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Forum warns of cross-strait dangers

Former president Lee Teng-hui, right, speaks to Harvard University researcher Ross Terrill during an international symposium at Taipei's Grand Hotel yesterday. The symposium focused on cross-strait exchanges and Taiwan's national security. PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES

Cross-strait exchanges may lead to Taiwan's demise if the country does not stop China from achieving its ambition of unification with Taiwan, experts warned yesterday.

Grave warnings against China's unification strategies interspersed experts'speeches in an international conference session titled "The Strategy and Campaign -- How China Uses Cross-Strait Exchanges to Influence Taiwan" in Taipei.

"This summer alone, China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) held six summer camps for Taiwanese children," said Deputy Secretary-General of Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation Yen Wan-ching (顏萬進).

ARATS, China's semi-official body handling cross-strait affairs, also recruited more than 1,500 Taiwanese university students to China this summer for sightseeing trips to ancient Chinese emperors' tombs and cultural sites such as Confucius temples, Yen said.

The design of such trips' itineraries was intended to evoke Taiwanese students' admiration for China, Yen said.

The association's enthusiasm for inviting Taiwanese students to visit China, Yen added, reveals Beijing is now expanding its campaign to unify with Taiwan by wooing the nation's younger generation.

Moreover, the Beijing authorities have been recently relocating Chinese officials based in the coastal provinces inland in order to bring Taiwanese businessmen's investment into the more backwater areas, Yen said.

As these Chinese officials have established good relationships with Taiwanese businessmen operating in the coastal provinces, Yen said, it is easy for them to persuade the businessmen to invest their money in China's less developed provinces.

"China may not swallow Taiwan in a mouthful, but we have to be very wary to prevent it from eating Taiwan bit by bit," Yen cautioned.

"We cannot have the illusion that if we stop developing our ties with other countries, China will be in cordial terms with us," Yen said.

Advisor to the Taiwan Research Institute Ruan Ming (阮銘) and Chen Hsiu-fang (陳秀芳), a student from Tamkang University's Graduate Institute of China Studies, analyzed how China has adjusted its cross-strait policy since President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) won the 2000 election.

According to their analysis, Wang Daohan (汪道涵), China's top negotiator with Taiwan, conducted a meeting to review China's cross-strait policy in Shanghai one week after the 2000 presidential election.

In 1996, China launched missile tests off Taiwan's waters before the country's first direct presidential election in an effort to persuade voters not to choose former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), who Beijing viewed as a separatist. Lee won a landslide victory.

Three days before the 2000 presidential election, former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji (朱鎔基) held a press conference to threaten the Taiwanese people to vote for either Lien Chan (連戰) or James Soong (宋楚瑜), now leaders of the major opposition parties, rather than the pro-independence Chen Shui-bian.

Zhu's intimidation was believed to have boosted Chen Shui-bian's popularity and helped him end the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) half-century regime in Taiwan.

In Wang's review of China's blunders in attempting to influence Taiwan's 1996 and 2000 presidential elections, he said because of the missile tests and Zhu's threat, China had made itself look like "a diner devouring with ugly gestures."

Wang decided China should not display the "ugly eating gestures" anymore. Instead, if Beijing wanted to unify with Taiwan, it should release a bait to lure Taiwan into the trap, Ruan's report quoted Wang as saying.

Wang said: "We have to observe [Taiwan's situation] calmly ... Taiwan is changing. We have to study the developments of its political parties. We will use politicians and the media to split Taiwan."

Ruan's report said the KMT, after losing its regime, took China's bait.

"Lien has so far been unable to give a clear definition of Taiwan's national identity," Ruan said.
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