winner was that there are some positions pending before the courts. I would like to ask the panelists what you make of this withholding congratulations to the declared winner, whether you think it's a good idea, whether that would give hope--maybe that would be the purpose--whether you would give hope to the losing opposition that, you know, they should continue their contest.  What are your views?  Thank you. MS. KIRKPATRICK:  My own view is that it was a consequence of what it just seemed to be, namely the consequence to delay a formal U.S. recognition of the apparent winner until the courts had acted on it, because the courts are now in the process of acting on just that.  And as soon as that happens, I would expect that the U.S. government will step forward with a congratulations to the declared winner. MR. BELLOCCHI:  I agree.  I agree 100 percent.  It has no implications.  I know there's always the urge to try to find something in there [inaudible], and I'm sure that there are a lot of the opposition who would like to have that kind of interpretation.  But that's simply not the case.  It's just protocol, it's custom, it's everything else.  You wouldn't congratulation someone if what he's going to do has not yet been decided by the courts. MS. RAVICH:  I'm not sure that there were not motives playing behind it--I expect not.  But I do think that the delay, at most, may be necessary, but it certainly is unfortunately.  It gives room; it gives room for protest, it gives room for folks on the mainland thinking, well, you know, is there an opportunity we can derive from the crisis.  And maybe I'm misinformed, but, as I mentioned, I understand that there might be the election commission can certify prior to going to the court.  That might not be factual, but that is what I was informed of.  If that's not the case, then that's not the case.  But certainly when an election commission certifies, I would expect and hope that the United States government would recognize that certification and congratulate the rightful president.  After that, if we don't, I think that is a serious mistake. MR. DONNELLY:  I'm hardly an expert on elections--or diplomatic niceties, when it comes to it--but it is, again, just kind of delicious to observe that this administration's hardly been exactly neutral in the run-up to the election.  And if the outcome does confirm President Chen's victory, there will be a moment when the administration has an opportunity to congratulate the winner, you know, very enthusiastically, which I think would be a wise and good thing to do and an appropriate thing to do in very many ways.  But it is probably, you know, diplomatically appropriate to at least avoid throwing gasoline on the fire at this point. QUESTION:  What's your view about the [inaudible] in Taiwan asking the United States to get involved, to intervene in the investigation, to help them to investigate the [inaudible] and also the election dispute?  What's your view about this request? MR. BELLOCCHI:  I can't picture them doing it generally, but if an agency such as the Security Bureau or something of that nature should ask for information on how you do something which the government is supposed to impartial on such things, I could see that happening.  But for asking them to actually help in the investigation, I don't see that. MS. RAVICH:  Chris [inaudible] from the China Post, from Taiwan.  I'm just wondering, if President Chen, assuming he is declared the winner of the election, if he continues to be unpredictable, as he seems to have been in the past, how do you think the U.S. might respond to this kind of action?  Thank you. MR. DONNELLY:  I think, at least in the near term, we'll respond as we do, and it will depend on what the occasion is.  I think one of the poll numbers that Nat didn't cite is that, regardless of how people of Taiwan identify themselves, the overwhelming majority of them prefer the ambiguous status quo.  They have de facto independence and are--you know, maybe the numbers in favor of declaring independence are edging upwards, but I still think the overwhelming majority, as I understand, at least, prefers not to risk an open declaration of independence.  And the United States is caught in a situation where it must defend Taiwan.  President Clinton demonstrated that rather reluctantly, but also very clearly, in 1995 and 1996, and I don't think that the Bush administration, for all its pique at President Chen, could materially respond in any different way. So the fundamentals sort of stay the same [inaudible] regardless of what the actual outcome of the election turns out to be. MS. RAVICH:  A quick comment.  I agree.  I think it also depends on, as we said, you know, what plays out over the next year in terms of what the United States is facing across a whole broad spectrum of issues.  I mean, we expect our good friends, such as Taiwan, to understand what--you know, the United States is fighting global war on terror, we have a lot of concerns around the world, so we would like to have good communication with Taiwan to recognize the United States has significant security interests around the world that we need to deal with, and we would hope that the new government [inaudible] would understand that and not be reckless with our security as well, if I can put it that way. MR. DONNELLY:  If I could--just 15 more seconds here.  I think Samantha raised an important issue.  Part of the conditions under which the administration began to put the screws to the DPP and President Chen was the justification that we needed China's cooperation for the global war on terror and to help out with the situation on the Korean Peninsula.  Again, I think the election--and again, maybe just the fundamentals of the situation now expose the sort of weakness of that argument.  And as it turns out, the rise of China, for reasons that are good for us, is not yet associated with the war on terrorism or the attempt to transform the Middle East.  They may become intertwined, but to the degree that they remain separate, that whole argument, that we have to make a partnership with Beijing for these other purposes, rings kind of hollow. MS. RAVICH:  Well, just to clarify, it wasn't that we would be needing to work with China vis-a-vis the global war on terror or in terms of their not really helping on the North Korean issue, it's simply that, you know, when we are focused on a lot of other things, concerned--you know, there are times for everything, and certainly, you know, in the midst of a raised security awareness on our part, there are times for certain actions.  That's all.  It wasn't that China [inaudible]. QUESTION:  Steven Ramsey.  I'm a student.  I just was wondering, I've had a lot of professors and I've read a recent statement--it wasn't very recent, but kind of relevant.  Senator Kerry made a reference that we do not have to defend Taiwan in the case of an attack. MS. KIRKPATRICK:  What? QUESTION:  President Kerry had made a statement saying that we do not have to defend Taiwan in the case of a U.S. mainland attack under the Taiwan Relations Act.  And I was wondering, what if we did not defend Taiwan?  How would that play out?  Is that good, bad?  Or is this an archaic thing of the Cold War? MR. DONNELLY:  He's not quite president yet, so I don't want to promote him prematurely. QUESTION:  Right.  That's right, yeah. MR. DONNELLY:  And I have no clue as to what Senator Kerry's position vis-a-vis the defense of Taiwan is.  It's a question for him as a presidential candidate.  Clearly this is a global hotspot, and what his--that is a reasonable question for Candidate Kerry.  And again, my position would be that these are national interests that transcend party, and President Clinton sort of demonstrated that in the mid-'90s.  Despite his avowed policy of strategic partnership with Beijing, he felt it necessary to respond militarily in 1995 and 1996.  So if that's going to change or if Senator Kerry has a fundamentally different view of what American security interests are in the Western Pacific, cross-Taiwan Strait, I'll let him answer that question. QUESTION:  Jason Sota [sp] from DFI International.  I'm just curious, at what point do you think--to Mr. Bellocchi, especially, since you were in Taiwan--does Lien Chan's refusal--I shouldn't say "refusal," but challenge to the election start to KMT if it drags on too long?  I mean, today we saw the stock market drop 7 percent.  Possibly, though it's not going to happen, talk of China's intervention, all the rumors swirling.  And we have a congressional election, or parliamentary election coming up.  At what point do you think it works against the KMT if something is not decided quickly, and continue to fight the election results? MR. BELLOCCHI:  I think natural politics would make that an important but secondary consideration.  The first consideration is to win what you're trying to get, and you can take care of the economy after that.  But, yes, in the longer term they're hurting themselves as well as everyone else by that.  But that's not going to be the basis for the decision that they make on something like that.  They figure they can take care of that later. QUESTION:  I'm [inaudible] from Cambridge Energy.  You mentioned earlier that there are reasons for the United States to ask Taiwan to be patient and to keep it ambiguous.  But despite the close result, Chen got a lot more votes than four years ago.  Doesn't that suggest that he also is in a much stronger position to push for what he's trying to push and make it difficult for the U.S. to accomplish what he wants to accomplish? MR. DONNELLY:  It's an interesting questions.  Yes, his number of votes and his percentage of the electorate--you know, there's just been a lot of commentary that if he wins he'll be in a weakened position.  But relative to where he was, trying to govern with a 39 percent plurality, I would agree with the general proposition that his political standing would be enhanced.  But I couldn't begin to predict exactly how that would play out. MR. BELLOCCHI:  I also agree, yes.  He's picked up a lot of votes, not just in one area but in--even in Taipei City, the number of votes he got was very high, which is practically nothing in the past.  So, yes, he's in a stronger position in terms of the numbers.  But his problem has not been so much the fact that he was a minority president in one sense, and that is that the legislature was the one that was preventing from going forward.  And that's going to be the case again.  Regardless of who the president is, it depends on the legislature.  The legislature, again, has got a lot of power in Taiwan. The other course is something that you brought up and I think is interesting, and is far from being determined just how we go about it.  As Taiwan becomes more and more democratic and changes its laws--and mind you, they'd become a democracy very quickly with a lot of laws that still have yet to be passed to make it a genuine democracy, like referendum is one of them--there's going to be a lot of occasions when we're going to have to worry how are we going to do this.  We don't want to be against something that's clearly a democratic pursuit and at the same time is going to hurt us.  And that's something that's going to come up quite often as Taiwan becomes a stronger and stronger democracy. MS. KIRKPATRICK:  I'd like to add something to this, too.  I simply say that the democratic--you look at the practices of democracy worldwide and through time, you simply cannot find a grounds for the case that referenda, respecting referenda as a requirement of democratic government.  It isn't.  It simply isn't.  Neither is it in the United States.  Our states, some states, have referenda and recall, and most states don't have referenda and recall.  Neither is it truly in the world among democracies.  And I don't think that this is necessarily true to any greater degree. So I don't think the outcome of the referendum is significant.  I think that more significant is the fact that he got a stronger vote, 50 percent as compared to 29 percent or whatever, 39 percent, in the previous election.  But again, what counts in a democratic election is who gets the most votes.  It isn't what percentage somebody gets, it's who gets the most.  In a winner-take-all system, which Taiwan has, as we have in the United States, as U.K. has. So I think that there's no substitute for winning the election as compared to your opponent.  And, you know, what's persuasive about the position of the DPP today is that [inaudible] and therefore we will speak of them as apparently having won the election.  And that just settles it as far democratic processes are concerned. QUESTION:  I'm Susan Lark [ph] with the Far Eastern Economic Review.  I wanted to follow up on a point that Samantha Ravich was making about trying to give Taiwan more international space.  As Ambassador Kirkpatrick mentioned, there is this big problem of whether China would actually allow anything like that to happen.  What kinds of measures are you thinking of besides trying to get Taiwan membership at the WHO?  Are there other items on that agenda?  And how do you deal with the constraint of China having veto, essentially, over a lot of those areas? MS. RAVICH:  Well, I think there are a number of proposals out there coming from both our side and from Taiwan's side and, really, from democracy advocates and supporters throughout the world, that are saying, you know, look, this is a success story for a democracy.  It really, in some ways it's a great American story--pulled itself up by its bootstraps, became a great democracy.  It's something that we need to support and find a way to support in conjunction with the other democracies and free nations of the world.  Now, not all of them want to actually encourage that.  It was somewhat disheartening to see France's military exercises with China the week before the elections in Taiwan, but some of our European friends will do some things like that. But, you know, so not only in and around the United Nations organization, where obviously the ambassador is correct.  You know, China sits there, the 900-pound gorilla will veto whatever it doesn't like.  But there are scores of other international institutions that Taiwan can come up from within, as well as potentially new ones that really ground it within the circle of democracy and democratic nations throughout the world in which--you know, call it a nation, don't call it a nation, whatever, it's a democratic entity Taiwan certainly fits within. MS. KIRKPATRICK:  I would add to that, if I may, that I believe that we, in thinking about such questions, should always recall the manner in which the Soviet Union found its way to democratic and less repressive policies.  And it did that by internal reform.  You know, we had some very interesting discussions in government at the time that the Soviet Union was transforming its system, during the Perestroika period.  And there were leading Chinese reformers at that time--and there were some real Chinese reformers in positions of real influence in China at that time--and they talked about whether reform would come most rapidly to those countries, namely the Soviet Union, who were trying to liberalize their policies, their politics first because the Soviet Union was moving to liberalize its politics, and then its economy, or whether it would come more rapidly to countries--at the time they said like China, which is concentrating on liberalizing its economy first and hoping then that a liberalized and non-repressive political system will follow. I still have hopes, myself, for internal reform in the Chinese mainland producing policies which are less repressive and more open than has occurred so far.  If that were to happen, there would be no question at all about the relationships between the mainland and the Republic of China.  And I really think that if there's hope in a situation, that's where hope lies.  Taiwan will have already had some experience with democracy by then, and they can help maybe.  Thank you. I think our time is up.  There's one person back there who's had her hand up for a long time and I think I should take that question. QUESTION:  [Inaudible] from Voice of America.  You mentioned about so many unusual aspects of this election and I'm wondering if you have any doubts in your mind that this is a fair election. MS. KIRKPATRICK:  No, I don't have any doubts that it was a fair election.  I just note that those are somewhat unusual aspects of the election, some noteworthy aspects of the election. Someone here had a question, and then we'll call it quits, okay? QUESTION:  [Inaudible] News Agency, Taiwan.  A neutral group called the Tanpopo Alliance suggests that a new presidential election be held in one month without any more election campaign except official debate.  I would like to know your opinion on this suggestion. MS. KIRKPATRICK:  I'm afraid that I--assuming that the decision will be as I expect it to be, that this was a fair election, then it would be unreasonable to request another election to settle the same issue. Thank you very much.  I think we've had an interesting conversation. [Applause.] MR.          :  Thank you. MS. KIRKPATRICK:  No, no, no, thank you.  And thank you.</body></html>