Yesterday and today, heads of state and government of 23 APEC members, including US President Barack Obama, Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, are attending the annual summit in Singapore. Because of Beijing’s objections, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) — like his predecessors Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) — has been excluded from the forum.
Last year, Ma dispatched Lien Chan (連戰), a former vice president and premier, as his representative to the APEC summit meeting in Peru. This time, Ma has again sent Lien.
Lien is the most senior former Taiwan official to participate in an APEC summit. In 2001, Chen named former vice president Li Yuan-zu (李元簇) as his envoy at the APEC summit in Shanghai, but the Chinese government, in contravention of APEC rules and precedents, refused to admit him.
Thereafter, Taiwan sent people like Academia Sinica president Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) and Morris Chang (張忠謀), chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
When Ma came to office in May last year, he had hoped to attend the Peru APEC summit. He had, after all, implemented a policy of opening to and reconciliation with China and had done everything possible to improve relations and develop a friendship with Beijing. Hadn’t Hu said that China wanted to help Taiwan expand its international participation? There was no reason, therefore, for Beijing to object to Ma’s presence — or so he thought.
To Ma’s disappointment, Beijing vetoed him. When former US president Bill Clinton, the host of the first APEC summit in Seattle in 1993, yielded to Beijing’s pressure not to invite Lee Teng-hui to the summit, he set a bad precedent, allowing China to wield de facto veto power over Taiwan’s representation ever since.
Thus, like his two most recent predecessors, Ma was compelled to appoint an envoy. His first choice was Fredrick Chien (錢復), minister of foreign affairs and a former National Assembly speaker and Control Yuan president. To Ma’s chagrin, Beijing vetoed him as well and, political sources say, had a say in naming its preferred candidate — Lien. Ma had to swallow this “bitter pill” because it would be politically impossible to oppose him.
Is there a particular reason for Beijing to support Lien? Yes. In April 2005, Hu invited Lien, then-chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and its unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2000 and 2004, to visit China and set up a KMT-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forum, a platform that calls for “one China” and opposes Taiwanese independence. The platform has provided Lien, the KMT’s “honorary chairman” since July 2005 and leader of the KMT’s pro-Beijing faction (or “old guard”), with opportunities to fraternize with Hu in China and set the tone for cross-strait rapprochement.
Hu has thus skillfully implemented a united front strategy to manipulate the KMT and Taiwan’s young democracy. Even after Ma took over as president, Beijing’s gambit to use Lien to checkmate Ma and to advance its Taiwan agenda has continued.
Lien yesterday met with Hu, and the economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) was a key topic for discussion. Lien had told reporters that informal talks on an ECFA had taken place and that because senior officials from both sides of the Strait would be in Singapore, “it is a prime opportunity to conclude the informal phase of the talks to expedite the official phase of the negotiation process.”
Parris Chang is professor emeritus of political science at Pennsylvania State University and president of the Taiwan Institute for Political Economic and Strategic Studies. He is a former National Security Council deputy secretary-general and a former chairman of the legislative defense and foreign relations committees.
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