In January 2001, Beijing made an unprecedented gesture of extending a general welcome to "the members of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)" except for an "extremely small number of stubborn Taiwanese independence advocates." Last March, it went a step further by announcing that it was willing to meet even with "pan-green die-hards."
In reality, Beijing had met only with pan-green members outside of the DPP administration, such as legislators, academics and businesspeople. China has cautiously avoided dealing with officials from President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) administration. However, such behavior has begun to show subtle changes.
On March 7, the Straits Exchange Foundation, a quasi-official organization set up to handle technical or business mat-ters with China, announced that its tourism head, Sun Chi-ming (
The first stage, which ended last fall, was the manifestation of China's soft approach toward Taiwan after Beijing's passage of the "Anti-Secession" Law in March 2005. A US academic who participated in a conference at a Beijing university last June was surprised to find that mentioning the "Republic of China" and displaying the national flag in academic events was acceptable. A group of Taiwanese academics who visited Shanghai last July also heard some Chinese researchers from a semi-official institute saying Taiwan should be given more international space. Beginning last fall, however, such relaxations in China toward Taiwan disappeared.
The second stage, which began last fall and ended in late January, saw the slowdown of Beijing's "goodwill measures" toward Taiwanese, reflecting an internal struggle among its ranks. Sources in China said that some Chinese policymakers began questioning the efficacy of the soft offensive. They question whether these measures have won support for China or unwittingly encouraged Taiwan's independence advocates. At the other end of the political spectrum are those who favor a continuation of the soft approach.
Based on my observations, the number of "goodwill measures" China offered Taiwan totaled four in June, four in July, none in August and September, and one each in October, November and December. The last one was to announce a policy allowing Taiwanese architects to practice in China if they pass the Chinese licensing exam.
Aside from the fact that no other goodwill measure has been offered since then, Beijing has also begun to adopt a tougher tone toward Taiwan. Beijing's previous three-part rhetoric on national policy -- social harmony, cross-strait conciliation and world peace -- was reduced to two, ie, "a harmonious society" and a "harmonious world." This appeared in Beijing's white paper on defense issued on Dec. 19, and was the catch-phrase mouthed by a Chinese government think tank visiting Taiwan at the time.
In January, Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), director of the Chinese State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), was quoted as saying that maintaining "cross-strait peace is facing grave challenges." In addition, Beijing's New China news agency published TAO's severe criticism of President Chen's New Year address.
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