China's new leaders are unlikely to depart radically from their predecessors' cross-strait policies, political observers in Taiwan said, but next year's presidential election here will have some influence on China-Taiwan ties that have stagnated since the DPP came to power in 2000.
China is completing a leadership transition as well as restructuring its government during the two-week National People's Congress, which started last Wednesday.
On Saturday, China's parliament elected Chinese Communist Party leader Hu Jintao (
Zeng Qinghong (曾慶紅), one of outgoing president Jiang Zemin's (江澤民) closest aides and chief political strategists, was elected vice president while Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), 60, became the country's top economic official, replacing the retiring Zhu Rongji (朱鎔基) as expected.
Jiang, however, will remain chairman of China's influential Central Military Commission, which controls China's 2.5-million-strong military.
Hu, 60, was elected vice chairman of the Central Military Commission yesterday, ranking him second behind 76-year-old Jiang.
Hung Mao-hsiung (洪茂雄), an international relations graduate research fellow at National Chengchi University, said that the Taiwan policies of China's new leaders would mostly stay unchanged even though Jiang is stepping down from his positions as chairman of the CCP and president of China.
"Jiang will continue to rule `from behind the curtain' just as the late Deng Xiaoping (
"With Jiang's influence likely to continue, cross-strait relations will probably stay just the way they were when Jiang was president," Hung said.
However, Taiwan's presidential election, to be held on March 18 next year, will force China to adopt a new attitude toward Taiwan, he said.
"It doesn't matter which political camp wins the election -- either President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) or the joint ticket led by KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) with PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) -- China needs, one way or another, to come up with new strategies to deal with Taiwan," said Hung.
If Chen is re-elected, Hung said, China could no longer ignore his administration, as the result of the election would be evidence of the general public's support for the pro-independence DPP.
On the other hand, Hung said, if the pro-unification pan-blue camp won the election, China would also have to adopt new tactics to take into account the transfer of power.
"Either way, the result of next year's presidential election will play a significant role and affect the relations between Taiwan and China," Hung said.
Noting the relative youth of China's new leaders, Hung said that they would likely be more open to new ideas and thus would have a new mindset in dealing with cross-strait issues.
"Although it might be still too early to tell, I personally think that when these new leaders stabilize their authority after a couple of years and thus gradually and eventually ditch Jiang's influence, I think cross-strait relations will head toward a more sanguine state," Hung said.
However, Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), a research fellow in the Taiwan Research Institute's Division of Strategic and International Studies, said that "youth does not necessarily result in being more liberal."
While agreeing that the outcome of next year's presidential election would play a key role in the development of cross-strait relations, professor of political science at the National Taiwan University Ger Yeong-kuang (葛永光), however, said that cross-strait relations would not improve if Chen won again.
"The DPP's pro-independence stance, plus former president Lee Teng-hui's (
Addressing an annual meeting of the World Taiwanese Congress held in Taipei, Lee on Saturday called on Taiwanese to forge a new Constitution and change the nation's name from Republic of China to Taiwan.
Ger said that cross-strait ties would improve if the pan-blue camp won next year, "because the pan-blue camp would go back to the `one China, with each side having its own interpretation' (九二共識: 一個中國各自表述) consensus reached in 1992 to resume the long-stalled cross-strait dialogue."
From China's point of view, they can accept the 1992 consensus because it is ambiguous in terms of Taiwan's self-identification, Ger said.
China thus insists negotiators from the two sides should use the consensus to resume dialogue. The DPP, however, does not acknowledge the "1992 consensus."
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