China’s rejection of Taiwan’s bid to become a founding member of the Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) was announced not by the AIIB secretariat, but by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office — the same office to which the Mainland Affairs Council, at the request of the Ministry of Finance, had submitted a letter of intent. The rejection was not unexpected, and people now wonder about the rush, to describe it with a Chinese-language saying, to have Taiwan’s “hot face stick to China’s cold butt.”
The government declared that the “strategic goal” — raising a hand to secure the right to speak up — had been achieved, as the AIIB interim secretariat said, according to the finance ministry, that the rejection “would not affect the possibility of Taiwan becoming an ordinary member.”
However, this is a self-serving argument, since it was never said that being rejected as a founding member would hurt a nation’s eligibility for ordinary membership, or that without Taiwan’s bid the charter would be written to bar the participation of what China deems non-state entities.
When Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China that Beijing unilaterally and obstinately compares to Taiwan as an equivalent in terms of sovereignty, applied as early as October last year and still has not been approved as a founding member, what realpolitik strategic analysis was used to dupe the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) into the delusional thinking that Taiwan might be treated differently by a China-led bank?
Giving the government’s move a charitable interpretation, it might be that, beyond economic reasons, it has decided to act as a sovereign state with the right to show its interest in shaping a multistate organization.
However, the reality is that the failed bid — about which the government released little information before the submission of the letter of intent, much like it did before signing the “black-box” cross-strait service trade agreement — had just whipped up public anxiety and anger, and aggravated the tension between the ruling and opposition parties, for nothing.
Was Ma betting on Beijing’s disposition toward favoring the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) over the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) — particularly now, just weeks before the KMT-Chinese Communist Party forum and less than a year from Taiwan’s next presidential election?
The outright rejection, which at first came without a clear explanation — Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) refused to confirm legislators’ speculation that it was related to Taiwan’s unrecognized statehood — shows that China is probably the last international player on which Taipei, pan-blue or pan-green, wants to lay its hopes for breaking into the “international space.”
With that in mind, the ruling party’s recent demand that DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) provide a “clear stance” on cross-strait relations is deplorable. The KMT’s so-called “1992 consensus” that it has much touted is nothing more than a fetter to restrict Taiwan’s movement in cross-strait activities, and a tool used by the KMT as Beijing’s proxy to bring the DPP into the “one China” fold.
The KMT legislators are now, in tandem with the opposition, calling for Taiwan’s “dignified and fair” participation in the international arena, even when facing China, but what KMT legislators and their party have done contradict their statements.
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