President Chen Shui-bian (
Interestingly, in a discussion regarding the US' hope that Chinese President Hu Jintao (
So, Chen is clear then that an ideal is one thing and reality is another, and that cross-strait relations are going nowhere in a hurry.
Lien's visit to China and meeting with Hu resulted in a joint communique, issued on April 29. One of the main clauses in that communique mentioned that the two parties would set up a platform for regular meetings between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the KMT. The clause also states that the first meeting will be held in Taipei before Lien steps down as chairman next month. A delegation of top KMT leaders and legislators is currently in Beijing to discuss the details of the meeting.
Chen -- who, full of wishful thinking, has been offering Beijing many goodwill gestures -- is finally waking up and is tasting the bitter fruit of his efforts. But it is surprising to see that the opposition leaders still cannot see the error of their ways. They remain full of hope that the CCP-KMT show will help improve their political prestige.
But it is just as Chen has pointed out. After Lien's, Soong's and New Party Chairman Yok Mu-ming's (郁慕明) visits to China, they are full of ideas for peaceful cross-strait development, but this simply does not meet the test of the current reality. Beijing continues to isolate Taiwan within the international community, and even in the few months since the opposition leaders visited China, it has not made the slightest concession in continuing to pursue this policy.
Because of China's pressure, Chen will not be able to attend the APEC meeting in South Korea at the end of the year. The US Congress on July 20 even passed a proposal to allow high-ranking Taiwanese officials to visit the US, and called on the US government to engage in direct talks with Taiwan's elected officials. This has also been met with violent opposition from the Chinese.
China continues to treat Taiwan as the enemy and, in pursuing its cross-strait policy, has sought every means to destroy it. Given this situation, any talks in Taipei between the KMT and the CCP are not likely to yield any result beyond a mass of propaganda applauding their achievements.
We hope that the KMT will realize its naivety in trying to "bargain with a tiger for its skin." As Chen pointed out at the videoconference, if China's "peaceful rising" is not accompanied by "discovering peace" and "developing democracy," then it is unlikely to ever have a government that loves peace.
Meanwhile, the "platform for communication" that the KMT thinks it has established with the CCP will simply become a stage on which China can perform, striving to divide Taiwan. It will certainly not forward the cause of cross-strait peace. How is it that the KMT cannot see something that is so blatantly obvious?
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017