On Monday, the Chinese-language Liberty Times reported that a new set of revisions to the official delineations of the territorial waters of the Republic of China issued November 18 left out the two island groups and warned that ``Kinmen and Matsu are being given to China.``

Such a conclusion may be overdrawn, but it did seem odd that the revised delineations displayed the 12-nautical mile territorial waters limits for Taiwan and its offshore islands of Penghu, Green Island and Orchid Island and even the disputed Tiaoyutai (or Senkaku) islets between Taiwan and Japan and Pratas Island and Spratly Island in the South China Sea but left out only Kinmen and Matsu.

On Monday, Interior Minister Jiang Yi-hua protested as ``unfair`` criticism from from both KMT and opposition Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers that the omission compromised Taiwan`s sovereignty and said the Ministry of the Interior will issue a chart for the boundaries of the territorial waters surrounding the two island groups within a year.

Jiang also gave reassurances that both Kinmen and Matsu are ``in the scope of the ROC`s sovereign jurisdiction`` and said it would be ``even more improbable`` that the ROC government would ``abandon`` Kinmen and Matsu after the new revisions were released next year.

The interior minister acknowledged that when the government, then under Taiwan-born former president Lee Teng-hui, promulgated the first set of baselines for Taiwan`s territorial waters in February 1999, Kinmen and Matsu were not included ``out of concern of sparking disputes`` in the Taiwan Strait with the authoritarian People`s Republic of China.

Unfortunately, Jiang did not explain why all the revised delineations were not promulgated at the same time and his position that the MOI did not conduct inter-ministerial discussions or broader social dialogue because the revisions were ``purely technical`` was at best naive.

After all, Beijing has included both Kinmen and Matsu, as well as the Tiaoyutai, Pratas and Spratly island groups and Taiwan itself, as part of its territorial waters, including in the PRC`s official delineation issued in 1996.

In this context, the promulgation by the Taiwan government of a new set of territorial water delineations that leaves out only Kinmen and Matsu inevitably sparks speculation over the possible political implications and motivations and justifiable concern among Kinmen and Matsu residents over their status and ROC citizenship rights.

Such speculation in turn should have been anticipated given the change in the Ma government`s conception of the status of Taiwan itself since he took office last May 20.

President Ma already provoked protests from the DPP and many other Taiwan citizens that he was denigrating Taiwan`s sovereignty with his statements in interviews with foreign news media last fall that cross-strait relations between Taiwan and the PRC are not ``state to state relations`` as defined by Lee and former DPP president Chen Shui-bian and his assertions that both ``Taiwan`` and ``mainland China`` were but ``areas`` under the ROC constitution.

Citizenship over territory

In this context, the failure to include a clear delineation of the territorial waters of Kinmen and Matsu easily gives rise to ambiguity about the respective status of the two island groups that can rebound on the status of Taiwan itself.

For example, it is conceivable that Kinmen and Matsu were not delineated because the Ma government considers Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) Counties as part of ``Fukien Province`` and therefore part of the ``Mainland Area.``

Given Ma`s emphasis on the primacy of ``territorial sovereignty,`` promulgating the territorial waters of Kinmen and Matsu together with Taiwan and other related islands could spark a ``dispute`` with the PRC by implying that Kinmen and Matsu were part of a ``state``together with Taiwan or implying the existence of ``two Fukiens,`` especially if the base territorial waters of the two island groups stretched the normal 12 nautical miles and thus overlapped with PRC territorial waters off the Fujian coast.

The root of this dilemma lie in Ma`s attachment to his party`s claim, which the KMT used to excuse four decades of martial law rule and is ironically similar to the Chinese Communist Party-ruled PRC, that Taiwan ``belongs`` to a virtual ``great China`` based on hoary territorial or even racial claims, and the clash with the reality of the PRC`s existence.

However, Taiwan`s democratization, symbolized by the initiation of direct presidential elections in 1996, realized the principle of ``sovereignty rests with the people`` and has already consolidated an independent democratic state based on common citizenship of the 23 million people living on Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu separate from the PRC.

We await the new MOI revisions, but should remind the Ma government that, as citizens of this democratic state, Kinmen and Matsu residents, who enjoy far greater democratic and civic rights than their neighbors in the authoritarian PRC, have the right to ratify by citizen referendum any proposed change in their status, including any plans by the Ma government to list Kinmen and Matsu as part of the territory of ``China`` instead of part of Taiwan`s democratic community.