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Two statements and two Taiwans

Just after President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) made his statement about one side, one country, and the need for having a referendum law, pundits in Taiwan and abroad were comparing it with the state-to-state remark made by former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) in 1999. I will leave to word merchants the explanations of the verbal jujitsu that is always a part of the cross-strait issue. More interesting are the differences in atmosphere in the immediate aftermaths of the two statements.

On July 9, 1999, it seemed like the sky was about to fall. As out-of-the-loop leaders in Taipei were scrambling to get back in as they were this time, the US government and most of the country's many China experts were denouncing Lee's move. They bestowed on Lee the title (borrowed from the PRC) of "troublemaker." Others, more sympathetic to Taiwan, were miffed by being blindsided, but moved to help patch things up.

The international media joined in this heavy criticism of Taiwan, as, more slowly, did the Taiwan media. The PRC, always slow to get its public relations act together, made gains by picking up what the US and the media were saying. For China, retaliating by cutting off cross-strait dialogue, and stepping up its Lee bashing, was cost-free. No one criticized its reaction.

Lee's 1999 statement is still seen by most observers as a mistake. Raising tensions, by definition, is not good, of course. But beyond that there was an assump-tion that the cross-strait dialogue, through the planned visit of Wang Daohan (汪道涵), would have continued. It was not likely, however, that the PRC would have permitted forward movement in the relationship while its bete noire, Lee, was in the president's office.

It is also well to remember that the jolt caused by Lee's remarks was based on the perception that the US was moving closer to China at the expense of Taiwan. Seen from that perspective, there were some gains. Then US president Bill Clinton softened up somewhat (making a statement that any change in Taiwan's status needed the "assent" of Taiwan's people). The US Congress passed a bevy of resolutions, some of which were meaningful (an annual report on the balance of forces in the Taiwan Strait, for example, put an end to the US' reluctance to address Taiwan's security problems).

Taiwan's world has changed drastically since then. China and Taiwan have joined the WTO, which may or may not be a good thing. But it is an important element in the rapidly growing economy of China and the drastically changing economy of Taiwan. The US administration has moved to redress the military imbalance in the Taiwan Strait, permitting Taipei to address the growing economic relationship with China.

Beijing, meanwhile, has shifted its effort on the Taiwan issue from an emphasis on security to an emphasis on the benefits accruing to it from the economic relationship, including Taiwan's international involvement. For Taiwan, the sensitivity factor therefore, has also shifted more in its direction in the last two years.

Chen's Aug. 3 remarks were made in Taipei by a different president, in a different world, under different circumstances, in response to different concerns in a different country. The pace of reactions was also different. The first to cry "disaster" was not the US, or even the PRC, which still takes a little time to get its act together, but the local media and opposition parties in Taiwan itself. Since the 2000 elections, the struggle over the cross-strait issue has not been played out in the Strait, or even in Washington or Beijing. The battle has been in Taiwan.

While the battleground has changed, so has the character of the battleground itself. It has a different ruling party, a different opposition, a media that is less easily manipulated by the government and a new and increasingly powerful constituency of busi-nesses doing business with China. And all of them, save the government itself, are able and willing to work with China. The struggle for consensus on national identity, for so long thought to be between Taiwanese and mainlanders, is increasingly between those who, regardless of ethnicity, wish for a closer relationship with China and those who want maximum separation.

For the last two years, Tai-wan's government has been coping with the need to restructure its economy in light of the changed economic relationship with China. A considerable amount of regulatory restructuring has occurred, mostly aimed at expanding the economic interchange across the Strait. Since this has been precisely the objective of the PRC as well, Beijing has not had to focus on pursuing that objective. Instead, it has been more active in efforts to limit Taiwan's participation in the international community, a very critical necessity for Taipei.

Most recently, Nauru was the loudest example of this objective because the PRC staged it that way. The treatment of Taiwan at the last APEC meeting is another. But China lately has expanded its efforts even further. Non-governmental organizations and groups such as the Lions Club International have been subjected to Beijing's campaign to cut Taiwan off from any international activity. In the WTO, China will not play by the rules when it comes to Taiwan and will go as far as to intimidate other members into opposing Taiwan's membership of subgroups to which the WTO looks, such as the World Customs Organ-ization and some others.

In 1999, Taiwan's concern was the US' perceived drift toward China. Today, the concern has been Beijing's efforts to strangle Taiwan's international identity. In many ways the environments in which the two incidents occurred are quite different. Yet Taiwan's reaction was the same -- make a lot of noise. Some outside observers have raised again the sobriquet of "Taiwan the troublemaker." I suspect that from within the minds of those who plan and make such decisions, and the alternatives they have which lead in a very different direction, they call it a matter of survival.

Nat Bellocchi is a former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan and is now a special adviser to the Liberty Times Group.The views expressed in this article are his own.
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