The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday shared worrisome news about the fate of 18 Taiwanese fraud suspects arrested in Cambodia, saying that they are most likely to be deported to China by the end of this week. If that occurs, it would increase to 95 the number of Taiwanese deported from a foreign nation to China over allegations of fraudulent activities.
The pending deportations again highlight the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) fallacy that the Straits Exchange Foundation and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) reached a consensus on the “one China” principle in 1992 and that both sides of the Taiwan Strait have different interpretations of what “China” means.
The existence of the so-called “1992 consensus” has been one of the most hotly debated topics in Taiwan’s political arena since then-Mainland Affairs Council minister Su Chi (蘇起) used the term on April 28, 2000, when he urged then-president-elect Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to use his inaugural address to call on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to break the cross-strait impass by returning to the “1992 consensus.”
On Nov. 7, 2001, then-Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) — who was a staunch advocate of the “1992 consensus” after he became president in 2008 — also said that a consensus had been reached during post-1992 talks between the foundation and ARATS.
Ma at the time said that the unprecedented cross-strait talks between then-foundation chairman Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫) and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Daohan (汪道涵), in Singapore in 1993 would never have been held if Taipei and Beijing had not reached an agreement on the “one China” principle the previous year.
However, a different conclusion can easily be reached after reviewing correspondence and historical records: While Taipei and Beijing use the term “1992 consensus” and assert that a consensus was reached following the 1992 talks in Hong Kong, the consensus was based on what was at best a purposeful misunderstanding.
While the foundation and ARATS found common ground in their correspondence after the 1992 talks “that both sides of the Taiwan Strait adhere to the one China principle,” a consensus could not be deemed as such unless all premises were agreed upon by both parties.
It goes without saying that Beijing never agreed to accept or directly responded to Taipei’s repeated assertions that “both sides have different understandings of the meaning of one China” in the two agencies’ post-meeting letters. As such, any belief in the existence of the “1992 consensus” is either the result of taking things out of context or pure wishful thinking.
Also, what Ma seems not to understand is that in holding the Koo-Wang talks, Beijing obtained what it has always wanted the most: Locking Taiwan into the “one China” cage and replacing the more thorny “one China” principle with the ambiguous “1992 consensus.”
Amid the rise in Taiwanese identity and the emergence of so-called “naturally pro-independence young people,” the chances of cross-strait relations continuing to be maintained based on the “1992 consensus,” as preferred by Beijing and the KMT, are likely to decline over time.
Whether the term “1992 consensus” will eventually be abandoned due to the dwindling support from Taiwanese remains to be seen, but one thing people can be sure of is that Beijing will not stop trying to shackle Taiwan using the “one China” principle.
Unfortunately, this will remain one of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) biggest challenges for the foreseeable future.
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