While offering the KMT favors in limited and individual cases, Beijing is setting traps for the DPP and taking preventive measures to prepare for its possible return to power. Examples are China’s acceptance of Taiwan’s appointment of a former vice president, Lien Chan (連戰), as its emissary to the APEC forum, allowing Taiwan to attend the World Health Assembly as an observer and its apparent compliance with Taiwan’s diplomatic truce initiative.
If Taiwan does not end the situation where one party — the KMT — has a monopoly on cross-strait relations, the nation will find itself completely adrift when the KMT is no longer in power.
From party-to-party talks between the KMT and the CCP to cross-strait economic and cultural forums and visits by mayors and county commissioners that have been going on for years, the mechanism for dialog in each case is directed by the KMT and the CCP.
Rather than sticking to this formula and just inviting a handful of DPP figures to attend talks with China for the sake of appearance, it would be better to open up lines of communication and debate about China policy within Taiwan, so that the two main parties can figure out how to march separately but strike together.
Although the DPP may decline to participate in KMT-CCP forums, it must improve its research on Chinese affairs to offer an informed analysis of the situation.
Clinging to hard-line standpoints that lack substance is not a persuasive strategy.
While cross-strait relations are improving, the gulf between the two camps in Taiwan is wider than ever.
Politicians can try to rationalize their policies by taking US policy as proof that there is no need to worry that cross-strait relations are developing too quickly, or by using opinion polls to show that most Taiwanese are in favor of maintaining the “status quo,” but none of this can bridge the confidence gap that exists in Taiwan today.
Compared with KMT-CCP detente, a rapprochement between the KMT and the DPP is not only easier, it is far more urgent. Without it, peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait will be as fragile as a house built on sand.
Lin Cheng-yi is director of the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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