The retired military man, who is closely connected to the Bush administration, accused Taiwan's opposition parties of playing into the hands of Beijing. He also called for a bipartisan approach to cross-strait issues and asked why Taiwan's politicians, on the evidence of the results of the Economic Development Advisory Conference, can pull together for the sake of the economy, but not for national security.
Taipei Times: You mentioned during the forum that Beijing has become a battlefield in Taiwan's domestic politics. Could you elaborate on that?
Ralph Cossa: When I talked to the Chinese, they told me that when people from the KMT and the New Party come to China ... the feeling they are getting is, "We'll be back in control and we are the kind of people you can deal with," which I find very ironic because it was the KMT that was the big "splittist" two years ago. I think that the Chinese are getting a false sense of security based on developing assessments of what's going on in Taiwan from opposition politicians and business people.
What I told the Chinese officials is that they should be attempting to begin a dialogue with President Chen. And the part of Bonnie Glaser's report (a recent CSIS paper by Glaser which cited Chinese analysts saying that visiting KMT members urged China to take a hard line against Chen) that was overlooked was that one of the four legs of China's strategy is to try to have some type of low-level contact and dialogue even with the administration. But they are keeping it at a very low level.
My sense is that everyone on the mainland and perhaps everyone here is waiting to see how things play out in the year-end elections ... whether the DPP and Lee Teng-hui's (
My sense is that China is confused about Taiwan politics ... They (Taiwan's opposition parties) wanted last year to talk about impeachment, but it's really not impeachment talk at all. It was aimed at trying to force Chen into a coalition with the sympathetic elements of the KMT, the Lee Teng-hui faction. And that's still part of this game that's being played out. Coalition politics is not something that the mainland has much history of understanding, so it's very difficult for them to understand what's going on in Taiwan.
TT: To what extent do you think that a false sense of security can play a role in shaping cross-strait interaction?
Cossa: The positive side is that they'll think time is on their side, that the next government would be more centrist, that "the independence movement" has been rejected. I think this is a basic misunderstanding on China's part.
All of these various polls about "one country, two systems" are confusing, and I think, sort of send mixed signals. But it tells Beijing that its "divide and conquer" tactics are working.
The good news is that removes a sense of urgency and a sense of having to do military saber-rattling. I think they understand that the military saber-rattling is counterproductive.
While they are not going to remove the military option because they understand that's the only basic hope they have, they understand that on a daily basis, they do better by playing politics and by entering the domestic political game as long as the political parties in Taiwan are so eager to rush over to the mainland and help them play that game.
RSS