On Wednesday, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) named former vice president Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) as his envoy for the upcoming APEC summit in Beijing. Clearly, the proposed meeting between Ma and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the gathering will not happen.
The idea of a Ma-Xi meeting has been a contentious issue for more than a year. Judging by the change in Ma’s attitude to the idea, he might have initially proposed a meeting in response to Xi’s call for political negotiations. Yet with plummeting approval ratings — and especially after hundreds of thousands protested the death of army corporal Hung Chung-chiu (洪仲丘) last year — Ma now seems to view meeting Xi as his best bet to avoid becoming a lame duck president.
Ma then said he would adjust his status for the meeting from “president” to leader of an economic entity, hinting that perhaps China could treat him how it treats Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying (梁振英). Beijing seized the chance and sent pro-China academics to the Cross-Strait Peace Forum last October to set three prerequisites for a Ma-Xi meeting: First, reciprocal visits by Mainland Affairs Council Minister (MAC) Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) and China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍). Second, establishing cross-strait representative offices and third, a cross-strait peace pact.
After the forum, the Ma administration started working to secure the meet. A MAC minister would not ordinarily attend an APEC summit, but Wang went to last year’s event and visited China three months later. He planned to invite Zhang to visit in April, but the visit was delayed to June after March’s Sunflower movement.
Ma demanded that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators prioritize amendments to set up cross-strait representative offices. Rumor had it that he suggested budgeting for the offices first, enabling the legislature to simultaneously pass the amendments and budget, so the offices could begin operations as soon as possible. Ma’s sense of urgency about meeting Xi is evident. However, Beijing’s bottom line of not holding the meet at an international event was clear: It sees the meeting as an internal affair.
In June, Zhang visited political figures in a high-profile trip to Taiwan. In August, he criticized the Ma administration for promoting Taiwanese independence economically — without not naming names — publicly opposed a Taiwan-Malaysia free-trade agreement and denounced the government over its accusations that former MAC deputy minister Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀) spied for and leaked confidential information to China.
The relationship between Ma and Xi has cooled and their meeting now seems unlikely. Ma hinted as much during an interview with al-Jazeera TV last month. Naming Siew his envoy to the summit means a Ma-Xi meeting there is dead in the water.
Taiwan has idled on the issue for more than a year, as China secures the establishment of a permanent mechanism for cross-strait political dialogue, making the world believe the two sides are preparing for unification talks. Luckily, the Sunflower movement put cross-strait exchanges on hold. Otherwise, more foreign academics would have suggested that the US abandon Taiwan and the nation would likely have been pushed by the international community onto the “one China” route.
If China establishes an office in Taiwan similar to the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in Hong Kong, remarks allegedly made by office director Zhang Xiaoming (張曉明) that it is OK to kill 500 protesters to crack down on the rallies there may resound in Taiwan during the 2016 presidential poll.
Although a Ma-Xi meeting will not happen at the APEC summit, it remains a contentious issue. Perhaps Ma and Xi should drop it.
Lai I-chung is vice chief executive officer of Taiwan Thinktank.
Translated by Eddy Chang
In the past month, two important developments are poised to equip Taiwan with expanded capabilities to play foreign policy offense in an age where Taiwan’s diplomatic space is seriously constricted by a hegemonic Beijing. Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) led a delegation of Taiwan and US companies to the Philippines to promote trilateral economic cooperation between the three countries. Additionally, in the past two weeks, Taiwan has placed chip export controls on South Africa in an escalating standoff over the placing of its diplomatic mission in Pretoria, causing the South Africans to pause and ask for consultations to resolve
An altercation involving a 73-year-old woman and a younger person broke out on a Taipei MRT train last week, with videos of the incident going viral online, sparking wide discussions about the controversial priority seats and social norms. In the video, the elderly woman, surnamed Tseng (曾), approached a passenger in a priority seat and demanded that she get up, and after she refused, she swung her bag, hitting her on the knees and calves several times. In return, the commuter asked a nearby passenger to hold her bag, stood up and kicked Tseng, causing her to fall backward and
In December 1937, Japanese troops captured Nanjing and unleashed one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century. Over six weeks, hundreds of thousands were slaughtered and women were raped on a scale that still defies comprehension. Across Asia, the Japanese occupation left deep scars. Singapore, Malaya, the Philippines and much of China endured terror, forced labor and massacres. My own grandfather was tortured by the Japanese in Singapore. His wife, traumatized beyond recovery, lived the rest of her life in silence and breakdown. These stories are real, not abstract history. Here is the irony: Mao Zedong (毛澤東) himself once told visiting
When I reminded my 83-year-old mother on Wednesday that it was the 76th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, she replied: “Yes, it was the day when my family was broken.” That answer captures the paradox of modern China. To most Chinese in mainland China, Oct. 1 is a day of pride — a celebration of national strength, prosperity and global stature. However, on a deeper level, it is also a reminder to many of the families shattered, the freedoms extinguished and the lives sacrificed on the road here. Seventy-six years ago, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東)
RSS