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What do a panda and Ma Ying- jeou share?

Both during his visit to the US and in his meeting with President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said he wished that the Republic of China would stop "being a troublemaker," as if democratic Taiwan created the Taiwan Strait crisis. It is incredible to hear a potential presidential candidate so casually belittle the country he is so eager to rule.

If we agree that there is a Taiwan Strait crisis, then the external factors are Beijing's deployment of missiles threatening Taiwan and its wish to use its "one China" strategy to annex Taiwan. An internal factor is pro-unification propaganda in China-friendly media preventing the Taiwanese people from gaining an understanding of the nature of the regime in Beijing.

Two recent opinion polls have offered surprising results. In one poll, conducted by the Institute for National Policy Research 14 percent of respondents said they agreed that the People's Republic of China was a free and democratic country, while 20 percent answered that they didn't know. Added together, this suggests that one-third of Taiwanese don't know that China is a despotic dictatorship.

Of all the countries in the world, Taiwan should not be unaware of the nature of Communist China. There are no elections there, it is ruled through violence and it has deployed 800 ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan along its eastern coast. In Taiwan with its press freedom, one-third of the population doesn't know that China is neither free nor democratic? This ignorance is preposterous.

In the other poll conducted by a media outlet after the Chen-Ma meeting, one-third of respondents said Beijing would agree to Ma's "one China, with each side having its own interpretation." This once again shows how many Taiwanese don't have a clue about the nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Anyone with a degree of political common sense knows that Beijing would never agree to Ma's "one China" interpretation, because that would mean acknowledging that there are two Chinas. China has never relaxed its interpretation of "one China," so why would it let this policy fall to pieces now?

The public's lack of understanding of China is mainly a result of pro-Chinese reporting in the pro-unification media in recent years, but, although worrying, it is understandable. Ma has joined those who lack this understanding. His statements during his US visit and his meeting with Chen were filled with wishful thinking, but he is deceiving no one but himself with his calls for "one China, with each side having its own interpretation."

Ma has also said that the KMT and the CCP have engaged in contacts over so many years that the KMT is able to get along with the CCP on any issue. I wonder if he understands the shamelessness of this statement. The reason the KMT continually lost out to the CCP and eventually had to flee to Taiwan was that it had no idea of how to deal with the CCP.

Prior to Lien's visit to China last year, he made a big issue of adhering to the non-existent "1992 consensus" and "one China, with each side having its own interpretation." While in China, however, he never even dared to mention the name "Republic of China," never mind "one China, with each side having its own interpretation." Apart from gaining a promise of two pandas during his "negotiations with the CPP," did Lien bring home anything substantive to Taiwan?

The CCP is not a dumb, cuddly panda. Anyone who wants to play word games with the CCP will be used by the party. Anyone who wants to befriend the CCP thinking that it is a sweet little panda must have the IQ of a panda.

Cao Changqing is a freelance journalist.

Translated by Perry Svensson
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