Let us Conduct a quick survey of changes to the regional situation over the past week or so.
First, US Secretary of State John Kerry made a three-day visit to Asia on Monday to Wednesday last week, taking in Laos — the ASEAN chair this year — Cambodia and China. Before he went, US officials said that, for this trip, Kerry hoped that he would get the ASEAN states to work together to counterbalance China’s military expansion in the South China Sea. Kerry also raised the issue in Beijing during a meeting with Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) on the final day of his trip, urging China to desist from reclaiming land and undertaking construction, such as building airports, in the South China Sea to reduce tensions in the region.
Second, and not 24 hours after Kerry got back on the plane, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) chose to go to Itu Aba Island (太平島, Taiping Island) on Thursday last week. Not only was this manifestly at odds with what the US was trying to do, but Ma also said during a press conference in Taiwan on his return that “Taiwan and China have a lot of shared history and shared lineage, and cannot be separated.”
On that same day, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement saying: “The Spratly Islands [Nansha Islands, 南沙群島] have always been part of China’s territory, and Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait have a responsibility to protect the inheritance of the Chinese race.”
Beijing’s official mouthpiece the Global Times published an editorial on Monday entitled “President Ma welcome on Taiping Island, [president-elect] Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yet to back down,” in which it said: “As the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] administration currently governing Taiwan concedes that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one China, President Ma Ying-jeou’s decision to go [to Taiping Island] to safeguard [the country’s] territorial and maritime rights is a positive act.”
In other words, Ma’s going to Taiping Island, despite the government’s claim that it was a demonstration of national sovereignty, actually plays into China’s hands, allowing Beijing to use Ma as its pawn in countering the US’ strategy of trying to get ASEAN to work with it on the South China Sea situation.
Even worse, this will only reinforce neighboring countries’ misconceptions about Taiwan’s stance on the issue, creating the perception that Taiwan stands with China on the South China Sea issue, and that if they stand up to China, then they will be standing against Taiwan, too.
The upshot of this is that Ma has curtailed Tsai’s room for maneuver on the South China Sea issue when she takes office in a few months’ time. It is worth noting that the rationale behind Ma’s cooperation with Beijing can also be applied to the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台).
China has long based its demand for sovereignty over the Diaoyutais on the idea that Taiwan and China belong to “one China,” because if Beijing can say it possesses Taiwan, then it can also say it owns the Diaoyutais. It just so happens that now the US Pacific Command has confirmed that if China attacks the Diaoyutais, the US military would intervene, and also that the islands in the South China Sea do not belong to China.
It is clear from Ma’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習進平) in Singapore last year to his trip to Taiping Island that he is intent on squeezing every last bit of value out of the final months of his term in office.
With this in mind, the public would be well advised to remain vigilant.
Huang Tzu-wei is a researcher at the Taiwan Thinktank.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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