Former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀) said Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) appeared “patient” in moving toward the goal of bringing Taiwan into the Chinese fold, an approach that was deemed a success by Chinese academics, leaked US cables showed.
Several US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks showed that Taiwan was among the issues discussed when then-US deputy secretary of state James Steinberg and US Senator Bill Nelson met separately with Lee in 2009.
A cable dated June 4, 2009, from the US embassy in Singapore detailed Lee telling Steinberg that Hu could live with President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) position on the so-called “1992 consensus” and on not addressing the “reunification issue” during his term in office, because Hu was “more patient and does not have any fixed timeline.”
Lee was quoted in the cable as saying former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) was “wedded” to his eight-point approach, while Hu was more flexible. Jiang wanted to show he was a great man by solving the “Taiwan issue” in his lifetime, but Hu was more patient, Lee added.
“On Taiwan, Hu will be pragmatic. It does not matter to Hu if it takes 10 years or 20 or 30. The key is building links with Taiwan,” Lee was quoted as saying.
“What mattered to Hu was that Taiwan not seek independence. If that happened, China has 1,000 missiles and is building its capacity to hold the US fleet at a distance. The implicit question for Taiwan’s leaders is if that is what they want,” Lee added.
Beijing’s calculations appeared to be to prevent Taiwanese independence in the near term, “then bring Taiwan ‘back to China,’ even if it takes 40 or 50 years,” the cable showed Lee as saying.
Lee also said Hu had wanted Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) to be his successor, not Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平), “but Hu did his calculations and accepted Xi when it became clear that Xi had the necessary backing from the rest of the leadership,” also an example indicating Hu was “pragmatic.”
In another cable from the same embassy, dated Aug. 17, 2009, Lee, in a meeting on Aug, 13, 2009, with Nelson, said China had asked Singapore to stop sending its troops for training in Taiwan and offered training areas in China’s Hainan instead.
Singapore does not have official diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but an agreement that began in 1975 allowed Singapore to train infantry, artillery, armored and commando units in Taiwan.
The cable showed Lee as telling his Chinese counterparts that “if Singapore forces go to Hainan for training, the Americans will stop selling Singapore arms.”
“[Lee] intended for the Chinese to get the message that their arms are not equal to American arms, he said. He added that he has told Beijing that if Beijing is in charge of Taiwan, he will ask Beijing for permission to train there,” the cable said.
Singapore is still pressured by Beijing on issues like Taiwan, Lee said.
Another cable, dated April 30, 2008, from the US embassy in Beijing showed that some Chinese academics exchanged views about Hu’s “patient” attitude on the “Taiwan issue” and considered the strategy a success in terms of increasing China’s influence on Taiwan.
Guo Zhenyuan (郭震遠), a senior academic at the China Institute of International Studies, said Hu “took risks” when he met with then-honorary Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) in 2005, expressing his faith in Taiwanese people in his “four nevers” speech, broke from Jiang’s timeline for unification, and deciding to be “very restrained” in the lead-up to the presidential election and referendum vote in March 2008, the cable showed.
“If the Taiwan referenda on joining the United Nations had passed and the DPP [Democratic Progressive Party] had stayed in power, Hu would have been vulnerable to strong attacks against his policy. By contrast, having achieved ‘the best possible result in the elections’ [that the KMT won the election and the referendums were defeated], Hu is now ‘very strong’ on Taiwan Policy, Guo argued,” the cable read.
The cable quoted Yang Liuchang, director-general of the Hong Kong, Macao, and Overseas Affairs Division of Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, as saying that Hu’s policy had been successful because it focused on peaceful development, which was a “win-win” situation for people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
“Yang said Hu is serious about achieving a peace agreement but will be patient and, unlike Jiang Zemin, will ‘not rush’ in pushing forward on cross-Strait issues,” Yang said.
In its comment, the US embassy in Beijing said it was a fact that Hu’s successful strategic gambles appeared to have strengthened his hand on Taiwan, the cable read.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS