Is it any surprise anymore that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-controlled government is holding secret meetings with top Chinese security officials?
Since former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) signed an agreement on cooperation between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2005, nothing has been on the level. Backroom politics, secret agreements, obfuscation and cover-ups now define relations between these former enemies, now bedfellows. That’s why it comes as little surprise that Chinese Vice Minister of Public Security Chen Zhimin (陳智敏) visited Taiwan for a week last month to discuss who-knows-what with top Taiwanese officials, who remain anonymous because nobody in power wants anybody in the opposition to know just what’s going on.
The ramifications of secret meetings like this run deep. Former Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) hit the nail on the head when he said that discussions between Chinese security chiefs and the Mainland Affairs Council, Ministry of Justice and Coast Guard Administration could be focused on combating “terrorism,” a euphemism that could easily be used to describe those who support independence, or those who disagree with President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) headlong push into unification. Once a secret agreement between the two sides’ security apparatuses is signed, it wouldn’t be hard to cooperate electronically to track and pressure pro--independence bloggers, activists and politicians.
If meetings like this become the norm, as Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) said he fears, then the public won’t know when their actions — which might have been legal in the past — will suddenly be considered dangerous or illegal.
Another suspicious coincidence is that Chen’s visit came at roughly the same time as the showdown between Japan and China on sovereignty over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The ongoing dispute directly involves the coast guards of all three nations that claim the islands — China, Japan and Taiwan. Setting the backdrop to these simmering nationalist tensions is unprecedented cooperation between the coast guards of Taiwan and China — an hours-long rescue drill off Kinmen Island, a place where the two sides used to do battle. In addition, the Taiwanese government allowed activists to board vessels leaving from Taiwanese territory to protest against Japan’s claim to the islands, escorting them with coast guard vessels. During this ugly confrontation, who steps across the Taiwan Strait to hold closed-door, secretive meetings with Taiwan’s coast guard? None other than one of the prime architects of the security crackdowns in Beijing, Hong Kong and Macau, China’s second-most powerful cop.
Why all this security cooperation? Isn’t the agreement on extradition of cross-strait criminals, stowaways and illegal immigrants — the Kinmen Agreement — that Taiwan signed with China 20 years ago enough? Why should the two sides meet secretly to strengthen cross-strait security, or hold so-called “peaceful exchanges”? The answer is because there will be a lot more people in Taiwan who disagree vocally with unification than there were in Hong Kong or Macau, and the groundwork needs to be laid. Once it becomes painfully obvious that the KMT and CCP intend to jointly unify the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, they’re going to have to act quickly to suppress all internal dissent and to unify their outward postures to discourage the involvement of Japan and the US. The talks surrounding these issues are not something they want to make public.
All this shows that things are a lot further along in the unification race than we had thought. Given the way the KMT and CCP are acting, unification seems like a done deal, with cross-strait markets and now mutual security apparatuses making the plunge before the politicians jump into the honeymoon suite.
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