Four cross-strait agreements were signed at the meeting between Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) earlier this month. Last Monday, Chiang and Mainland Affairs Council Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) finally gave the legislature a belated report on the pacts. This rash attempt to dodge public supervisionwas strongly criticized in the legislature.
The fact is that both the form and content of the Chiang-Chen meetings were conducted within the framework of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) communication platform. And they are pressing on: The next meeting within this framework will be held in Shanghai next month as the two parties prepare to establish a cross-strait economic framework. It is clear that they want to continue to manipulate public perception of the Chiang-Chen talks. If President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) continues to behave like a puppet, he will end up like the last Chinese emperor Puyi (溥儀), living in exile in a puppet state.
The attempt to solve the cross-strait issue through peace talks between the KMT and the CCP has been part of China’s united front strategy ever since then-chairman of the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress Ye Jianying (葉劍英) proposed his nine principles for peaceful unification with Taiwan in 1981. This wishful thinking is based on the idea that the Chinese civil war is not over and that Taiwan’s sovereignty and democratization must be undone.
This view has remained constant through Deng Xiaoping’s (鄧小平) six points and Jiang Zemin’s (江澤民) eight points to the communiques issued by Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and Hu and People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜).
Faced with China’s attempts to ignore the fact that Taiwan is an independent and sovereign state, former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) refused to have any contacts, negotiations or compromises with China, his so-called “three noes.” Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) insisted on talks between two equal states in his six points, which led to the birth of the SEF and ARATS.
However, after the KMT’s return to power, Ma resumed talks following a decade-long hiatus. But what is left of the old framework is only an empty shell, and the promise that second track party to party talks or private exchanges would not override official talks and replace the central government’s role has been proven to be just empty talk.
The first Chiang-Chen meeting in Beijing in June and their second meeting in Taipei this month were both orchestrated by the KMT-CCP communication platform. Before the four agreements signed this month have been reviewed by the legislature, the government has already decided to hold the Shanghai meeting, and it plans to invite more than 100 people from Taiwan’s financial, industrial and commercial sectors along with Chinese industrialists to provide policy guidance.
We can no longer talk about merely allowing private enterprise to pressure the government or letting the party lead the government — pressing on like this before the results of the first meeting have been dealt with is evidence that business is all-important and that what ever the party says goes, reducing Ma to a rubber stamp.
RSS