The fourth round of cross-strait talks between the heads of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) is scheduled for Tuesday through Thursday in Taichung.
Compared with the last meeting between SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and his Chinese counterpart Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), the political atmosphere in Taiwan today is totally different.
First, the approval rate for the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration has dropped since a year ago, when Chiang met Chen in Taipei. Ma suffered a huge loss of support largely because of the government’s failed handling of Typhoon Morakot in August and was forced to reshuffle the Cabinet and replace the premier.
Later, Ma’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lost the Yunlin legislative by-election in October, followed by the KMT’s poor showing in this month’s three-in-one local elections.
The Democratic Progressive Party, on the other hand, has recovered from the decline in party support since the last presidential election and is escaping the shadow of former president Chen Shi-bian’s (陳水扁) criminal proceedings. The DPP’s symbolic victory this month by increasing its percentage of the vote demonstrated its recovery and the consolidation of Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) leadership. It also reflected public distrust in the Ma administration’s poor governance over the past 18 months.
At the previous round of Chiang-Chen talks, the DPP was misrepresented by some media and foreign observers as “violently” taking to the streets to obstruct cross-strait rapprochement. Yet the fact that the Ma government has bypassed legislative and public oversight was the main reason the DPP organized demonstrations.
The DPP is stronger this time after gradually increasing its public support over the past year. It has successfully communicated the need for more public surveillance, participation and legislative oversight of the Ma’s administration’s talks with Beijing on an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA). This was clear in the results of the mayoral and county commissioner elections, which also showed leaders in Beijing that more than 45 percent of the public support the pan-green camp, which advocates a cautious opening of cross-strait relations. Moreover, more than 70 percent say they are unclear as to what the ECFA consists of.
The DPP is at an advantage now and its plan to mobilize 100,000 people to protest the Chiang-Chen talks in Taichung will no doubt cast a more legitimate pressure on the Ma administration. The DPP could garner further support if the demonstration proceeds without incident. This explains why Ma has, since doing poorly in the local elections, decided to give the public more information about the ECFA. It also suggests why Chiang does not want to make ECFA talks the agenda focus in Taichung.
In light of the changes in domestic politics and Beijing’s increasing pressure to establish an atmosphere for political dialogue, Ma downplayed the possibility of unification talks in a recent interview with foreign media and said it could take “decades” before such sensitive negotiations began.
Local media reported that Ma would restart his presidential campaign tour of “long stays” in the countryside now that he his newly appointed KMT secretary-general, King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), has taken up his post. Ma is about to launch a campaign to implement his key policies to help start his re-election campaign early next year. Leaders in Beijing must take a pragmatic and realistic look at Taiwanese politics. Ma’s leadership is weakening because he has missed many windows of opportunity for broadening his support base through direct and sincere communication with the public.
Ma cannot win the support of the majority simply by advancing cross-strait relations. His cross-strait policy initiatives remain controversial and lack transparency. If Chinese leaders fail to understand Taiwanese democracy and underestimate the support for the pan-green camp and believe they can influence Ma’s cross-strait agenda unilaterally, they will only deteriorate his fragile position.
Humbly listening to the public is the most important task facing Ma right now. Ma could have won more support from middle-of-the-road voters had he not pushed his cross-strait policies so quickly and unilaterally. Ma should have engaged in a candid, constructive and comprehensive dialogue with the public on the pros and cons of his initiatives. He could have used the opposition to his government as a bargaining chip in negotiating with China. Regretfully, he has not done so, and for this he has paid a huge political price.
Shih-chung Liu is a visiting fellow at the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
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