Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is facing her biggest test on the road toward the presidency. The US is Taiwan’s most important ally, and in a bid to avoid a repetition of what happened during her visit to the US four years ago, when her Taiwan Consensus failed to woo her hosts, she is now attempting to win international recognition of her policy to maintain the cross-strait “status quo.”
Washington is not the only challenge facing Tsai. In Taiwan, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) must have been feeling lonely, so while Tsai is visiting Washington, he has hosted a video conference with Stanford University. During the conference, Ma said Tsai’s “status quo” lacks substance. He instead pushed his own China policies and the so-called “1992 consensus.” In doing so, he probably forgot that last year’s Sunflower movement was a protest against his China policies that pushed his approval ratings down below 10 percent.
Not only is Ma stabbing Tsai in the back during her US visit, he has also arranged a transit visit to the US to “clean up” after Tsai when he visits Central and South America. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) morale is at an all-time low and the party’s failure to put forward a candidate for next year’s presidential election is forcing Ma to fight the election battle as if he had returned to the 2012 presidential campaign.
China has not been idle either. On Tuesday, Chinese ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai (崔天凱) criticized Tsai, saying she needs to pass the test of 1.3 billion Chinese and accept the “one China” principle rather than try to muddle through the presidential election without a clear message. On Wednesday, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) said that its stance on the DPP remained clear and would not change, namely that “opposition to Taiwanese independence and insistence on the 1992 consensus is the foundation of peaceful cross-strait development.”
China clearly has not learned its lesson. During past Taiwanese presidential elections, China has tried to influence the elections with propaganda and military threats; both the missiles it fired over Taiwan in 1996 or the verbal threats issued by then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and then-premier Zhu Rongji (朱鎔基) had the opposite effect of what was intended. The Taiwanese impression of China is not good, and the statement by Cui was not helpful.
Cui misspoke. Regardless of how one looks at it, there are two separate governments in Taiwan and China. Taiwan’s presidential election is a matter for Taiwanese voters, so why should Tsai be tested by Chinese? China’s president has not passed the democratic test and been elected by 1.3 billion Chinese voters, so China has no right to comment on Taiwan’s democratic presidential elections.
The US visit is a pressure-cooker experience for Tsai. Whether various circles in the US agree with Tsai’s ideas for running the country is not an absolute factor when considering her election prospects. It will perhaps not increase her prospects of winning the election, but she must make sure it does not detract from them.
While China’s interference may have been unexpected, it is undeniably positive. Taiwan is likely to have to wait before seeing any positive effects of Tsai’s visit, but it is only by first allaying international concerns that she can focus on the presidential election campaign at home.
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