During A high-profile conference in Taipei on Nov. 13 and Nov. 14 for track two, party-to-party contacts between Taiwan and China entitled “60 Years Across the Taiwan Strait,” Chinese academics were surprised by the challenge by pro-blue Taiwanese academics to Beijing’s “one China” principle after the pan-blues had promoted the idea in the past. Taiwan applauds them for delivering this surprise. However, this track two confrontation contained two more surprises that are even more deserving of our attention.
The first surprise was delivered by Li Jiyun (李際均), former director of the General Office of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Military Commission, who said Taipei’s request for Beijing to withdraw its ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan was a non-issue because mobile missiles can easily be redeployed. After mocking the request, which is a long-term policy of Ma and was a policy of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), Li said vaguely that the missiles are not as powerful as Taipei believes.
The second surprise came from Yang Jiemian (楊潔勉), president of Shanghai Institutes for International Studies and the younger brother of Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (楊潔篪), who said the possibility of a cross-strait war was almost zero.
Their views are very different from those of the Taiwanese public, and remarks made by both government and opposition leaders, who claim China’s missiles are devastating, and that a cross-strait war could break out anytime.
However, their apparent “slips of the tongue” were really insider information. Tens of thousands of missiles were fired when Nazi Germany attacked Britain and during the various Arab-Israeli conflicts. Despite the strong psychological effect, the missiles’ destructive capability is insignificant compared with attacks by strategic bombers. This is why every country invests much more on their air force than on ballistic missiles.
Thanks both to the high external dependence of China’s economy and the strong constraints created by the international political situation that has been the result of globalization, there has not been a war in the Taiwan Strait for almost 60 years. After Taiwan ended the Period of Communist Rebellion in 1991, China was no longer “an enemy state.” If Beijing also rejects the possibility of resolving the cross-strait conflict by force, the two sides could easily embrace peace and there would be no “state of hostility” that needs to be ended by a peace agreement.
So the Chinese academics’ remarks pointed to a stark truth: Ending cross-strait hostility, building mutual military trust and signing a cross-strait peace agreement are non-issues.
Since a war in the Strait is unlikely, the purpose of China’s deployment of ballistic missiles is designed to simulate a civil war status in order to pursue peace through the threat of war and pursue unification through peaceful means in the hope that this will give it sovereignty over Taiwan. The signing of a peace treaty is usually carried out if two parties want to remain on an equal status after a war, but if one party defeats the other party in a civil war, the winning party will take over the central government. If the losing party yields to the rule of the winning party and gains the right to participate in the government through unification, a peace agreement can be signed, rather than a treaty.
During the recent track two conference, Beijing’s grasp of this spirit was obvious, and its stance was clearly expressed.
After the Ma administration finally realized the goal of China’s wish to sign the peace agreement that Ma has pushed for, it was forced to retreat and procrastinate. The national defense report recently published by the Ministry of National Defense said China would use a peace agreement to achieve its political goals, diminish Taiwan’s ability to resist and achieve its ambition to win over Taiwan without a fight.
At the conference, KMT Legislator Shuai Hua-min (帥化民), a retired army lieutenant-general, said: “The two sides of the Taiwan Strait must not rely too much on a piece of paper with a peace agreement or peace mechanism and hope that will solve all the problems.”
As Ma went on the retreat, China attacked and pointed out that the promise of a peace agreement was made in the communique; issued after former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) met in 2005, and that this promise was included in the KMT’s party charter at the time Ma became chairman.
Lien used his attendance at the APEC meeting in Singapore to make some statements helping Beijing by putting pressure on Ma. China also threatened Taiwan by saying that 70 percent of Taiwanese back the signing of a peace agreement and the creation of a mechanism to build mutual military trust.
In 1999, then presidential candidate Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) also suggested such an agreement and such a mechanism in his White Paper on China Policy and in 2004, he said: “The two sides of the Taiwan Strait should end hostilities … and discuss a mechanism for mutual military trust.”
Ma followed Chen’s policies in the last presidential election and the pair managed to mobilize a strong public opinion. Unexpectedly, this public opinion has now become a tool for China in its attempts to put pressure on Ma.
Although pan-blue academics made some limited protests at the recent conference, they were afraid to oppose China outright. Instead, they only stirred up a little technical trouble within Beijing’s strategic framework. In the final communique; after the conference, the two sides were back to offer solemn joint affirmations of the mutual trust mechanism, the peace agreement and the “one China” principle. It was very clear who won, the red team, not the blue team.
Although the conclusions of this conference are not legally binding, these meetings are harbingers of semi-governmental talks, and that is why the outcome is so worrying.
Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG AND PERRY SVENSSON
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