On Wednesday, China once again put conditions on the government of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). This time it was Wang Yi (王毅), director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, who set the conditions by saying that, as long as the two sides of the Taiwan Strait can work together to oppose Taiwanese independence and uphold the “1992 consensus,” that will be the political guarantee for cross-strait cooperation.
Put in plain language, this means that there is no such thing as a “purely economic issue” in negotiations between Taiwan and China, and the idea that “the economy is the economy and politics is politics” is a fantasy. Every economic question is overshadowed by the two pillars of China’s Taiwan policy — opposition to Taiwanese independence and the so-called “one China” principle. Wang’s statement echoed what Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) said at the National People’s Congress in March. How will Taiwan respond? Everyone is waiting to hear what Ma, who recently raised his fist while passionately insisting, “I am the president of the Republic of China,” will say.
In his speech in March, Wen already made it clear that signing an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with Taiwan was one of the policy tasks his government has set itself for this year. He also said, “As long as we stick to the position that the mainland and Taiwan both belong to one China, the great task of completely unifying the motherland is bound to succeed.”
Nobody in Ma’s administration dared utter a word in response. Soon after, Taiwan’s government meekly went ahead with the second round of ECFA negotiations, which were held in Taoyuan County’s Dasi Township (大溪). Now, while the dates for the third round of talks have yet to be finalized, Wang has thrown in another political requirement, which is that the Chinese Communist Party and Ma’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) must fight together against Taiwanese independence. The aim, of course, is to promote unification. The ECFA debate between Ma and DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is over, and there will be no presidential campaign debate between the two parties until 2012.
It looks as though Ma, who promised that there would be “no independence, no reunification and no war” during his term as president, won’t be shouting any more slogans for the time being. Ma only needs the “Republic of China” cover when he’s on stage in front of the public, so he can put it away for now. That is the way Ma plays the sovereignty issue, as we have seen time and again during his first two years in office.
In such circumstances, when Ma says he intends to personally lead a free-trade agreement (FTA) team and that the more FTAs Taiwan signs, and the sooner it does so, the better, one can’t help feeling the whole situation is “creepy,” to borrow Ma’s own turn of phrase. We have to ask Ma whether he’s got China’s “blessing” for this latest project, given that it was only a few days ago that Wang publicly denied rumors that China would help Taiwan to sign FTAs with other countries.
China has repeatedly said that FTAs are agreements between sovereign nations, so Taiwan has no right to sign them. The ECFA, on the other hand, is another thing entirely, at least according to China. Judging by Ma’s meek obedience to China’s every command, his promise to push for FTAs is not very convincing.
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