China has recently adopted a new tactic against Taiwan in the international arena. By using different rhetoric and different interpretations while addressing Taiwan and the international community, Beijing is now working to confuse international understanding of cross-strait relations and push Taiwan into the quagmire of an independence-unification dispute.
While in New York for the UN Millennium Summit, Chinese President Jiang Zemin (
Jiang asked, "Most countries in the world recognize `one China;' even the US government has repeatedly claimed to support the `one China' policy, so why does this problem remain unsolved?"
"Once the leader of Taiwan recognizes the `one China' principle, we can talk. He can come [to Beijing] and I can go [to Taiwan]," he said.
His remarks are aimed at painting Taiwan as a troublemaker, and hinting that the US had deliberately blocked unification of the two sides across the Taiwan Strait.
Jiang used the same approach during his meeting with Cuba's President Fidel Castro. Jiang said the main policy toward Taiwan is "peaceful unification under the `one country-two systems' model," but also includes "the determination and preparations necessary to foil all splittist schemes and safeguard the integrity of Chinese sovereignty and territory."
Jiang's rhetoric fell a long way off the recent syllogism posited by Qian Qichen (錢其琛), head of Beijing's Taiwan affairs task force. Speaking to visitors from Taiwan, Qian said: "There is only one China; both the mainland and Taiwan belong to one China; China's sovereignty and territory cannot be split." Obviously, when Jiang talks about "one China" to the international media, what he means is exclusively the People's Republic of China. What Qian told his Taiwanese visitors, on the other hand, is that China includes both Taiwan and the mainland. Such a gaping discrepancy is the reason why the Taiwan government has difficulty understanding Beijing's flip-flopping rhetoric.
China wants to shift the blame onto Taiwan for cross-strait tension, saying Taiwan unilaterally overturned the 1992 "one China" consensus. However, the two sides only agreed to disagree in 1992 -- which means not to challenge each other's interpretation of what "one China" meant. Taiwan by no means agreed to the "one country, two systems" arrangement or that it was in any way a part of the PRC. By playing fast and loose with its own rhetoric, Beijing is trying to push Taiwan to agree to what it calls the "1992 consensus," which Taiwan has always interpreted as not challenging the other side's definition of what "one China" means. If Taiwan agreed to a return to the 1992 position, this would then be trumpeted internationally as acquiescing to the "international" version of "one China" -- in which "China" is the PRC -- making it appear in the eyes of the international community that Taiwan has agreed to PRC sovereignty and that the cross-strait dispute is a domestic issue. This is a meticulously designed semantic trap. In fact, Beijing's "two ways to cook `one China'" spin-doctoring is the main reason why the two sides have not been able to build mutual confidence.
So far, President Chen Shui-bian's (
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