The government of the Republic of China lays claim to a territory that includes China proper and extends as far as The Republic of Mongolia, but when Li Teng-hui paid an official visit to Singapore in March 1989, he was introduced as "the President from Taiwan"; all Li could do was "accept it with dissatisfaction" so as to continue his concrete diplomatic work. In September of 1991 he even declared, "Taiwan is a sovereign and independent country and its name is The Republic of China," ingeniously stringing together Taiwan, The Republic of China, and sovereignty and independence, so as to defuse the debate between the independent ROC and the independent Taiwan groups. However, this left the unification group with the feeling that putting Taiwan and the Republic of China on an equal footing was no different from abandoning the ideal of a unified China, while the independent Taiwan supporters could counter by questioning that since Taiwan was a sovereign and independent country, why oppose Taiwan independence, and why shrink from having the constitution reflect this political reality. From the perspective of the unification and independent Taiwan groups, this declaration is just a ploy of the independent ROC group. For the Republic of China to survive as an entity in international society, even under the oppression of the People's Republic of China, is fraught with difficulties. The Republic of China's guiding principle of national unification prevents her from restricting the island's unification party from using nationalism to publicize the notion of "the great motherland" (Red China). On the other hand, the Republic of China only effectively governs the four areas of Taiwan, the P'eng-hu Islands, Kinmen, and Matsu (TPKM); and if there is to be any discussion about the "Taiwanese experience," one cannot ignore the over forty years of de facto independence from Mainland China; and in addition the fifty years of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, so that Taiwan already possesses what amounts to almost a hundred years of experience in development independent of China. Although appeals are made to unify China by means of the Three People's Principles, being situated at the fringes of Capitalism, does Taiwan actually possess sufficient power to unify China once more? One cannot but have doubts about that. If the government does not accept the "one country two systems" formula, wherein Taiwan is relegated to the status of a local government by the PRC, and if instead it tries to hold on to and develop Taiwan while surviving through all the international contradictions solely on the basis of the "Taiwanese experience," even as it holds to the democratic line, the government must nonetheless face up to the will of the Taiwanese people. Of the twenty million people on Taiwan, more than three million or about 16.5% of the entire population of Taiwan, are émigrés from the Mainland, but in fact 70% of this group were born on Taiwan, and given the view that people belong to the land, then they too are Taiwanese;

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