For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the united-front strategy is a matter of combining all possible strengths and playing on its opponent’s weaknesses. It was used to emancipate the working class, and now it is being used to annex Taiwan. Because China believes these to be sacred tasks, it set up the United Front Work Department. For Taiwan, the strategy is a threat that aims for cooptation and division. The great difference between how the two sides understand this concept means that exchanges are filled with suspicion and attempts to outsmart each other.
After the re-establishment of Beijing-Washington diplomatic relations, a self-satisfied China issued an “Open Letter to Taiwanese Compatriots” in which it pinned its hopes for unification on the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwanese, thus singling out the authoritarian government and the people of Taiwan. The answer from then-president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) was “three noes”— no contacts, no talks, no compromise.
Following a major change in KMT policy in 1986, Mainlander veterans were allowed to return home and cross-strait trade was opened up, giving China its first chance to leverage business interests as a way to control Taiwanese politics.
To handle cross-strait contacts, Taipei established the Straits Exchange Foundation, while Beijing set up the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait. Within a few years, however, contacts between the two organizations were discontinued and Taiwan implemented its “no haste, be patient” policy while China started to lob missiles toward Taiwan in military exercises.
After the KMT lost its hold on power, the united front approach changed and Beijing pinned its hopes on the Taiwanese alone, leaving the KMT out of its slogans. It also tried to establish contact with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). In 2001, then-Chinese vice premier Qian Qichen (錢其琛) said Beijing was willing to establish contacts with Taiwanese independence activists if they gave up their separatist ways. In 2002, he welcomed DPP members to visit China “in an appropriate status.”
In 2004, then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) believed passage of Beijing’s “Anti-Secession” Law placed Taiwan in a dangerous military situation. He mobilized the public to use as a bargaining chip and tried to clarify his stance to China.
He organized a meeting with People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜), where he reiterated his adherence to his four noes pledge: That so long as Beijing had no intention of using military force against Taiwan, he would “not declare Taiwan independence, change the national title, push for the inclusion of the “state-to-state” model of cross-strait relations in the Constitution, or promote a referendum on independence or unification.He then agreed to send Soong to Beijing on a bridge-building visit.
As a result of Chinese pressure and threats, the meeting was followed by a competition between then-KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰), Soong and Chen over who would visit China first. After a strong backlash within the DPP, Chen’s contacts with Beijing came to naught.
Lien won the race and went to Beijing to declare that the KMT would work with the CCP to suppress Taiwanese independence. The KMT then announced its participation in a KMT-CCP forum that would accomplish the things the DPP had not. The KMT’s attitude was that the CCP threat was located far away on the distant shore across the Taiwan Strait, while the threat from the DPP was staring it right in the face.
In other words, Lien directly copied Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) united-front strategy — to work with tomorrow’s enemy to defeat the enemy of today, and with the secondary enemy to fight the main enemy — in effect creating a CCP-KMT united front. That was how China’s approach to work with business interests to control the political situation in Taiwan was expanded to give it strong direct political leverage over Taiwan.
In 2006, one pan-blue leader after another visited China. Jia Qinglin (賈慶林), then-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, addressed the pan-green camp, saying: “We’ll even meet with die-hard pan-green members.”
Although the pan-blue camp regained power last year and government policy leaned heavily toward China, Taiwan and Taiwanese independence awareness increased.
To complete the united-front strategy, Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) formulated his six points, in which he — in addition to responding to Ma’s pro-China stance by moving Beijing’s Taiwan policies from the anti-independence and peaceful development stance adopted during Chen’s presidency toward promoting peaceful unification and “one country, two systems” — moved away from defining localization, Taiwanese culture and Taiwanese awareness as desinicization and the creation of an independent Taiwan and stressed the need to strengthen cultural exchanges.
Hu expanded the united-front strategy to include the cultural sector, making it the main focus of the CCP-KMT forum this year and the DPP the main goal of the new cultural approach.
This is why Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) could travel to Beijing to promote the World Games in Kaohsiung and then hold the Games without any serious opposition. It is also why she and International World Games Association president Ron Froehlich could call Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) the president of the Republic of China in a practical implementation of the “mutual non-denial” policy the KMT likes to talk about but dares not practice.
It was also the reason the national flag, which Ma has frequently banned at venues where Chinese visitors have been present, for the first time in many years could fly over an international sports event in Taiwan.
In addition, a visit by Yang Yi (楊毅), the director of the information department of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, to SETTV was also smoothly carried out during a sailing competition jointly organized by China and Tainan City.
The example of the most far-reaching cooperation under the united-front strategy is no doubt the soap opera coproduced by Formosa Television — led by DPP bigwig Tsai Trong-rong (蔡同榮) — and a Chinese TV station. By comparison, the participation of former DPP legislator Hsu Jung-shu (�?Q) in the CCP-KMT forum is trivial. By dealing so strictly with Hsu while not even mentioning Tsai really puts the DPP in an untenable situation.
China’s united-front strategy has expanded from the pan-blue into the pan-green camp and from the economic and political sectors to the cultural sector, and it is becoming increasingly flexible in how it deals with the DPP.
Unless the pan-green camp severs all contacts with China, it will not be able to stop party members from engaging with China simply by referring to the united-front strategy.
The DPP must deal with individual cases as they occur, but must hurry to formulate a strategic and tactical approach to dealing with China.
If the DPP can develop its own strategy, it will not have to duck every time it encounters the united-front strategy. The Chinese strategy is becoming increasingly intense, and unless the green camp comes up with its own strategy, it will soon run out of responses.
Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
TRANSLATED BY PERRY SVENSSON
Would China attack Taiwan during the American lame duck period? For months, there have been worries that Beijing would seek to take advantage of an American president slowed by age and a potentially chaotic transition to make a move on Taiwan. In the wake of an American election that ended without drama, that far-fetched scenario will likely prove purely hypothetical. But there is a crisis brewing elsewhere in Asia — one with which US president-elect Donald Trump may have to deal during his first days in office. Tensions between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea have been at
A nation has several pillars of national defense, among them are military strength, energy and food security, and national unity. Military strength is very much on the forefront of the debate, while several recent editorials have dealt with energy security. National unity and a sense of shared purpose — especially while a powerful, hostile state is becoming increasingly menacing — are problematic, and would continue to be until the nation’s schizophrenia is properly managed. The controversy over the past few days over former navy lieutenant commander Lu Li-shih’s (呂禮詩) usage of the term “our China” during an interview about his attendance
Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), the son of former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee Politburo member and former Chongqing Municipal Communist Party secretary Bo Xilai (薄熙來), used his British passport to make a low-key entry into Taiwan on a flight originating in Canada. He is set to marry the granddaughter of former political heavyweight Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政), the founder of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital in Yilan County’s Luodong Township (羅東). Bo Xilai is a former high-ranking CCP official who was once a challenger to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for the chairmanship of the CCP. That makes Bo Guagua a bona fide “third-generation red”
An article written by Uber Eats Taiwan general manager Chai Lee (李佳穎) published in the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) on Tuesday said that Uber Eats promises to engage in negotiations to create a “win-win” situation. The article asserted that Uber Eats’ acquisition of Foodpanda would bring about better results for Taiwan. The National Delivery Industrial Union (NDIU), a trade union for food couriers in Taiwan, would like to express its doubts about and dissatisfaction with Lee’s article — if Uber Eats truly has a clear plan, why has this so-called plan not been presented at relevant
RSS