Upon being re-elected chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) on Friday, Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) vowed to forge ahead with negotiations under the so-called “1992 consensus,” a clear sign, if one was needed, that Beijing and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) intend to leave no room for the emergence of alternative approaches to cross-strait talks.
Chiang’s pledge plays right into the KMT’s insistence on abiding by the controversial consensus, whose existence is denied by both the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), who was in office at the time the agreement was alleged to have been struck.
Chiang showed that the nation’s top cross-strait negotiator is anything but neutral, since it has been widely rumored that the DPP is hard at work trying to ensure that communication with Beijing would not cease if the party’s presidential candidate, Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), were elected on Jan. 14. Although the DPP has refused to confirm the rumor, at least two of Tsai’s advisers are reportedly engaged in talks with Chinese officials on alternatives to the “1992 consensus” that would be palatable to both sides — perhaps a sign that Beijing realizes that a DPP return to the executive office is not altogether impossible.
Not only has Tsai said the DPP would not cancel outright the cross-strait agreements signed under President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), she has made it clear that under her watch, Taiwan and China would continue to talk in an attempt to work out some modus vivendi. Her party also realizes that, for better or worse, Taiwan cannot afford to have its economic ties with China severed, and it will continue to explore means to continue the liberalization of cross-strait trade — efforts that, we must not forget, were launched well before Ma stepped into office.
However, Chiang’s pledge would nip Tsai’s efforts in the bud. In late October, Chiang’s Chinese counterpart, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), told bilateral economic talks in Tianjin, China, that the agreements signed during the past four years would be threatened if the DPP did not change its stance and agree to a “joint political basis,” which could have been no other than the “1992 consensus.”
Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Wang Yi (王毅) was even less oblique, saying cross-strait talks could only take place based on the consensus.
It is also hardly a coincidence that former National Security Council secretary-general Su Chi (蘇起), who admitted to inventing the term “1992 consensus,” became a board member at the foundation on Friday. Su, whose wife and brother have been the object of controversy over certain business deals in China, denies “speculation” that his presence on the SEF board signifies the possibility of political negotiations, but his claims are hard to believe.
For several years, as he played musical chairs in government and academia, Su has fulfilled a behind-the-scenes role as a point man for political talks with China. Not only did US intelligence place him in Beijing sometime in March 2005 getting friendly with Chinese Communist Party officials, no sooner had he stepped down as council chairman in February last year, than he was seeking to go to China again. Only laws about former officials with access to top classified information and public disclosure of his desire to go to China prevented Su from making a visit.
It is also said that Su and other officials who worked with him at the council played a role in the less-than-transparent efforts to develop a military confidence-building mechanism with China. Credible sources place Su at a meeting in the US on that subject, a month prior to Ma’s inauguration in May 2008.
Not only does Su’s presence at the foundation congeal his Frankenstein’s monster of a consensus, it dovetails directly with Beijing’s portrayal of the DPP as a party it can’t do business with and whose election would threaten the “progress” made under Ma.
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