On July 30, Chinese defense ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng (耿雁生) said that everything is discussable under the “one China” principle, including the removal of ballistic missiles that China has pointed at Taiwan. China has deployed almost 2,000 missiles targeting Taiwan and this is only part of its military threat against the nation. China’s ultimate goal is to annex Taiwan, making the island part of its territory. Even if the missiles are removed, China’s military threat is still enormous. In proposing to remove the missiles on condition that Taipei accepts the “one China” principle, Beijing is employing both political and military blackmail. If China got its way on this, it would get into the habit of blackmailing and keep trying to coerce Taiwan in the future.
One of China’s negotiating skills is to blackmail others while pretending to do them favors. Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) once said that everything was negotiable on the premise of “one China.” He may have sounded lenient on the surface, but he was really playing a deceitful trick. Nothing is negotiable if Taiwan accepts the “one China” principle. Whatever Taiwan and China negotiate, they would most likely reach Beijing’s presumption in the end.
The so-called “1992 consensus,” namely that there is only “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what that means, appears to leave room for each side’s “respective interpretation” at a superficial level. However, such an interpretation is limited by the “one China” principle, not to mention that the international community does not really care about Taiwan’s own interpretation.
Similarly, during the former Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) rule, Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) said that everything was discussable if Taiwan acknowledged the “consensus,” but the DPP government strongly denied that such a consensus ever existed.
Geng’s latest remarks are nothing new, so it is hard to understand why some of Taiwan’s pro-unification media were so overjoyed to hear them. Hu already issued a six-point statement on cross-strait relations at the end of 2008. The last of his six points called on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait to officially end their state of hostility and reach a peace agreement through talks based on the “one China” principle. Thus, Taipei would have to accept the principle first to reach a peace agreement.
For Taiwan, this amounts to waving the white flag. What would Taiwanese gain from “peace through surrender?” Besides, the current situation remains one in which Beijing is hostile to Taiwan and wants to annex it, while Taiwan is not hostile to China and has no intention of invading it. China’s proposal is to end its hostility toward Taiwan on condition that the latter surrenders first. What kind of equal negotiation is this?
In the past, Jiang suggested to former US president George W. Bush that he could cancel US arms sales to Taiwan in exchange for China’s removal of some of its missiles pointed at Taiwan. However, missiles are just part of China’s military threat against Taiwan, while US arms sales are crucial to Taiwan’s defense and survival. Given this imbalance, Washington did not even discuss it with Beijing.
Obviously, what China should have done was to remove the missiles targeting Taiwan unconditionally. Linking the removal of missiles to the cancellation of US arms sales and Taiwan’s acceptance of the “one China” principle is akin to a gangster kidnapping someone for ransom.
Pitifully, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration dares not insist that China remove its missiles unconditionally. On the contrary, in the shadow of China’s military threat, Ma’s administration has resurrected the “1992 consensus” and resumed talks with Beijing to curry favor with it.
Over the past two years, China has continued adding to the number of missiles it has pointed at Taiwan, even while playing the trick of “using business to promote unification.” If Ma, as head of state, truly considered Taiwan his first priority, he would do all in his power to resist such trickery. Unfortunately, he has instead made concessions all throughout. He has revived the dubious “1992 consensus,” put up with Chinese envoys greeting him with “mister” instead of “president,” defined Taiwan as a part of China, participated willingly in international events under the name “Chinese Taipei” and signed the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) between the so-called “Taiwan and mainland areas.”
Step by step, this administration is walking toward China’s goal. As the Chinese missiles are all still there, Ma has only said that the deployment seems “discordant” now that Taiwan and China have signed the ECFA, while avoiding comment on how illusory the “peaceful atmosphere” across the Strait really is.
Even more ridiculous, the Ma administration recently called on Beijing to take the initiative by removing the missiles on the basis of the “1992 consensus.”
We need to understand that the so-called “consensus” is nothing but a cover for the “one China” principle. For the Taiwanese government, acknowledging the consensus is also acknowledging the principle, so China should remove the missiles soon. However, the Chinese government will surely want more and it will continue blackmailing the Ma administration until it swallows Taiwan’s sovereignty entirely.
China is fully aware of Ma’s obsession with the idea that “Taiwan should not provoke China” and that he will not insist on the unconditional removal of its missiles. That being the case, China is more than happy to take the false missile issue as a trump card, while compelling Ma to shed more of his bargaining chips.
This is exactly how the situation has been developing in recent years. Voters were deceived into choosing the wrong person in the 2008 presidential election and the result is that Taiwan’s future is now uncertain. Everyone in Taiwan should remember this painful lesson.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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