With little more than one year remaining before the presidential election, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has entered the twilight — or lame duck — period of his presidency and his cross-strait agenda has become mundane and sedate, judging by his New Year’s Day address.
Looking toward how cross-strait relations are set to evolve this year under a new Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman, all eyes are on New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), the sole candidate, who looks likely to assume the position on Jan. 21.
In Ma’s address, among his goals for the year he juxtaposed “peace across the [Taiwan] Strait” with “social reconciliation,” and said he wanted to see “cooperation between the ruling and opposition camps.”
He also laid out his plans for the development of cross-strait relations, such as the completion of negotiations on issues both sides have agreed to under the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), including a deal on a trade in goods agreement and the establishment of representative offices on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
Before the Nov. 29 nine-in-one elections, Ma repeatedly pledged his intention to carry out his cross-strait agenda before he leaves office, but it seems the KMT’s crushing loss in the elections has caused concern that this program has been blown off course.
On several occasions over the past weeks, while vowing to ensure that cross-strait relations would continue to evolve peacefully under his chairmanship, Chu has said explicitly that he sees not only positives in Ma’s policy, showing his intention to pursue a revisionist agenda.
Although Chu did not address in detail the faults of Ma’s China policies, at the center of his concerns was that benefits arising from cross-strait economic integration have been reaped by just a handful of people because of the high level of cronyism and nepotism in political and business circles.
That was a positive response to growing public unease with the direction in which Ma has been taking the nation as far as the economy is concerned. Chu’s concerns revolved around whether the KMT would take seriously the unfair sharing of benefits and take care of those adversely affected by liberalization.
However, he has yet to address the bigger picture of the nation having become increasingly dependent on China economically and thus susceptible to its political influence.
It remains unclear how extensive Chu’s revisions would be, even from an economic standpoint, which would likely be viewed favorably by the majority of people.
It can also be expected that he would provoke a backlash from those whose power or vested interests would be challenged. Chu has recently experienced a pushback on the issue of the KMT’s assets — soon after he said that illicitly obtained assets would be returned to their rightful owners, vice president and acting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) quickly scheduled a meeting of the party’s Central Standing Committee and concluded that all party assets were legally registered.
Chu’s family background — which links him to princelings and crony capitalists in both Taiwan and China — puts in question whether he would actually have free rein to make any high-profile adjustments to Ma’s cross-strait policies.
Nevertheless, unlike Ma, who insists that his China policy is correct, Chu has at least acknowledged public discontent.
After taking the chairmanship, Chu should consider the stalled bill on government oversight of cross-strait agreements a priority. Only by throwing a democratic wrench into cross-strait negotiations would he be able to withstand pressure from those who favor more opaque discussions.
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