No major changes should be expected in cross-strait relations now that Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平) has taken over as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, a US specialist on China told a conference in Washington on Monday.
Both Beijing and Taipei are “very comfortable” with the current state of relations, said Christopher Johnson, senior adviser and Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.
However, he said it would be interesting to watch over the next four years to see if China would try to “squeeze some concessions” from the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
A former senior China analyst at the CIA, Johnson told an audience at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University that Xi — “with all his service in the coastal regions” — understood the Taiwan relationship “very, very well.”
The Chinese were familiar enough with elections in Taiwan to understand that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) might “get itself together” and regain power, Johnson said.
He said that Beijing did not want the DPP, with its leanings toward independence, back in charge.
“But the Chinese have to be thinking there is no guarantee [that the DPP will not win the next election] and perhaps will try to leverage Ma in his last few years,” Johnson said.
However, he said he did not see Beijing doing this because there were no signs that Xi did not support the existing policy.
“My sense is that we are going to see more of the current cross-strait relationship,” he said.
Johnson said he did not expect to see a different “tone” in Taiwan relations under Xi.
He added that there was always going to be a constituency in the Chinese system that argued Beijing had given the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) and “a lot of economic things” to Taipei, while on the important issue of sovereignty it had received little in return.
He said this did not mean that China was going to push for a peace treaty, but that it might try hard to get a cultural agreement.
On the peace treaty issue, he said the Chinese were likely to be “realistic.”
Johnson said that Xi would continue policies that resulted in the building of “lots” of military hardware.
“There is no sign they intend a cessation of their military buildup, and in fact they are moving it forward even more dramatically,” Johnson said.
“What are they going to do with all of this stuff?” he asked.
He said there could be more moves toward cross-strait military confidence-building measures, and did not expect Beijing to move back to a strategy based on a military invasion of Taiwan.
With all of the other regional problems, particularly with Japan, Beijing wants “as much stability as they can possibly have.”
As a result of the global financial crisis and US President Barack Obama’s Asian rebalancing policies, the forces within China that were making “a lot of noise” about the permanent decline of the US have become significantly quieter.
Johnson said this was an important win for the rebalancing policy.
He said China had some initial success arguing throughout the region that while it was all about economic growth and trade, the US was all about military troublemaking.
However, the US had recognized the problem and was now putting a stronger emphasis on business, he said.
TENSIONS: The Chinese aircraft and vessels were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a joint air and sea military exercise, the Ministry of National Defense said A relatively large number of Chinese military aircraft and vessels were detected in Taiwan’s vicinity yesterday morning, apparently en route to a Chinese military exercise in the western Pacific, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. In a statement, the ministry said 36 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft, including J-16 fighters and nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or an extension of it, and were detected in the southern and southeastern parts of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) from 5:20am to 9:30am yesterday. They were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a
Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supports peaceful unification with China, and President William Lai (賴清德) is “a bit naive” for being a “practical worker for Taiwanese independence,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an interview published yesterday. Asked about whether the KMT is on the same page as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on the issue of Taiwanese independence or unification with China, Ma told the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily that they are not. While the KMT supports peaceful unification and is against unification by force, the DPP opposes unification as such and
CASES SLOWING: Although weekly COVID-19 cases are rising, the growth rate has been falling, from 90 percent to 30 percent, 14 percent and 6 percent, the CDC said COVID-19 hospitalizations last week rose 6 percent to 987, while deaths soared 55 percent to 99, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that the recent wave of infections would likely peak this week. People aged 65 or older accounted for 79 percent of the hospitalizations and 90 percent of the deaths, the majority of whom have or had underlying health conditions, CDC data showed. The youngest hospitalized case last week was a six-month-old, who was born preterm and was unvaccinated, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. The infant had a fever, coughing and a runny nose early this month, but