The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has been enthusiastically participating in activities held by Beijing and speaking openly about being the intermediary between Taiwan and China since becoming the opposition party.
Does this represent a strategic departure or is the KMT repeating its stance, acting as a cross-strait comprador, of its last period of opposition from 2000 to 2008, which it maintained after returning to power in 2008, causing it to be loathed by young people?
On Saturday last week at the fifth Yunnan-Taiwan Economic and Cultural Exchange Seminar, KMT Vice Chairman Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) talked about the KMT adopting a second-track mechanism to maintain cross-strait peace. Former KMT vice chairman Jason Hu (胡志強), who on Monday attended the eighth Cross-Strait Forum in Xiamen, China, doubled down on Hau’s second-track gambit by saying that the KMT should not be overly modest and take the second track, “but try to be the first track for maintaining peace.”
KMT Legislator Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) on Tuesday at the legislature’s question-and-answer session also brought up second-track diplomacy after pressing Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Katharine Chang (張小月) on whether the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration is upholding the “status quo” by talking to China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) via a hotline and maintaining functional negotiations between the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits.
KMT Central Standing Committee member Tseng Wen-pei (曾文培) on Monday said at the fifth Common Homeland Forum in China’s Fujian Province that the status of the KMT Mainland Affairs Department would be elevated to “replace the [government’s] SEF and MAC” in order to provide services to Taiwanese businesspeople in China.
According to the China Times, a KMT subgroup is expected to meet with Zhang in Beijing next week, paving the way for the KMT-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forum slated for the latter half of the year and a possible meeting between KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
Zhang — who has been avoiding exchanges with the MAC — is to meet with KMT officials, and the SEF — which has been deliberately shut out of interactions with its Chinese counterpart — is to be “replaced” by the KMT’s Mainland Affairs Department.
From 2000 to 2008, when the DPP was in power, “track two” was an option for the DPP administration, but it was not as successful as “party-based” exchanges between the KMT and the CCP. The latter culminated in the so-called KMT-CCP forum that first took place in 2006, following hot on the heels of then-KMT chairman Lien Chan’s (連戰) first visit to China in 2005.
Exchanges of this kind persisted even after the KMT returned to the presidency in 2008. Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) officially branded the “KMT-CCP platform” the “second track” in cross-strait exchanges.
The second track has always been a mechanism limited to the CCP and the KMT, which were archenemies, but are now united over the “consensus” that there is only “one China.” The KMT claims that it wants to “play the role” of a go-between, but in reality there has never been a time it has not.
What makes the KMT think that what it is doing now would make a different impression on the public?
Is it “being more candid on the KMT’s ‘Chineseness’” as Hung has been saying? Or China’s rising power and assertiveness?
It is hard not to surmise that the KMT is betting on the might of China, rather than placing its confidence in the choices of Taiwanese democracy.
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