Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) yesterday hosted the 15th Taipei-Shanghai Twin-City Forum in Taipei. The annual event is supposed to facilitate exchanges, understanding and cooperation, and promote peace and goodwill — especially in these particularly tense times.
Life is never that simple, and this is especially true when it comes to cross-strait relations. The forum has never been uncontroversial.
For the expense to Taipei taxpayers’ pockets, many question what real value can be gained from the forum, save for the opportunity for the Taipei mayor to put on a good show on a high-profile platform.
Over the past few years, the incumbent mayor has emphasized the need to reduce cross-strait tensions and said that the forum is the only official-level exchange opportunity between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait since national-level communication channels were cut in 2016.
Chiang yesterday waxed lyrical about his desire for “more dialogue and less confrontation; more of the olive branch of peace, less sour grapes of conflict; and more lights from fishing boats adorning the sunset, less of the howls of ships and fighter jets.”
On the campaign trail in 2022, Chiang laid down conditions for continuing the controversial annual forum, echoing similar conditions stated by his predecessor, former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), promising that he would cancel it unless the Chinese Communist Party (CPP) demonstrated the principles of equality, respect, goodwill and reciprocity in its approach to the forum.
Chiang said that last year too, but the forum goes ahead even though the CCP adheres to none of the aforementioned principles. It is not surprising that a politician would write a check during a campaign, only to bounce that check when in power. More importantly, however reasonable or well-intentioned a line drawn in sand might be, it quickly loses all meaning and power when the other side so gleefully runs roughshod over it. Chiang knows this, as did Ko before him, and yet the show still went on.
It is true that the forum has been the only official exchange between China and Taiwan since 2016. Taipei City Government spokesman Yin Wei (殷瑋) has placed the blame for this squarely at the feet of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文). This is a political move, as he and Chiang know that the reason for this disruption of communication was the CCP’s unilateral and immediate decision to sever communications on the election of Tsai, due to her refusal to accept the so-called “1992 consensus” and idea of “one China” as preconditions for talks. They also know that Tsai and President William Lai (賴清德) have offered to resume talks with Beijing in good faith, as long as no preconditions are set.
Blaming the Taiwan side, be it the DPP, Tsai, Lai or all three for the tensions, rather than suggesting that perhaps it is the CCP’s intransigence and bellicosity that should be held accountable for the situation, is not only a distortion of the truth, it is also a lost opportunity for Chiang to stand up during the forum and call the CCP out for its flouting of the principles of respect and goodwill that he himself had once demanded.
Chiang might prefer fishing boat lights prettifying the evening sky over the sound of hostile fighter jets overhead, but he is blaming his own government for the reason they are there, and giving the belligerent a pass, presumably in the hope that the belligerent would not be provoked.
His line drawn in the sand has lost all relevance.
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