When Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was president, he sought to hoodwink the public and Taiwan’s allies, especially the US, by proposing a “three noes” policy of “no unification, no independence and no use of force.”
On Wednesday last week, he came up with a new version of the “three noes” that calls instead for “not excluding unification, not supporting Taiwanese independence and not using force.”
In the same speech, he proposed the following ideas, which would make relations between Taiwan and China look even more like matters of domestic policy: “For cross-strait relations to improve, the two sides must engage in consultations. We cannot use the US, Japan or any other third party as a proxy. Relying on a third party to intervene in cross-strait consultations could be unhelpful or even have a negative effect.”
Ma’s Chinese dream is close to that of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), but compared with the Taiwanese dream cherished by the majority of people in this nation, it might as well be in a parallel universe.
China never stopped bullying Taiwan, even when Ma was president. The illusion of cross-strait peace that existed during his presidency was actually a bubble inflated on condition of Ma’s acceptance that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to “one China.”
The results of the 2016 presidential and legislative elections once again showed that mainstream public opinion rejects the political blackmail that China uses to pressure Taiwan into accepting the so-called “1992 consensus.”
The election results burst the bubble blown by Ma’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Xi’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the bursting of this bubble is the main reason cross-strait relations are in a stalemate.
Xi is now engaging in cutthroat competition with Taiwan for the allegiance of its diplomatic allies. He has dispatched Chinese aircraft and warships to harass Taiwan by flying and sailing around it, and Beijing is using its influence to obstruct Taiwan’s participation in international organizations.
During his presidency, Ma declared a “diplomatic truce” with China, as well as a military one, while accepting the model of taking part in international organizations as an observer using the name “Chinese Taipei.” However, the events of the past two years show that these “checks” could only change hands between the KMT and the CCP, and now that a different party is in office, those checks bounce.
The illusion of economic prosperity maintained by the KMT and CCP between 2008 and 2016 was just as bogus, as most of the profits were channeled to China. Since then, China has revealed its true political face by reducing the numbers of Chinese tourists to Taiwan and buying less Taiwanese produce.
In their campaigns for the nine-in-one elections on Saturday, KMT candidates and spokespeople have been blaming the cross-strait stalemate for keeping certain cities and counties “old and poor,” but surely it is more in line with market mechanisms to dispense with bogus prosperity and let business get back to normal.
Having been rejected by voters in 2016, Ma’s political line was soon also made irrelevant by the US government’s strategic shift. Shortly before his inauguration as US president, Donald Trump referred to Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) as “the president of Taiwan,” and he has accused China of trying to change the “status quo” across the Taiwan Strait.
US warships have twice passed through the Taiwan Strait over the past few months and US arms sales to Taiwan are being normalized. Meanwhile, the US Congress has passed the Taiwan Travel Act, which encourages senior Taiwanese and US officials to visit each other’s countries, and annual US national defense authorization acts encouraging mutual port calls by Taiwanese and US warships.
The US’ Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy also confirms Taiwan as a model of democracy. Based on shared values and common interests, the US has attemoted to deter China from bullying Taiwan with what White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called “Orwellian nonsense.”
In addition to showing concern for peace across the Taiwan Strait, the US is helping Taiwan to maintain and expand its participation in international affairs. When Xi’s and Ma’s Chinese dreams are seen against such a background, it is all the more obvious how far out of touch they are with the new geopolitical dynamic.
The Trump administration is in the process of adjusting the US’ “one China” policy, which involves altering the balance between its policies regarding Taiwan and China. It is hard to predict how far this will go, but it seems clear that safeguarding Taiwan’s democracy and security is an anchor of the US government’s Taiwan policies.
After gaining good-enough results in the US midterm elections to consider running for a second term in 2020, Trump immediately said that he would again choose Mike Pence as his running mate. Considering Pence’s speech on the US administration’s China policy at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Oct. 4, this could pose a challenge to Xi for, at least in the next six years.
Trump is determined to stick to his guns in the US-China trade war and to use the Indo-Pacific strategy to deter China from upsetting the international order. He can also be expected to take countermeasures against China’s digital dictatorship.
On Monday last week, the US Department of State announced exemptions from its Iran oil sanctions requirements for eight countries. The inclusion of both Taiwan and China in this list of countries can be seen as a deft diplomatic move that sends the message that Taiwan does not belong to China.
As dictatorial China competes with the democratic US, it goes without saying which side Taiwan should choose. In contrast, despite all the changes that are going on, Ma still wants the KMT and CCP to get together behind closed doors to promote unification. The choice he has made also goes without saying.
Over the past year, China’s image in the international community has quickly gone from a positive one of the factory and market that is driving global growth to that of a copycat empire that is guilty of debt-trap diplomacy, unfair trade practices, intellectual property theft and putting pressure on foreign companies, while its leaders are going back to the political line of Mao Zedong (毛澤東).
More and more Western countries are starting to take countermeasures against China’s interference in their domestic policies, and its suppression of academic freedom and the freedom of the press. For example, academic institutions in some countries have closed China’s Confucius institutes and suspended academic cooperation with China.
Ma claims that his international outlook is superior to that of other local politicians, but in a changing international environment, he is going against the trend by jumping from “no unification” to “not excluding unification.”
One wonders what he thinks about China’s digital dictatorship and how he feels about China’s betrayal of its pledge to let “Hong Kongers rule Hong Kong” or the dim prospects of the Chinese government reassessing the 1989 democracy movement in the foreseeable future.
In shifting from “no unification” to “not excluding unification,” Ma has even dropped the precondition that China must first adopt democracy, freedom and a fair distribution of wealth. What happened to the insistence of Ma’s mentor, former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), that China must be united under the Three Principles of the People?
Ma boasts that during his presidency the two sides of the Strait experienced their most peaceful and prosperous period in more than six decades.
He complains that this peace and prosperity are gradually disappearing and the two sides are now behaving like enemies.
However, these changes show the illusory nature of that peace and prosperity, which were Beijing’s to give or take away as it pleased. The Taiwan Strait, which is now in a stalemate, is just one of the places where Xi is colliding with the international order as he pursues his Chinese imperial dream.
Supporters and opponents of China are lining up, and the international and cross-strait situations are quite different from what they used to be, but Ma is still reminiscing about his meeting with Xi three years ago and dreaming about Taiwan being unified with no preconditions.
The public is bound to oppose such ideas, but the question remains: Will the KMT endorse Ma’s leap from “no unification” to “not excluding unification”?
Translated by Julian Clegg
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) decision to step down after 19 years and hand power to his deputy, Lawrence Wong (黃循財), on May 15 was expected — though, perhaps, not so soon. Most political analysts had been eyeing an end-of-year handover, to ensure more time for Wong to study and shadow the role, ahead of general elections that must be called by November next year. Wong — who is currently both deputy prime minister and minister of finance — would need a combination of fresh ideas, wisdom and experience as he writes the nation’s next chapter. The world that
Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands? With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align. The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war.
As Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu’s party won by a landslide in Sunday’s parliamentary election, it is a good time to take another look at recent developments in the Maldivian foreign policy. While Muizzu has been promoting his “Maldives First” policy, the agenda seems to have lost sight of a number of factors. Contemporary Maldivian policy serves as a stark illustration of how a blend of missteps in public posturing, populist agendas and inattentive leadership can lead to diplomatic setbacks and damage a country’s long-term foreign policy priorities. Over the past few months, Maldivian foreign policy has entangled itself in playing