One Year On: National Security - Cross-starit relations are as chilly as ever

In the run-up to the presidential election last year, Beijing threatened to unleash the full force of the People's Liberation Army and rain missiles down on Taiwan if the DPP won office. Critics at home echoed the theme that China would attack Taiwan should the pro-independence party come to power.

President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), Beijing's bete noire, has been in office for one year already and cross-strait ties are rather stable, if somewhat cold.

In keeping with his campaign promise, Chen has sought hard to preserve peace in the Taiwan Strait. To that end, he has made a series of concessions including promises not to declare Taiwan independence nor tinker with the nation's flag nor national anthem. This centrist tilt has earned the president applause both at home and abroad.

To further demonstrate his goodwill, Chen floated the idea of "integration" between both sides of the Strait in his New Year's Eve speech. The next day, the so-called "small three links" (小三通) went into effect, allowing direct trade and transport links between Taiwan's outpost island groups of Kinmen and Matsu and Xiamen and Fuzhou in Chinese-controlled Fujian Province.

This and other overtures, however, have all failed to move Beijing, which insists Chen accept the "one China" principle before seeking to mend fences. Chen and the DPP are unwilling to concede this point, however. With no solution in sight, the two sides will most likely remain in what analysts refer to as a state of "cold war" until after the December elections when Taiwan's political map is expected to undergo a substantial change.

The fact that the US might intervene on Taiwan's behalf in the event of hostilities breaking out has also been a stabilizing factor. Last month, US President George W. Bush said the US would do "whatever it takes" to defend Taiwan and "the Chinese must understand that." The statement stands in stark contrast to US policy toward Taiwan since Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing at the end of 1978.

On the campaign trail, Chen vowed to emulate late US president Richard Nixon, who had been a staunch opponent of communism but who managed to bridge the gap between the US and communist-ruled China. If elected, Chen said he would visit China, talk with its leaders about any issue and lift the ban on full-scale exchanges. To date, he has yet to make good on the pledge, due mainly to Beijing, which has ignored his administration and wooed the opposition instead.

"Given the predicament Chen is in, he has done a better-than-expected job at guarding the nation's security," said Andy Chang (張五岳), a China watcher at Tamkang University. "The past 12 months have seen no deterioration in cross-strait relations."

Capturing the presidency with less than 40 percent of the vote, Chen has avoided confronting the opposition parties, which together control a two-thirds majority in the legislature. He stepped back from the frontline and asked popular Academia Sinica President Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) to head a task force on cross-strait relations. The panel, with members from across the political spectrum, was charged with building a consensus on cross-strait issues among a politically polarized populace.

Unfortunately, the KMT and People First Party (PFP) refused to participate in the undertaking, as did the miniscule New Party. Their boycott has seriously undermined the task force.