On Double Ten National Day, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said that cross-strait relations are not “international relations.”
The majority of Taiwanese probably do not accept this and neither does such a view conform with reality.
In June 2008, when Ma’s first month in office had just ended, the Chinese-language magazine Global Views Monthly (遠見雜誌) conducted an opinion poll in which 73.7 percent of respondents agreed that “Taiwan and China are two countries that have developed independently.”
Earlier this month, a Taiwan Mood Barometer survey (台灣民心動態調查) asked the same question, to which 69.7 percent of respondents agreed, while only 12 percent believed Taiwan and China were the same country.
Of the last group, 9.6 percent of respondents equated “one China” with the Republic of China (ROC), while 2.4 percent equated it with the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Evidently, there has been a consistent majority consensus in Taiwan on this issue, with negligible disagreement as to which party is in charge.
The president believes that the ROC is a country, but contends that the PRC is a country, too.
No matter what the law says, it is difficult to deny the fact that the PRC is a country. It is therefore obvious that relations between the two countries called the ROC and the PRC have to be “country to country,” that is, international relations.
Legally, none of Taiwan’s policies need to be directed by Beijing. No country signing an agreement with China needs to announce it to Taiwan, nor are any agreements signed with China applicable in Taiwan. Furthermore, none of Taiwan’s laws are applicable in China. It has been this way since 1949.
None of this has been the result of bilateral negotiations or agreement or approval by either side. Therefore, the relations between Taiwan and China are indeed international in nature.
Regardless of what happens in the future, this is how things stand at the moment.
For Ma to say that cross-strait relations are not “international relations” strongly suggests that he is laying the groundwork for a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
China naturally does not want a meeting between Ma and Xi to be interpreted as a meeting between two heads of state. Xi is the head of state in China and if he were to appear at an APEC summit and meet Ma, he would necessarily do so in this capacity because APEC is not a forum for meetings with “leaders of ruling parties from various countries.”
If the relationship between Taiwan and China is not international, what would be the nature of a meeting between Ma and Xi?
Without clarification, the repercussions for Taiwan could be serious. Surely Ma would not attend such a meeting in the capacity of a “special guest of honor,” or some such title?
Unless Ma believes the term “president” does not mean a head of state and does not refer to someone who represents a particular country, he should not be making comments about there being no “international relations” between Taiwan and China.
Bill Chang is a professor at National Taipei Medical University.
Translated by Drew Cameron
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs most: a reliable US commitment. Taiwan’s security depends less on US power than on US reliability, but Trump is undermining the latter. Deterrence without credibility is a hollow shield. Trump’s China policy in his second term has oscillated wildly between confrontation and conciliation. One day, he threatens Beijing with “massive” tariffs and calls China America’s “greatest geopolitical
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made the astonishing assertion during an interview with Germany’s Deutsche Welle, published on Friday last week, that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a dictator. She also essentially absolved Putin of blame for initiating the war in Ukraine. Commentators have since listed the reasons that Cheng’s assertion was not only absurd, but bordered on dangerous. Her claim is certainly absurd to the extent that there is no need to discuss the substance of it: It would be far more useful to assess what drove her to make the point and stick so
The central bank has launched a redesign of the New Taiwan dollar banknotes, prompting questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — “Are we not promoting digital payments? Why spend NT$5 billion on a redesign?” Many assume that cash will disappear in the digital age, but they forget that it represents the ultimate trust in the system. Banknotes do not become obsolete, they do not crash, they cannot be frozen and they leave no record of transactions. They remain the cleanest means of exchange in a free society. In a fully digitized world, every purchase, donation and action leaves behind data.
A large majority of Taiwanese favor strengthening national defense and oppose unification with China, according to the results of a survey by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC). In the poll, 81.8 percent of respondents disagreed with Beijing’s claim that “there is only one China and Taiwan is part of China,” MAC Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) told a news conference on Thursday last week, adding that about 75 percent supported the creation of a “T-Dome” air defense system. President William Lai (賴清德) referred to such a system in his Double Ten National Day address, saying it would integrate air defenses into a
RSS