“The old path of [cross-strait] antagonism” is not to be taken, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has said more than once — in her Double Ten National Day speech and in interviews in the past few days. However, her appeals seem to have fallen on deaf ears, or worse, sounded evil to Beijing.
In response to Tsai’s speech on Monday calling for renewed dialogue, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman An Fengshan (安峰山) said that denying the so-called “1992 consensus” is a dead-end “evil road.”
Unification is a “great historical trend and those who go with it would thrive, while those who oppose it would perish,” he said.
What is the next step for Tsai? Goodwill needs reciprocity, but one-sided hostility could easily stir up resentment and cause damage, especially when it is from a powerful nation that has been ratcheting up its assertiveness in the region, with its neighbors feeling the pressure.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) also needs to respond correctly to Beijing’s enmity. China can afford to go back to the “old path of antagonism,” because it presumes that there are those in Taiwan who would be more than willing to benefit from its selective goodwill.
With the KMT having another forum with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) next month — the name of which it said would be changed from the cross-strait economic, trade and culture forum to the “cross-strait peace development forum” — and amid claims that a meeting between KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is being planned, one cannot help but be reminded of the cross-strait situation during the previous Democratic Progressive Party administration from 2000 to 2008.
Then-KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) went on his “journey of peace” to China in 2005, marking the first-ever meeting between KMT and CCP heads after the KMT fled to Taiwan in 1949. The former vice president launched the forum and asserted that both parties agreed on the “1992 consensus.” Since then, the Chinese government has tabled various deals that would “benefit” Taiwan through the KMT, forming a comprador system that in 2014 sparked fury among Taiwanese, particularly young people.
In November last year, two months before the presidential election, the KMT struck up another historic meeting with China, but this time it was not a party-to-party scenario, as then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was involved. At the meeting with Xi, the two sides focused on the “one China” part of the “1992 consensus,” but neglected the part saying: “with each side having its own interpretation.” It was agreed that the two sides should interact by following the “1992 consensus.”
In a sense, the cross-strait political agenda was set by the KMT, while Beijing was happy to play along. That might be an overstatement, but at the very least, both were happy to play into the other’s hands.
However, Hung seems more eager than Beijing to advance the KMT’s cross-strait political agenda, tearing away the “economic and trade” facade of the KMT-CCP forum and upholding “peace,” in reference to the “cross-strait peace agreement” she advocates.
The KMT needs a debate over its policy — and some in the party have begun to push for it — as Hung is leading the KMT on a path of antagonism, not between Taiwan and China, but between the KMT and Taiwanese.
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