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Be proactive with cross-strait policy

Last Saturday, before the economic and trade forum between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ended, the director of China's Taiwan Affairs Office, Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), announced a package of 15 policy measures to promote economic and trade relations across the Taiwan Strait.

Following on from last year's preferential trade measures for Taiwan, China has now declared policies highlighting expanded preferential treatment, mutually beneficial cooperation, facilitation of cross-strait exchanges and the avoidance of negotiations.

China's economic policies toward Taiwan have changed. They are no longer aimed at using cross-strait economic exchanges to boost China's economy. Instead, Beijing has gradually demonstrated its economic strength and is using economic allurements to force Taiwan to make political concessions.

Beginning last year, China offered Taiwan preferential treatment in several areas: It removed import tariffs on several kinds of Taiwanese fruit, provided 30 billion yuan (US$928 million) in preferential loans to Taiwanese businesspeople, established several cross-strait cooperative projects and Taiwanese agricultural parks, lowered tuition fees for Taiwanese students in China, allowed Taiwanese students to take-up employment in China, offered Taiwanese students and other scholars engaging in cross-strait academic exchanges special privileges in China; and tried to give Taiwan two pandas.

The 15 measures show Beijing using its economic strength as a bargaining chip. It has expanded its preferential treatment of Taiwanese agricultural and seafood imports, and pushed to facilitate trade in these products.

Moreover, China has also proposed sending agricultural procurement delegations to Taiwan to buy goods, and offered to facilitate more marketing advantages for Taiwanese agricultural produce, and establish several cross-strait agricultural cooperation projects.

The goal of the Chinese government is laid bare for all to see -- it is hoping to co-opt Taiwanese farmers and fishermen in order to divide the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) grassroots support.

Furthermore, China has expanded the channels through which Taiwanese people can find employment in China by recognizing Taiwanese academic degrees, allowing Taiwanese to sit for China's Customs Declarer qualification examination and allowing Taiwanese physicians who obtain Chinese permission to practice medicine in China.

Beijing has also added more entry points where Taiwanese people can obtain landing visas and has made it easier for Taiwanese to obtain medical treatment in China.

The most significant measures Beijing offered in its recent announcement were the plan to allow Chinese tourists to travel to Taiwan, as well as permitting Taiwanese healthcare institutions to set up jointly invested and managed hospitals in China. While tourist visits will be subject to quota restrictions and investments in hospitals by Taiwanese shareholders will be capped at 70 percent, it is still a significant gift from China, aimed at winning the support of Taiwan's tourist and healthcare industries.

In the middle of 2004, Taiwan proposed 18 topics to guide cross-strait talks on economic issues, including financial supervision, passenger and cargo charter flights, direct air and sea links, tourism and others, but China still has not responded positively to these suggestions. In the middle of last year, the Taiwanese government authorized a non-governmental organization to engage in dialogue with China on cross-strait tourism, chartered passenger and cargo flights, and agricultural produce exports, but China has remained passive.

Obviously, the Chinese government is pursuing deregulation unilaterally. It is appealing directly to the economic interests of the Taiwanese people, and is using the cooperation of opposition parties as leverage to squeeze concessions from the Taiwanese government on the "one-China" principle.

Faced with the increased resources China is allocating to its Taiwan policy and the policy's increasingly clear targets, the Taiwanese government will only be able to change its currently disadvantageous position in the cross-strait political conflict by taking an active approach.

Rather than losing public trust by trying to adapt or changing policies after the fact as a result of public pressure, the government should be proactive and stress that it is willing to entrust civil organizations with the task of negotiating with China, thereby taking an active role in safeguarding and expanding the interests of Taiwanese in China.

Cross-strait issues such as direct links, deregulation of the service industry, a framework for interaction and the establishment of a cross-strait governance mechanism can only be agreed on following negotiations between the two sides.

These issues are not easily manipulated by China. Only by following the trend of deregulation of cross-strait economic exchanges will Taiwan's government be able to allay public doubt and relieve the pressure on it to make political concessions to China.

Tung Chen-yuan is an assistant professor in the Sun Yat-sen Graduate Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities at National Chengchi University. Translated by Lin Ya-ti
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