The meeting between President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has been called a breakthrough for cross-strait relations, and, as such, it should of course be welcomed. Still, China’s real motives must not be ignored.
Beijing has firmly grasped the initiative and how it has gone ahead has taken everyone by surprise. It has also used all sorts of smoke-and-mirror tactics to trick observers, but looking at the issue from the perspective of regional strategy and land and marine-based geopolitics, the context becomes a bit clearer.
The key lies in the changes to the security situation and the intensifying South China Sea dispute. Beijing has trotted out a contemporary version of indirect offensive diplomacy. Perhaps the best commentary on this situation was that the US naval aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt just happened to be traveling through the South China Sea while the Ma-Xi meeting was going on.
First, Beijing has made an all-out diplomatic effort to break out of the US’ soft containment. It had a big win in London. Britain’s foreign policy has always been to play the role of diplomatic balancing power, and during World War II, it used the conflict between Germany and France to gain leverage. This time it used the same old trick to leverage the competition between the US and China: Britain was the first major Western nation to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), breaking the mold for other Western powers, which then clamored to become founding members.
In Northeast Asia, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s (李克強) summit involving Japan and South Korea achieved a diplomatic breakthrough. That was closely followed by Xi’s visit to Vietnam and then Singapore, where, incidentally, he met with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). This makes it clear that the main goal of Beijing’s diplomatic maneuvers is to weaken the leadership of “Captain America.”
Taiwan is in the East Asian triangle, and, strategically speaking, it could almost be called “China’s Hawaii,” so pulling Taipei into its orbit is important to it.
Although Mao Zedong (毛澤東) failed to take Kinmen, despite the bombardment, he stopped Taiwan from leaning completely toward the US. The difference is that where Mao used artillery, Xi is using a peaceful offensive.
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) strategy has always been not to fight wars unless it is certain of winning. Its thinking is to kill two birds with one stone. When dealing with Captain America, it naturally needs to boost its role as “Captain China.”
Just like Ma, Beijing has no friends. This can be seen from the meeting of ASEAN defense ministers, where only Cambodia supported Beijing in the South China Sea dispute. Strategically, preventing Taiwan from leaning too heavily on the US and Japan requires the domestic consolidation of the “one China” political framework. Even if this does not affect the overall result of January’s presidential election, it might affect the Democratic Progressive Party’s vote count and number of legislative seats.
More important to the CCP is setting up room to maneuver the “one China” framework. Now that the leaders of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have met, the initiative remains in Beijing’s hands. If the next president cannot meet with the Chinese leader, it would be interpreted as a setback to cross-strait relations, and “one China” would be crucial to whether any meeting would take place, with Beijing free to decide. China’s strategy of attack by drawing out the opponent is tantamount to putting a straightjacket on the next president. On the road to the election, “one China” and the so-called “1992 consensus” are a time bomb controlled by Beijing.
The importance of the South China Sea is not only in the US$5 trillion dollars in trade which transits through the area. For China it is also the transport route for 95 percent of its crude-oil imports. Beginning in 2020, China is set to have 350 million barrels per day of crude transiting through the region. The route is an absolute lifeline for China, and Beijing’s concern is its strategic layout five or 10 years into the future.
The geopolitical struggle for land and marine rights gives Taiwan tremendous strategic space to maneuver. Taiwan should be more self-confident. It should appropriately bolster its defense capabilities to create a bargaining chip to turn the security situation resulting from this struggle to its advantage.
Su Tzu-yun is assistant director of the Center of Advanced Technology at Tamkang University
Translated by Clare Lear
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