A review of the political literature from two to three years ago would give any reader or researcher the impression that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his administration are pragmatic and cautious. Ma, so the argument went, understands that cooperation with Beijing is the key not only to peace and stability in the region but also to Taiwan’s prosperity.
That was then. This is now.
It is fairly clear, in hindsight, that Ma was pragmatic in one sense: By witnessing the growth of cross-strait economic ties under his predecessors, he knew that Taiwan’s economic prosperity, at least in part, depended on the ability of Taiwan and China to do business. In this sense, it has to be accepted that Ma was and is being just as pragmatic as his predecessors.
In other ways, however, Ma has proven to be every bit as much an ideologue as his predecessors have been accused of being and perhaps even more so. As a column in the Taipei Times reveals (“President Ma disappears the PRC,” Aug. 8, page 8), Taiwan’s president may be even more of an ideologue than two of his most reviled predecessors — the “evil separatists” Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
Beyond Ma’s inability to see the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on any map, which betrays one enormous ideological blind spot, is the belief that the PRC harbors any goodwill toward Taiwan — or any of its neighbors, for that matter.
Case in point number one: the South China Sea issue. For years, China’s “peaceful rise” in Asia meant that Beijing was willing to peacefully settle the issue so long as nations with competing claims would agree to bilateral negotiations with China. First, this puts all nations in the region with claims to the South China Sea at a disadvantage, as China’s size, population, economic might and military capabilities dwarf those of any single country in the region. Many of China’s other dealings with those nations with claims to the area are done through the ASEAN framework (though not every nation with such claims is a member of ASEAN, the majority are). Clearly, working through ASEAN means that the negotiating table would be far less tilted. That is exactly why China sought to avoid negotiating multilaterally with ASEAN.
Recently, however, the Chinese authorities have changed their tune — the South China Sea is now considered China’s “indisputable territory.” So much for being willing to negotiate, either multilaterally or bilaterally. So much for “flexible diplomacy” and “goodwill.”
Case in point two: believing Beijing will renounce the use of force against Taiwan. This is, simply put, a dream. As Richard Bush wrote in his Untying the Knot: Making Peace in the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan and China are locked in what game theorists call a Prisoners’ Dilemma: Because both sides harbor mutual distrust, they both, as Bush writes, “appear to have a compelling incentive to opt for an uneasy status quo instead of a mutually beneficial settlement.”
To believe that Beijing would unilaterally renounce the use of force — or even remove some of the more than 1,400 short to medium-range ballistic and cruise missiles aimed at Taiwan — as a show of “goodwill” flies in the face of all reason. China’s fear is that even if Ma himself is not a “creeping separatist,” he may not win re-election in 2012 and even if he does, the possibility that the “separatist” and “independence-minded” opposition will regain the presidency in the future makes such unilateral action non-negotiable for Beijing. So much for “goodwill.”
Case in point three: the “one China” principle based on the “1992 consensus.” Despite strong pan-green camp claims that there was no “consensus,” the application of such an “agreement” since the Ma administration came to power makes it important, at least pragmatically. The substance of that agreement is, in essence, that both sides agree to disagree and leave the most important decisions to be solved at a later date. Based on this “consensus,” cross-strait relations have “improved.”
However, there is just one problem: The “consensus” solves practically nothing. Any husband and wife will tell you that an argument which “ends” with the statement “let’s agree to disagree” is an argument that is not only unfinished, but will most certainly bubble back to the surface with more ferocity later.
Therefore, it is not a pragmatic statement at all — it is a postponement for ideological reasons, just as believing that “time heals everything” is also based entirely on ideology. For confirmation, ask other regions, nations and peoples of the world ripped apart by political or ethnic strife: Sudan, Rwanda, Israel-Palestine, the Balkans, the Korean Peninsula — the list goes on and on.
All of the “pragmatic” measures undertaken by the Ma administration are, in the end, completely ideological. Nothing of substance has been solved. Time has been bought for the ideological wounds to continue to fester. During that time, Beijing has wasted no time expressing its “goodwill.” That China has announced it would raise the total number of missiles aimed at Taiwan from about 1,400 to 2,000 by the end of the year despite “warming cross-strait relations” are the real proof of the pudding.
So much for being pragmatic and so much for “goodwill.”
Nathan Novak is a writer, researcher and student of China and the Asia-Pacific region with particular focus on cross-strait relations.
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