President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) idea of a cross-strait truce is the boldest diplomatic move in decades of competition between Taiwan and China.
Under Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administrations, both sides of the Taiwan Strait poured tremendous resources into competing for allies and battling over Taiwan’s participation in key international organizations. Taiwan has thus been burdened with the labels “money diplomacy,” “spendthrift diplomacy” and “suitcase diplomacy” that refer to inappropriate use of financial aid.
Since taking office in May, Ma has placed normalization of cross-strait relations at the top of his agenda. Other foreign policy has apparently been sidelined largely because of his attempts to forge a quick resumption of dialogue, accelerate cross-strait cooperation and pave the way for this month’s visit by Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林).
The goal of a truce, Ma has said, is to urge Beijing to yield international room to Taiwan.
The fact that China’s rise enjoys mainstream acceptance in international society means that Taiwan cannot afford to compete with Beijing in a zero-sum game of maintaining diplomatic allies. The underlining political consideration for Ma is to avoid more diplomatic setbacks that might jeopardize both cross-strait relations and his pursuit of a good economic record for his re-election campaign.
China initially responded with goodwill to Ma’s attempts at rapprochement by turning down Paraguay’s offer for diplomatic recognition, sending Chen to Taipei amid strong opposition from the pan-green camp and allowing former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) to attend this year’s APEC leaders’ summit.
There is ongoing and intense debate among Chinese decision-makers on whether to agree to Ma’s request that Taiwan gain observer status at the World Health Assembly. But there are no guarantees that Ma’s concessions will translate into China’s willingness to adopt an open-door policy on Taiwan’s international participation. Even Ma has said this, and he has mooted the possibility of both sides reengaging in “cross-strait diplomatic crossfire.”
A diplomatic truce should proceed with preparation and caution rather than electoral considerations and wishful thinking.
But there are downsides to Ma seeking a diplomatic truce.
First, China’s intentions remain unclear, and some of Taiwan’s allies are preparing to raise the stakes if Taipei’s strategy fails. No contingency plans are on the table if the temporary truce is broken, meaning a domino effect or chain reaction might occur.
Second, morale of diplomats may be undermined by a lack of guidelines on how to gauge interaction between Taiwan’s allies and China during a truce. And even a successful truce that addressed the problem of wavering allies would not necessarily be a green light for the bid to attend the World Health Assembly.
Worse, Beijing could take advantage of Ma’s anxiousness to boost fragile domestic support through a short-term breakthrough, thereby reducing his bargaining space when the time for political negotiations arrives.
Ma has ruled out the possibilities of “one country on each side” of the Strait as advocated by his predecessors, as well as the formulas of “dual recognition,” “two Chinas” and “special state-to-state relations” by redefining cross-strait ties as a constitutionally “region to region” relationship. This gives Beijing more leeway to sell its “one China” principle on the global stage.
For a diplomatic truce to work, or for deleterious effects to be minimized if it fails, the Ma administration must act according to the following principles.
Don’t push too hard or make too many concessions before understanding an opponent’s thinking. Don’t proceed with a cross-strait policy through haste or based on electoral constraints. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs must draw up rules of engagement and a code of conduct while preparing for the worst-case scenario: retaliation by allies.
Most importantly, Ma must respect and incorporate voices from the opposition without bypassing legislative oversight and democratic checks and balances.
Liu Shih-chung is a former vice chairman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Research and Planning Committee and a visiting fellow at the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS