The Dalai Lama’s trip to Taiwan is bound to upset China, but Beijing will likely seek to avoid lasting damage to its warming ties with Taipei, analysts said yesterday.
China’s initial comments about the visit by Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader have focused on the fact that he was invited by members of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) — not the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government. This could allow China to go easy on President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who is struggling to overcome criticism of his handling of this month’s devastating typhoon, which left at least 543 people dead, experts said.
“The mainland will watch the situation carefully and earnestly take Taiwan’s internal situation into consideration,” said Wu Nengyuan (吳能遠), a Taiwan expert at China’s Fujian Academy of Social Sciences. “It won’t fall for the DPP’s plot.”
Liao Da-chi (廖達琪), a political science professor at Taiwan’s National Sun Yat-sen University, agreed, saying the absence of any mention of Ma’s ruling party in China’s official reaction was not a coincidence.
“Judging from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office’s [TAO] reaction, which criticized the DPP but left out the KMT, there’s some mutual trust between the two sides,” she said.
The Dalai Lama, who is expected in Taiwan late tomorrow, was invited by seven mayors and local government chiefs from the DPP.
The TAO issued a statement on Thursday after Ma approved the Dalai Lama’s visit, voicing “resolute opposition.”
But a spokesman for the office was also quoted in China’s media as singling out the DPP for special criticism.
“When people from all sectors on the mainland are lending a hand to help Taiwan reconstruct and overcome the typhoon disaster quickly, some DPP members have taken the chance to plot the Dalai Lama’s visit to Taiwan,” said the official, who was not identified.
Beijing routinely reacts with anger whenever the Dalai Lama goes on overseas trips, but this time he is heading for territory that it claims as its own national soil.
Some pro-China media in Taiwan expressed concern yesterday about the possible fallout from the visit following recent improvements in ties between Beijing and Taipei.
“If Beijing would not leave the matter at that, the adjustments in cross-strait relations in the past year would be wasted,” the Chinese-language United Daily News said in an editorial.
But Chinese academics said they believed ties would remain strong, and that Ma was powerless to refuse the visit, given the domestic pressure he is facing over his reaction to Typhoon Morakot, which has been described as weak and tardy.
“Ma dared not say no to the invitation of the Dalai Lama,” said Hu Shisheng, a Tibet expert at the Chinese Institute of Contemporary International Relations think tank.
“He and his Kuomintang [sic] were strongly accused of ineffective disaster relief, so it could be a big political crisis,” Hu told the Global Times.
Xiong Kunxin, an expert on ethnic minority issues at China’s Minzu University, told reporters: “I still have confidence. Whether it’s Taiwan or the mainland, I don’t think we’ll end up in a deadlocked situation just because the Dalai Lama visits.”
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