Sat, Nov 09, 2002 page8

• Editorial: Little new in Beijing's old leaders

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  The Chinese Communist Party's 16th National Congress is underway in Beijing with important decisions on China's leadership being made over the course of the next five days. However, looking at the content of the report Chinese President Jiang Zemin (江澤民) delivered to the congress yesterday one can see that there will not be any structural change in cross-strait relations in the short term.

  Chinese officials recently launched a rhetorical offensive to push for direct links, sparking expectations that Jiang's report to the congress would break new ground -- that Beijing would show some flexibility. Such expectations have been dashed. Jiang said nothing new about Taiwan. Since he will continue to call the shots for the foreseeable future his report will dictate Beijing's policies toward Taiwan for the next two or three years.

  Jiang's policies toward Taiwan have been a failure because he has never been able to understand public opinion in this country. His eight-point policy on Taiwan remains just a piece of paper.

  Taiwan is very different from Hong Kong or Macau. The ROC is an independent sovereignty established in 1912. It did not disappear after the PRC's establishment, but instead has continued to enjoy sovereignty over its own territory and population. Therefore any discussions between Taipei and Beijing must be at the level of two independent states, not between a central government and a "renegade province." China wants cross-strait relations to be conducted under the premise of its "one China" principle. It wants Taiwan to give up its self-esteem and status and accept the "one country, two systems" scheme. If the leadership in Beijing was younger, one might be tempted to ask what it had been smoking.

  Even talk between a man and a woman about marriage has to be an act of free will. One side can extend a proposition and try to make the other side happy. However, if your potential partner threatens to blow your brains out with a gun if you don't marry them, it is not exactly what one would consider a friendly offer. But this is what China's Taiwan policy is like.

  The unification of two countries is a marriage of thousands of families. State leaders need to consider the optimum welfare of all of them. Despite his emphasis on peaceful unification, Jiang has also vowed not to renounce the use of force, warning Taiwan that it cannot delay unification indefinitely. No parent can ever accept such a belligerent marriage proposition, much less a state leader.

  A normal relationship between a man and a woman should begin from friendship and then proceed toward marriage, not the other way around. Beijing's Taiwan policy is to force Taipei to recognize "one China" before any negotiation can begin -- which is equivalent to forcing a marriage before the two sides have become friends. This is diametrically opposite to the normal procedure, where people interact on an equal basis before they discuss marriage.

  Cross-strait relations reached an impasse more than 10 years ago because Chinese leaders of Jiang's generation were unable to overcome their blind spots. Hopefully the next generation of leaders will see that equality and mutual benefit should be the true nature of cross-strait relations. Hopefully they will remove the unnecessary ballistic missiles deployed against Taiwan and try to win acceptance from the people of Taiwan through a normal relationship.
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