There is something of a mystique surrounding the so-called “1992 consensus,” the idea that representatives of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) in 1992 met in Hong Kong and agreed to disagree on what “China” means.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) insists that it is used as a prerequisite for talks between Taiwan and China, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has a real problem letting it go.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) appears obsessed with it. Former KMT chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) tried to retire it two years ago, but the attempt ultimately cost him his job. KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) went big, trying to jettison it in Washington during his recent US trip, calling it a “non-consensus consensus.”
Chu’s move was an audacious, and likely intentional, public flogging of the concept meant to impress not the US, but Taiwanese politicians and the electorate back home, just before the upcoming nine-in-one elections.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) acknowledges it as a “historical fact,” albeit with hazy details.
The “1992 consensus” — in Taiwan used to refer to the idea that there is only “one China,” with each side of the Taiwan Strait having its own interpretation of what that means — has a habit of cropping up around elections.
In 2000, the KMT suffered the catastrophic blow of losing the presidential election, quite literally the first time it had ever lost power in an election to another political entity. Former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) invented the term “1992 consensus” just after that election, presumably to remind the electorate what they were missing.
The “consensus” was the mainstay of Ma’s pro-China stance, and the context for the KMT’s rout in the 2014 nine-in-one elections.
It reared its ugly head again in 2015, when Ma was exiting center stage and it was quite apparent that Chu was to lose the 2016 presidential election to Tsai, with Ma insisting on meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Singapore before he left office.
The pro-localization media in Taiwan lambasted Ma for only mentioning “one China” and not adding the phrase “with each side having its interpretation of what that means.” Criticism was also levied at Xi, as it was suspected that he had cynically dropped the second part and prevented Ma from saying it.
The media should have cut Xi some slack: One little detail that seems to have been lost in the creation of the “consensus” mystique is that the Chinese side never, ever agreed to the addition of each side having its own interpretation of what “one China” means, not even expressed verbally, and certainly not in written form.
The Chinese side would not need to, as it was always sure what it meant by “one China,” and did not have time for any other interpretation. As far as it was concerned, “one China” meant the PRC and that Taiwan was part of that “one China.”
At the 1992 Hong Kong talks, in which the “consensus” was supposedly arrived at, the Chinese delegation would not even allow the ROC year numbering — which begins at 1912, the year the republic was founded — to appear on any document that it signed, as that would imply the existence of the ROC, which would run counter to the very principle it was trying to establish.
People who are still confused about what the “1992 consensus” is should not blame the CCP, but those who made Taiwanese believe that a “consensus” ever existed, namely Ma and his coconspirator, Su.
Now Chu has decided to do what Chiang failed to do, and bid the “non-consensus consensus” farewell, sacrificing it in the run-up to the nine-in-one elections.
Good luck with that.
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
In an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that Taiwan should not have to choose between aligning with Beijing or Washington, and advocated for cooperation with Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” as a form of “strategic ambiguity.” However, Cheng has either misunderstood the geopolitical reality and chosen appeasement, or is trying to fool an international audience with her doublespeak; nonetheless, it risks sending the wrong message to Taiwan’s democratic allies and partners. Cheng stressed that “Taiwan does not have to choose,” as while Beijing and Washington compete, Taiwan is strongest when
RSS