On May 4, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman and New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) is scheduled to visit Beijing and meet with Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping (習近平).
This will undoubtedly be heralded as another step forward in the rapprochement between China and Taiwan.
While it is obviously a positive sign that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are meeting and talking, there are a number of underlying problems with this meeting.
First, Beijing does not view or treat Taiwan as an equal neighbor, but considers it a “lost territory” that needs to be recovered — by force if necessary.
Its current strategy toward Taiwan is to gradually envelop it by economic means, so in due time it can impose political unification.
Second, the meeting in Beijing is set to be a KMT-CCP party-to-party affair. It is clear that the KMT does not represent the full range of public opinion in Taiwan.
For long-term peace and stability between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait it is essential that there is a better consensus in Taiwan on the way forward in relations with China.
Third, Beijing has a habit of backing its diplomatic efforts with force in its relations with neighbors, as it has demonstrated in the South China Sea, East China Sea, Tibet and East Turkestan.
It has not shown itself to be acting as a “responsible stakeholder” in these incidences.
So, can we expect it to adhere to any promises and agreements it might make with Taiwan?
In view of these rather serious concerns, it would be good if Chu would impress the following points on Xi:
Taiwan is a free and democratic nation, and in a democracy one can expect there to be changes of administration. China needs to accept this, and pursue peace and stability between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, irrespective of the government that is elected in Taiwan.
Taiwanese want the nation to be accepted as a full and equal member in the international community.
If Beijing respects the wishes of Taiwanese it must cease its objections to Taiwan’s membership of international organizations such as the UN and the WHO.
Taiwanese do not want to live with the threat of more than 1,600 missiles aimed at their homeland.
It would be helpful, to say the least, if China would dismantle these missiles and end the threat of military force.
Chu could tell Xi that the failure of Beijing to move on these issues would increase tensions in the region, and would not be beneficial to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
An agreement on these three issues would constitute a real breakthrough and would provide the basis for a long-term framework for positive relations across the strait, as friends and neighbors.
Such an agreement — which could be called the “2015 consensus” — would be much more preferable than a perpetuation of the old and vague myth of the so-called “1992 consensus” — which is still being promoted in some quarters.
We need to move away from outdated concepts and move relations into the 21st century, laying the basis for a better future for both Taiwan and China.
Respect for Taiwan’s existence as a free and democratic nation would be an appropriate first step.
Mark Kao is president of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, a Taiwanese-American grassroots organization based in Washington.
US President Donald Trump last week told reporters that he had signed about 12 letters to US trading partners, which were set to be sent out yesterday, levying unilateral tariff rates of up to 70 percent from Aug. 1. However, Trump did not say which countries the letters would be sent to, nor did he discuss the specific tariff rates, reports said. The news of the tariff letters came as Washington and Hanoi reached a trade deal earlier last week to cut tariffs on Vietnamese exports to the US to 20 percent from 46 percent, making it the first Asian country
Life as we know it will probably not come to an end in Japan this weekend, but what if it does? That is the question consuming a disaster-prone country ahead of a widely spread prediction of disaster that one comic book suggests would occur tomorrow. The Future I Saw, a manga by Ryo Tatsuki about her purported ability to see the future in dreams, was first published in 1999. It would have faded into obscurity, but for the mention of a tsunami and the cover that read “Major disaster in March 2011.” Years later, when the most powerful earthquake ever
As things heated up in the Middle East in early June, some in the Pentagon resisted American involvement in the Israel-Iran war because it would divert American attention and resources from the real challenge: China. This was exactly wrong. Rather, bombing Iran was the best thing that could have happened for America’s Asia policy. When it came to dealing with the Iranian nuclear program, “all options are on the table” had become an American mantra over the past two decades. But the more often US administration officials insisted that military force was in the cards, the less anyone believed it. After
During an impromptu Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) rally on Tuesday last week to protest what the party called the unfairness of the judicial system, a young TPP supporter said that if Taiwan goes to war, he would “surrender to the [Chinese] People’s Liberation Army [PLA] with unyielding determination.” The rally was held after former Taipei deputy mayor Pong Cheng-sheng’s (彭振聲) wife took her life prior to Pong’s appearance in court to testify in the Core Pacific corruption case involving former Taipei mayor and TPP chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲). The TPP supporter said President William Lai (賴清德) was leading them to die on
RSS