It has been suggested that if President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) approval ratings remained at their current low levels in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election that Beijing may announce the removal of the missiles targeting Taiwan to try and help Ma secure a second term.
However, such a move would be at odds with the carrot-and-stick approach to cross-strait affairs employed by Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), which is far removed from his predecessors’ method of direct threats, including firing missiles into the Taiwan Strait ahead of the 1996 election.
Taking such a drastic step would also be foolish given the number of variables involved.
A primary consideration would be whether dismantling the missiles would have the desired effect among the electorate in Taiwan, because it is difficult to predict whether voters would fall for such an obvious attempt to interfere with an election.
Many people may be happy with the results of the recent cross-strait rapprochement, but they remain rightly wary of Beijing’s motives and are aware that China’s promises are not worth the paper they are written on.
While China may have granted Taiwan permission to attend the World Health Assembly as an observer and has refrained from stealing any of Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic allies over the past two years, other events, such as Beijing’s continued blocking of Taiwan’s attempts to participate in UN specialized agencies and sign free-trade agreements with other countries, make China’s real intentions plain.
Many people are also concerned about what would happen to Taiwan once the government’s planned economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) is signed, given the unification undertones Chinese leaders have attached to the agreement.
Another important factor is that the success of any move to remove the missiles would depend entirely upon the reasons for Ma’s dismal approval ratings. No one is quite sure whether Ma’s disastrous approval ratings are the result of the economic woes of the past two years, his bad governance during the Typhoon Morakot disaster and the US beef debacle, the erosion of civil liberties and judicial independence during his tenure or the uncomfortably rapid pace of cross-strait rapprochement.
If people are indeed unhappy with Ma’s headlong tilt toward China, then he could lose even if Beijing were to make such a gesture of missile magnanimity.
Besides, however impatient China’s leaders may be to settle the “Taiwan issue,” they know that time is on their side. China is aware that as time goes by, its continued pressure on the US government results in arms sales to Taiwan becoming less potent and more infrequent. The will of many in the US to support Taiwan in the face of China’s emerging superpower status and its rapid military build-up also diminishes by the day.
China’s influential hard-line generals would also surely come out in force against any move that might show even an iota of weakness.
These unpredictable factors would make removing the missiles a gamble, but if China did decide to abandon its recent caution in a rash attempt at a quick cross-strait solution, it could end up with egg on its face again, proving once and for all that China’s leaders shouldn’t meddle with democracy — something they can’t control and clearly don’t understand.
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