With only six months left before leaving office, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) made an audacious move to shake hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Singapore; a historic event lauded by Chinese state media as a parallel to the meeting of former US president Richard Nixon and former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) in China in 1972.
Nixon himself proudly claimed his visit to China was “the week that changed the world.”
Ma optimistically emphasized that he “built a bridge for leaders of two sides and provided a framework for future dialogue,” a phrase that echoes Nixon’s words in 1972, who said he “built a bridge” for the US and China.
Admittedly, Nixon’s groundbreaking visit was a game changer. It helped the US get out of the painful quagmire in Vietnam, the consequence of which totally changed the balance of power in Southeast Asia, and laid the foundation for establishing diplomatic ties between the US and China in 1979, which has now become one of the most important relationships in the world.
Compared with it, Ma and Xi said nothing new during their meeting. Their meeting was a milestone, but not a breakthrough, as Time magazine said.
However, according to The Hundred-Year Marathon by Michael Phillsbury, since its initial contact with the US in the late 1960s, China has manipulated stratagems to misguide, or even cheat, the US into believing that it will develop peacefully and has no ambition to compete with the US, just as former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) said in his 24-character strategy in 1990: “Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership.”
For decades this approach has successfully persuaded most US policymakers, China experts and the general public, who optimistically believe that with the help of the US financially, technically and militarily, an open, prosperous and progressive China is a great benefit to the world.
Now China has risen and become the second-largest economy, which boosts its confidence and makes it more assertive as well. As a result, as opposed to what the US expected, China is revealing its real intention, which is to restore the power it had 300 years ago and to supersede the US as the dominating world power.
When dealing with Taiwan, China uses the same stratagems, but with more flexible skills. Clearly written in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) constitution is: “Taiwan is part of the sacred territory of the People’s Republic of China. It is the inviolable duty of all Chinese people, including our Taiwan compatriots, to accomplish the great task of reunifying the motherland.”
This principle unequivocally states China’s fundamental position toward Taiwan.
Before Ma’s first election in 2008, China insisted on the “one country, two systems” principle — formulated by Deng in the early 1980s, which has proven a failure in Hong Kong and Macau — and threatened “to use force, if necessary,” to unite with Taiwan.
Since 2008, accompanying Ma’s conciliatory “one China” policy, Beijing has concealed its hardline attitude and coercion, and has instead tried to use its increasingly mighty economic leverage to restrain Taiwan.
The Economist said: “The Chinese theory about economic integration with Taiwan is that it will bind the two together politically. Taiwan will become even more reliant on China for its prosperity, paving the way to eventual unification.”
During the Ma-Xi meeting, Ma told Xi that for Taiwan, “one China” means the Republic of China (ROC), and both sides have different interpretations of the meaning of “one China”; that the “1992 consensus” is based on “one China” and both sides insist on the “one China” principle, the meaning of which is interpreted orally by each side — the so-called “one China, with different interpretations”; and that regarding the content of the “1992 consensus,” Taiwan would not seek “two Chinas,” “one China, one Taiwan,” or “Taiwan independence,” all of which are prohibited by the ROC Constitution.
However, according to China’s official definition of the “1992 consensus,” an essay posted on Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office Web site in 1999 clearly states that “both sides neither discussed the political definition of ‘one China,’ nor reached a consensus on ‘different interpretations’ related to the political definition of ‘one China.’”
The essay bluntly rejects Taiwan’s version of “one China” and strongly criticized Taiwan for twisting the meaning of “one China” by interpreting it as “one China with different interpretations,” which Beijing considers a pursuit of “two Chinas.”
Despite a huge gap between Taiwan’s and China’s definitions of the “1992 consensus” and “one China,” Xi did not reveal China’s true aims toward Taiwan during his meeting with Ma. Nor did he reject Ma’s theory of “one China with different interpretations.”
Instead, Xi was quoted as saying: “The importance of the ‘1992 consensus’ is that it reflects the ‘one China’ principle, which clearly defines the state of cross-state relations. That means the mainland and Taiwan belong to the same China and that there are not ‘state-to-state’ relations, nor ‘one China, one Taiwan.’”
More importantly, he said: “Although both sides of the [Taiwan] Strait are not unified yet, China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity has never been separated. Both sides belong to the same country.”
Essentially, Xi’s remarks were along the line of China’s official position and reinforced its rigid frame of cross-strait relations that its constitution defines as domestic relations, which Xi intentionally avoided expressing.
However, two days later, an article by Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) published by China’s Xinhua news agency candidly said that “the 1992 consensus states that both sides of the Strait are of one country’s domestic relations.”
In the political field, China has used different rhetoric to confuse Taiwanese and relax their vigilance, but gained little ground. Economically, however, it has. In the past seven years, the intense economic cooperation between Taiwan and China has given Beijing great advantage to control, or even choke, Taiwan’s economy. The result is that China, including Hong Kong, has become Taiwan’s top trading partner and about 40 percent of Taiwan’s goods are exported to China. Moreover, Chinese tourists account for about 40 percent of Taiwan’s overseas visitors.
A poll by National Chengchi University in 1992 showed that 17.6 percent of the people living in Taiwan identified as Taiwanese. By last year, that number jumped to more than 60 percent. The same poll found that 35 percent of respondents identified as both Taiwanese and Chinese, and only 3.5 percent identified as Chinese.
The significant shift in identification reflects a mistrust of China, despite the fact that both sides share the same culture, language and are economically integrating. Under such circumstances, the Ma-Xi meeting, which was built on an illusory “1992 consensus” and a controversial “one China” policy, can hardly be seen as a real achievement. Instead it put Taiwan’s sovereignty in jeopardy.
According to opinion polls, Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is forecast to win this month’s election. Tsai has repeatedly promised that if elected, she will make an effort to keep peace and stability across the Strait in accordance with the ROC Constitution.
However, it takes two to tango. Without a real consensus between Taiwan and China and with China’s vicious intention of annexing Taiwan, the “bridge” built by the Ma-Xi meeting is not helpful, nor likely to promote healthy cross-strait relations.
Tu Ho-ting is a journalist and international political analyst based in Taiwan.
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