Having served up a charm offensive touting the benefits of closer economic ties with China, Beijing is making no secret of its growing impatience for political talks with Taiwan.
Its annoyance is evident in the recent string of calls to talk politics. First, there was the blunt comment from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) who, speaking with Taiwan’s APEC envoy Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) on the sidelines of the APEC meeting in Bali earlier this month, said “the longstanding political division between the two sides will have to be resolved step-by-step, as it should not be passed down from generation to generation.”
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Director Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) renewed the call a few days later, saying that Taiwan and China cannot put off addressing their political differences in the long term, adding that sidestepping politics in favor of economic talks was “unsustainable.”
While it comes as no surprise for Beijing to want to rush political discourse to attain its goal of unification, the nation’s response to Chinese pressure requires careful deliberation.
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) statements on the topic leave many concerned.
In the past, Ma has usually been vague on the issue of political talks with China, saying that there is no need to consider them until more progress is made on economics. He also had a prerequisite for opening political discussions: Beijing must first remove its missiles aimed at Taiwan.
Not only has Ma made no mention of this condition recently, his public statements on cross-strait relations also come across as more aligned with those from Beijing.
First, in March last year, Ma sent former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) to Beijing, where he raised the issue of defining cross-strait relations as “one country, two areas” at a meeting with then-Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
Then, in July this year, the KMT made a sharp departure from the the so-called “1992 consensus” — defined as “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means. It said “both sides of the Taiwan Strait reached a consensus in 1992 to express each other’s insistence on the ‘one China’ principle,” which ceded to China’s definition of the “1992 consensus,” that China and Taiwan are both part of “one China.”
Ma further echoed Beijing’s stance that China and Taiwan do not have a state-to-state relationship by saying in his Double Ten National Day speech that cross-strait relations are “not international relations.”
In Hu’s six points on cross-strait relations, he said the two sides could only talk on a foundation of political trust if they reached a common understanding on the principle of “one China.” This leads people to suspect that all the changes with regard to cross-strait relations are Ma’s way of meeting Hu’s so-called “common understanding on the principle of ‘one China’” to pave the way for political talks.
As if on cue, Ma fueled concerns about his interest in starting a political dialogue with China by saying on Tuesday that the issue of establishing cross-strait representative offices carries some political significance, another departure from his previous stance that had sought to tone down the political nature of the establishment of the representative offices.
Ma does not have a mandate for his cross-strait policy, let alone to begin negotiations with Beijing.
The nation’s future should be decided by its people, not by the president alone. Any step Ma takes on cross-strait relations that is not democratically processed would be a breach of his duty as head of state.
As Taiwan’s domestic political crisis deepens, the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) have proposed gutting the country’s national spending, with steep cuts to the critical foreign and defense ministries. While the blue-white coalition alleges that it is merely responding to voters’ concerns about corruption and mismanagement, of which there certainly has been plenty under Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and KMT-led governments, the rationales for their proposed spending cuts lay bare the incoherent foreign policy of the KMT-led coalition. Introduced on the eve of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the KMT’s proposed budget is a terrible opening
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,
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
RSS