In his inaugural address last Tuesday, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) sought to sweep away eight years of gloom and to set a cautious, yet optimistic, foundation for three-way relations between Taiwan, China and the US. But while Ma has bid farewell to the past, new and difficult problems have emerged.
Through a multi-layered strategic approach in his inaugural speech, Ma used security and trade relations between Taiwan and the US as backup and the potential for another power transfer as bargaining chips in an attempt to seek cross-strait negotiations with Beijing on highly sensitive issues such as the threat of Taiwan’s marginalization in the economic integration of Southeast Asia and its shrinking international space. At the same time, Ma utilized the improvement in cross-strait relations as a leverage for engaging in talks with Washington on intellectual property rights enforcement, import of US agricultural products and weapon sales to Taiwan.
Although Ma once again mentioned direct cross-strait weekend charter flights and allowing more Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan, he said this would hinge on whether Taiwan and China could move into a new era. He also appealed to Beijing to consider the fact that both nations are largely composed of ethnic Chinese — a tactic that is both forceful and compliant.
With full knowledge that Beijing would not respond in the short term, Ma still offered reconciliation as the objective of his cross-strait effort, saying that Taiwan would become a harbinger of peace, thereby implying that former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) government was a harbinger of trouble — again combining force and compliancy.
The problem is, we cannot control how Beijing and the US will respond. Will Beijing maintain a passive position during long-term cross-strait negotiations? Can the Chinese authorities only give without asking for anything in return?
Ma has said that Taiwan’s relationship with the US as a trade partner and a security ally must be strengthened, that an adequate defense budget is needed and defensive weapons must be purchased. He has also said that a resumption of dialogue with Beijing should be built on the so-called “1992 consensus.” No doubt all these statements set Washington’s mind at ease.
However, it was the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) that opposed numerous weapon purchase bills during its term in opposition. The US has also refused to sell F-16C/D aircraft to Taiwan for political considerations, did not support the development of the Hsiung Feng IIE anti-ship missile and was in two minds over the sale of submarines.
The situation has changed. Will Ma and the administration of US President George W. Bush consider new measures once trust between Taiwan and the US has been restored?
If Taiwan, faced with China’s superior military power, does not develop or purchase the necessary defensive weapons, how can it strengthen its national defense and negotiate with Beijing from a position of confidence? The US and Taiwan still have different view of what constitutes essential defensive weapons, and these differences must be resolved.
In his inaugural speech, Ma said nothing about signing a free trade agreement (FTA) with the US. Coincidentally, US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte did not mention it either when testifying before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations earlier this month, showing that the two parties have not reached a consensus on this issue.
The problem is if the Bush administration is unwilling to set an example by negotiating an FTA with the Ma administration, how can Taipei expect Beijing to allow the ASEAN to negotiate such a deal with Taiwan?
As for Taiwan’s highly sensitive bid to gain observer status in the World Health Assembly (WHA) — the WHO’s top decision-making body — Negroponte did show his support. Still, without Beijing’s approval, Washington’s support is nothing but empty words. During the Democratic Progressive Party government’s rule, Beijing’s obstruction of Taipei’s bid created a lot of public discontent. If Ma fails to bring Taiwan into the WHA within the next few years, he will have a problem explaining his failure to Taiwanese voters.
Cold War thinking is causing Washington to worry that cross-strait unification may be unfavorable to US national and strategic interests. Post-Cold War thinking also implies that annexation is unlikely owing to tensions and confrontation between these two major powers. However, Taiwan’s economic and trade integration with China and the Southeast Asian region is inevitable. How will Taiwan, China and the US deal with this trend? This deserves more attention in future.
Edward Chen is a professor in the Graduate Institute of American Studies at Tamkang University.
TRANSLATED BY ANGELA HONG AND EDDY CHANG
A series of strong earthquakes in Hualien County not only caused severe damage in Taiwan, but also revealed that China’s power has permeated everywhere. A Taiwanese woman posted on the Internet that she found clips of the earthquake — which were recorded by the security camera in her home — on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. It is spine-chilling that the problem might be because the security camera was manufactured in China. China has widely collected information, infringed upon public privacy and raised information security threats through various social media platforms, as well as telecommunication and security equipment. Several former TikTok employees revealed
At the same time as more than 30 military aircraft were detected near Taiwan — one of the highest daily incursions this year — with some flying as close as 37 nautical miles (69kms) from the northern city of Keelung, China announced a limited and selected relaxation of restrictions on Taiwanese agricultural exports and tourism, upon receiving a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) delegation led by KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁). This demonstrates the two-faced gimmick of China’s “united front” strategy. Despite the strongest earthquake to hit the nation in 25 years striking Hualien on April 3, which caused
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past
President-elect William Lai (賴清德) is to accede to the presidency this month at a time when the international order is in its greatest flux in three decades. Lai must navigate the ship of state through the choppy waters of an assertive China that is refusing to play by the rules, challenging the territorial claims of multiple nations and increasing its pressure on Taiwan. It is widely held in democratic capitals that Taiwan is important to the maintenance and survival of the liberal international order. Taiwan is strategically located, hemming China’s People’s Liberation Army inside the first island chain, preventing it from