Sat, Mar 19, 2016 page8

• The Liberty Times Editorial: Ma still striving toward unification

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  President-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has named former minister of finance Lin Chuan (林全) as the premier of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration that is to take office on May 20.

  However, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) still wants to act as a kind of doctoral supervisor for Tsai. He recently embarked on a tour of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies in Central America, announcing that he is to promote his own particular brand of “flexible diplomacy” until May 19 and that he hopes his successor would continue in that vein.

  Ma’s policies were rejected at the ballot box on Jan. 16, but he expects Tsai to follow the way that he has laid out. This is not what democracy is about.

  Having landed on US soil, Ma boasted that during his tenure he promoted Taiwan-US relations on the principle of maintaining a low-key, “no surprises” approach and has re-established mutual trust between his administration and the higher echelons of the US leadership.

  This has led, he said, to the best relationship between the governments of the two nations in the 37 years since the US enacted the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA).

  However, the reality is a little different. The US government knew nothing of Ma’s Singapore meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) until five days before the event.

  This was a nice little ambush courtesy of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) modus operandi of non-transparent decisionmaking. Then there was Ma’s insistence on traveling to Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) for an inspection despite US objections. The trip, which was consistent with Beijing’s stance, was criticized by the US Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Asia Evan Medeiros as sending “the wrong signal to the region at the wrong time.”

  When Ma talks about keeping things “low key,” with “no surprises,” he means “try to get away with as much as possible without telling anyone.” It was recently revealed that the Chinese government plans to build a high-speed rail line between Beijing and Taipei. Some legislators suspect that Ma’s cronies must have been involved in the negotiations for the project and that the government must have known about it.

  The more Ma can blinker the public, the more low key he can be and the fewer surprises the public would have. In those terms, at least his approach is coherent.

  Ma also mentioned in the comments he made in the US that his supervisor told him that the US recognizes Taiwan more than the other nations that it does not officially recognize. Some US academics said that although the executive branch of the US government had withdrawn its recognition of Taiwan, the TRA passed by US Congress essentially restored the recognition of Taiwan by the legislative branch.

  The withdrawal of recognition shifted official recognition of the representative of China from the Republic of China (ROC) to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1979, and as such was exactly the same as UN Resolution 2758 — which states that the PRC is the only legitimate government of China — passed in 1971, and had nothing to do with Taiwan’s sovereignty.

  In other words, the TRA represented a recognition of the authority that rules Taiwan and Penghu, based on the withdrawal of the US’ recognition of the ROC as the legitimate representative of China.

  This means that the basis for Taiwan-US relations, and in particular military cooperation, is the TRA and former US president Ronald Reagan’s “six assurances,” and that they exist in parallel to the idea that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to “one China.”

  The TRA interprets Taiwan as Taiwan and the Penghu Islands, which does not comply with Ma’s contention that “one China refers to the ROC, which includes mainland China and Mongolia.”

  The Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty signed in 1954 also defines the nation as Taiwan and Penghu. During the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, when a US military battle group sailed through the Taiwan Strait, was not a line drawn down the strait?

  Ma should be clear about the distinction between US policies regarding Taiwan and China, and yet he has done all that he could do to bring Taiwan closer to China, despite such moves running counter to both mainstream public opinion and the nation’s strategic interests.

  Ma says that “one China” means the ROC; it is his mantra. However, has anyone seen Ma protecting the ROC? When he is with Chinese officials, he protects the idea of “one China.” When he met Xi, did he repeat his mantra out loud? The globally accepted reality is quite simple: “one China” is the PRC.

  When Ma says that “one China” is the ROC, all that people hear is “one China.” To cover “one China” with the ROC, and reject returning to the UN as the ROC or Taiwan, is to place the nation in the dragon’s jaws. The Chinese Communist Party has consistently held that the TRA is an obstacle to unification, peaceful or otherwise. Ma aspires to revive China: Does this not explain how he views the TRA?

  Not far into his first term in office, Ma said that Beijing was refraining from trying to poach Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, taking it as evidence that his diplomatic truce was the correct approach.

  At the time, Reuters said that Beijing’s lack of interest in gaining the allies was, on the one hand, to support Ma and, on the other, because if the government falls out of Beijing’s favor, it can pull the diplomatic rug from under Taiwan’s feet, isolating it on the international stage.

  This would be Ma’s legacy. If people look at China’s “Anti-Secession” Law, they would see that Ma complies with each and every clause in it. It is important for Taiwan to hold on to its diplomatic allies, but Ma continues to use the ROC’s name in a covert attempt to strive for eventual unification.

  Tsai would have to work with what she has got and that is to try to further democracy and maintain the “status quo,” in which Taiwan is a sovereign, independent nation. She cannot proceed under the “one China” banner that Ma and Xi hold aloft.

  Translated by Paul Cooper
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