The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) poor showing in the recent elections has raised eyebrows in Beijing, suggesting there is a rather shaky patch in cross-strait relations ahead.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) also made a careless error in a Wall Street Journal Asia interview, saying he would not discuss unification with China during this term; his policy could be summed up as the “three noes” — no unification, no independence and no use of force — and maintaining the “status quo.” He then said there was not much support for unification in Taiwan, adding that the public should be given the time “to decide what to do.”
This was met with an unusally quick response from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, which declared that it would do everything in its to power to seek complete national unification — a position, it said, that had always remained unchanged.
Chinese leaders discussed the uncertainty surrounding Taiwan’s political situation last month and concluded that they needed to be flexible in response. China wants to open discussions on the subject after talks on an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA), hoping to sign a memorandum similar to the one dealing with a cross-strait peace agreement by 2012. So who would have thought the election results would have caused such anxiety in Beijing, or that Ma would turn his attention to reinforcing relations with the US and Japan and away from his position on China.
Ma is between a rock and a hard place. CommonWealth Magazine reported that 61 percent of the public are concerned about being overly reliant on China and 78 percent want the “status quo,” while the government’s disapproval rating rose to 66 percent.
Public opinion, then, is not merely moving toward support for independence, it is also showing distinct disappointment in Ma’s 600 days in power, during which he has had complete control over the government and the legislature. The coming legislative by-elections and five special metropolitan elections will be a real test, with implications for Ma’s re-election effort in 2012. No wonder Beijing’s faith in Ma has been shaken.
Even so, Ma has not lost his airs, despite his lack of presidential gravitas. He seems to think that all he has to do is fly the flag of reform and crank up the public relations machine. It has yet to dawn on him that when you have total control over government, you cannot keep spouting soundbites while failing to deliver.
From the outset Ma has blamed his problems on wider political circumstances or the previous administration. More and more, however, he is falling short of public expectations. More than half of the public doubt that he can get rid of money politics, reform the KMT or put a dent in corruption. He has offered little more than a symbolic nod to returning KMT assets to the national coffers. The elections were therefore nothing if not a clear warning.
Cross-strait relations used to be driven by Beijing. Nowadays, the impetus comes from Ma’s deficit in public trust, which poses several challenges to cross-strait policy. Taiwanese are calling for a greater say in matters that affect them, and calls for referendums should be read as a warning that the public lacks faith in the Ma administration.
As Charles W. Kegley, Jr, vice chairman of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York, recently put it, don’t put your cards on the table too early during economic and trade negotiations. He warned against confusing talks with economic negotiations; after all, trade is trade and politics is politics.
If we need an example of this, look no further than recent cross-strait talks. And if the government loses its focus, the result could be political rallies.
Lu I-ming is a former publisher and president of the Taiwan Shin Sheng Daily News.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
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