The highly political character of the Changsha meeting was displayed by the tone-setting address delivered Saturday Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Chairman Jia Qinglin who defined the objective of cross-strait cultural and educational cooperation as "jointly passing down Chinese culture to bolster the spiritual bonds between compatriots on the two sides" and "promoting Chinese culture and Chinese racial identity."

Indeed, Jia openly declared that the "distortion" of "Taiwan consciousness" into "Taiwan independence" could "not be allowed."

Besides defining what was "allowable," namely "Chinese racial identity," and what was not permitted, namely Taiwan national identity, the CCP side unilaterally announced that PRC universities would accept Taiwan academic records and tests for applications by Taiwan students in a move designed to force the KMT government to announce the validity of diplomas issued by PRC educational institutions despite intense opposition in Taiwan.

While the CCP had no compunctions about promoting its interests, not one Taiwan delegate, including the seven unauthorized Democratic Progressive Party participants, raised any objections to the PRC's pervasive violations of press freedom and freedom of cultural expression or criticized China's grossly inadequate protection for intellectual property rights, a matter that would seem to be crucial for bilateral cooperation in "cultural and creative industries."

Most shamefully of all, instead of upholding the values of democracy and free speech, former Council of Agriculture chairman Fan Chen-tsung Fan and ex-DPP legislator Hsu Jung-shu allowed themselves to be used as propaganda fodder to create the false impression of multi-partisan backing for the KMT-CCP goal of rolling back Taiwan consciousness and cultural pluralism and protection for freedom of expression and reimposing "Chinese" cultural and national identity.

The only notable reported comments by the two has-been DPP politicians were Fan's agreement by with Jia's statement that "Taiwan consciousness does not equal Taiwan independence" and Hsu's discovery Sunday that the CCP claims to consider the Taiwan people as "its flesh and bones." This result demonstrates that the DPP Central Executive Committee was correct to ban its members from attending this staged farce and will be justified in expelling both Fan and Hsu.

The concluding joint statement did not quote Jia's reference to "identity with the Chinese race-nation," its call to "jointly pass on and propagate Chinese culture" marks full KMT acceptance of the CCP leader's explicit shared ideological agenda, namely to impose "Chinese culture" and "identification with the Chinese race-nation" on Taiwan society. As Hsu "discovered," both the KMT and CCP cherish the shared feudal and racist myth of KMT and CCP leaders that "people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to the Chinese race nation."

Besides making the above statement in his May 20 inaugural address, Ma has repeated declared that the Taiwan people are "children of the Yen and Yellow emperors," referring to the legendary forefathers of the Han Chinese race and officially paid homage to the Yellow Emperor in a feudal rite April 3.

This top-down exercise in cross-strait cultural colonialism is purposely designed to negate the pluralistic character of Taiwan as a multi-ethnic, multicultural and multilingual society and grant legitimacy to only the Chinese "national language" and a monist "Chinese culture."

As Jia proclaimed, identity with "the Chinese race nation" would localize "Taiwan consciousness" and deny any legitimacy to concepts of democratic self-determination of the 23 million Taiwan people since both the KMT and CCP define us as "part of the Chinese race nation" and thus, like the Tibetans and Uyghurs, in no need of independence or self-determination since we are part of the same mythical "flesh and bones."

Besides observing how the Beijing regime treats its own people and Tibetan and Ugyhur "compatriots," we should note that such a definition relegates indigenous peoples, Taiwan citizens from countries such from Southeast Asia to the United States or indigenous people are relegated to second class (or lower) status.

This notion is already reflected in new commercials issues by the Mainland Affairs Council which proclaim, correctly, that "mainland spouses" are "the mothers of Taiwanese" and ignore the equally numerous spouses from Vietnam and other nations.

Under the "Chinese race nation" umbrella, Taiwan will be "reoriented" from its historical role and future potential as a democratically governed center for Asia-Pacific development into a marginalized part of a "greater China" whose course we will have no say whatsoever.

The fundamental question which only the Taiwan people can answer is whether they want to regress to being children and slaves in a new "great China empire" of uncertain duration or whether they want to remain adults and take responsibility for making their own decisions and their own destiny.

No one else can decide the answer but we ourselves.