Because President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has pinned all Taiwan’s hopes on the rise of China, he broke with tradition and gave Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) a high-level reception not long after assuming office.
To leave Chen with a good impression, Ma mobilized large numbers of police and prohibited the display of the national flag anywhere Chen was likely to go. Ma allowed some of his more important party members to use their “A-list” status to vie for the honor of wining and dining the “C-list” Chen.
The president himself even met the “C-list” Chen.
Ma was labeled pro-Chinese because of the excessive police force used to silence protests against Chen’s visit on Nov. 6, 2008. His approval ratings have remained low ever since.
Ma has suffered from his mistakes, but he is not alone. China’s growing power has also caused US President Barack Obama, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and former Democratic Party of Japan president Ichiro Ozawa to kowtow to China. When Obama returned to the US after visiting China, he was the subject of ridicule and sarcasm.
Ozawa’s case was even worse. He took 140 Japanese parliamentarians to Beijing where he lined them up so former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) could review them one by one as if he was reviewing troops. Ozawa then pressured the Japanese emperor to break with tradition and receive Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Japan. This caused an uproar that sent support for Ozawa plummeting.
These examples make it clear that people in the US, Japan and Taiwan will not support a leader who jeopardizes national prestige.
After reflecting on his mistakes, Ma did two things. He limited the force used by police against protesters and demanded Chen’s second visit be simplified.
Only four issues were to be discussed, everything else was kept simple and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) elders were told not to invite Chen to lavish banquets.
This avoided problems between police and the public during Chen’s visit, but to everyone’s surprise, KMT elders still fought for Chen’s attention. A fed-up civil servant scornfully described the mess as an issue of “A-list” Taiwanese politicians currying favor with a “C-list” Chinese politician, setting off a storm within the KMT.
Ma quickly said it was inappropriate to talk about “A-list” and “C-list” politicians.
While such talk is not very polite, the worst discourtesy was Chen behaving like an emperor on an inspection tour, with KMT elders falling over themselves to meet him.
While the government’s handling of Chen’s visit left the public unhappy and sent Ma’s ratings even lower, it is only fair to say that there has been some progress.
Aside from trying to restrain KMT elders from doting on Chen and making sure that police used less force against protesters, Ma avoided signing a tax agreement rather than giving in to China too easily.
In the past, Ma’s negotiation team rushed to sign agreements to show off their achievements to the public. This often damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, but Ma seems to have finally learnt his lesson.
The Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) is considering using an exchange of notes for agreements with China. This would remove the need to hold degrading meetings.
This is praiseworthy because it would be in line with the normalization of relations and it would stop Taiwan from appearing like a political satellite of China.
Cross-strait negotiations are necessary, but domestic conflicts of interest must be handled before going to the negotiation table. Otherwise KMT elders will ruin reasonable domestic decisions on the pace of negotiations.
This is why it was out of line for former KMT chairmen Lien Chan (連戰) and Wu Po-hsiung (吳伯雄) and People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) to use the KMT-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forum and their personal connections to meet China.
Not long ago, Ma won the KMT chairmanship and gained influence over the KMT-CCP forum.
He has made efforts to restrict KMT elders from acting on their own, but they are upset because they think Ma is not letting anyone else in on the act.
KMT elders argue that if former US president Bill Clinton could go to North Korea to negotiate on Obama’s behalf, then Lien, Soong and Wu should be able to behave in the same manner.
But Clinton received authorization from Obama before going to North Korea. Politicians cannot go off at will to help another government hurt their country and then feel proud of it.
Ma has not done much right since coming into office and his China policies remain questionable. However, revamping the team that negotiates with China is a step in the right direction. The statements by the Mainland Affairs Council, Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) and the SEF over this incident have been forceful. Ma has not been applauded in a long time, so let us give him some encouragement for once.
Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
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