President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration swept to power only a little more than a year ago, yet her government has already suffered a major diplomatic setback.
Formal diplomatic relations between the Republic of China (ROC) and Panama, which date to the end of the Qing Dynasty and have remained unbroken for all 106 years of the ROC’s existence, came to an end on Tuesday last week.
What will the end of this relationship mean for the nation?
First, the Panamanian government’s severing of ties is doubtlessly a serious setback for Tsai’s policy of “pragmatic diplomacy,” which her government has been promoting since taking office.
Tsai must now reconsider how to expand the nation’s space on the diplomatic stage — an intractable problem that cannot be easily resolved.
Meanwhile, the government is being attacked from both sides: by the pan-blue camp, which mocks Tsai as too weak to reform the cross-strait policy, and by pro-independence advocates who are calling on the government to abandon the “ROC” as the nation’s official title in favor of “Taiwan.”
Only time will tell whether Tsai will give up the goal of maintaining the “status quo,” a policy that means not pursuing de facto independence.
Second, Beijing’s decision to tighten the screws is not simply motivated by a desire to punish Tsai; rather China’s leaders also hope that they will be able to burst the bubble of Taiwanese independence and force Tsai’s administration to get back “on message.”
This would require Tsai to either publicly acknowledge the so-called “1992 consensus” or say that “both sides belong to one China.”
It is not difficult to envisage how this diplomatic crisis could lead to a domino effect starting with the loss of Panama and moving on to Nigeria, Dubai, Jordan, Ecuador and Bahrain, all of which are facing pressure from China to demand that Taiwan expunge “ROC” from the name of its representative offices and replace it with the word “Taipei.”
In Taiwan, there are already voices discussing the possibility that the nation might lose all of its diplomatic allies, while in March, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) issued a harsh warning, saying: “The road toward Taiwanese independence will end in unification.”
Suppose the premise is accepted that unification would eventually occur if Taiwan is left with no diplomatic allies — or the argument that Beijing’s tightening of the noose will eventually force Tsai to accept the “1992 consensus” and wider Taiwanese society to accept Beijing’s “one China” principle.
This would be a fundamental misreading of Taiwanese society, which has been undergoing a process of democratization and “localization” since the 1990s and, in particular, the Sunflower movement in 2014.
Third, Beijing views the termination of diplomatic ties between Taiwan and Panama as the overturning of a long-standing injustice regarding the question of who is the rightful representative of China: the ROC or the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
In 1949, the Chinese Civil War reached an endgame. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established the PRC, while the defeated Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his ROC government retreated to Taiwan. This resulted in the two governments competing for international recognition as the official government of China, with both sides claiming to be the only legal entity.
As the Cold War came to East Asia, the US lent its support to the ROC government in Taipei. This meant that Chiang, although forced out of the Chinese mainland, sat as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, representing China as the ROC.
From the public’s perspective, Taiwan — which had been seen as an outpost of the Chinese empire — underwent a process of nationalization and moved from the periphery toward the center within the ROC’s framework.
However, following the sudden downgrading of Taiwan’s international status when the US switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing in 1979, the nationalization and centralization program, as well as the ROC itself, suffered a setback.
In the 1990s, the ROC began to take on new connotations.
Following the ROC’s expulsion from the UN in 1971 and the breaking of formal diplomatic ties with the US in 1979, Chiang continued to insist that the KMT could never coexist with the CCP. This stubbornness caused the ROC to suffer a dramatic decline in international standing, with a large number of allies switching allegiance to China.
Throughout the 1970s, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs became the “Ministry for Severing Foreign Relations.”
Although by this time the KMT had given up on its goal of “reconquering the Mainland,” Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), who succeeded his father as president in 1978, continued to argue that his government was the legal representative of China, advocating Sun Yat-sen’s (孫逸仙) Three Principles of the People (三民主義) and retaining the goal of unifying China under the KMT flag.
However, in an attempt to bolster the KMT’s governing mandate, Chiang Ching-kuo also began to promote “localization policies” and recruited members of the Taiwanese elite into the central government. An even larger number of those elites rapidly began to form an alternative political force, separate from the KMT party-state: the dangwai (黨外, outside the party) movement.
Simply put, during the 1980s, Taiwan began to transition away from the ROC and toward localized politics.
During this time, the ROC did not alter its foreign policy position, and although the nation continued to hemorrhage allies, a number of significant countries, including South Korea and South Africa, maintained formal diplomatic relations.
The 1990s were an era of big political, social and cultural changes, and foreign diplomacy did not escape the wave of reforms. The concept of “China” was redefined, bringing new ways of thinking to the nation’s diplomatic approach.
The lifting of martial law in 1987 ushered in a new era of liberalization and political democratization.
After the 1991 Wild Lily student movement, then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) initiated a series of constitutional reforms that abolished the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion (動員戡亂時期臨時條款), which took legal precedence over the ROC’s democratic Constitution, and introduced full elections to the National Assembly and the Legislative Yuan, whose members had all been elected in China in 1948.
These changes signified a more “localized” ROC and further eroded the ROC’s claim that it represented all of China. It also effectively ended the decades-long tussle over who represented China on the world stage.
From this moment on, Taiwan started to move further away from China.
In addition to top-down constitutional and political localization, the 1990s was also a decade of comprehensive, bottom-up localization in society.
“Taiwanese consciousness” began to rapidly take hold, and by the end of the decade, “Taiwanese” identity had supplanted the formerly mainstream “Chinese consciousness.”
This burgeoning nationalism meant that unification with China was no longer the only option, and the “ROC” became nothing more than Taiwan’s official title.
The connection with China no longer existed.
As Beijing categorically refused to recognize the nation’s existence, the KMT’s position that the ROC is a nation connected to China became further divorced from reality.
As society — particularly after the Sunflower movement — began to adopt the idea of “organic independence,” the era of the KMT as the dominant political force in Taiwan drew to a close.
Only by understanding the progression of ideas that led to a national awareness can falling for the mistaken belief that Tsai entered the Presidential Office off the back of a “Sunflower effect” be avoided, as well as the mistaken belief that following the loss of Panama as an ally, Tsai will be ready to roll over and accept the “1992 consensus” and the “one China” principle.
Indeed, due to China’s rise as a major power, Beijing has for some time been able to take advantage of the nation’s long-term economic decline and leverage its own increasing international influence, so it is entirely possible that Beijing will lure away all of Taiwan’s remaining allies.
While such overbearing punishment might damage the political record of Tsai’s administration and sow public dissatisfaction, it will do nothing to reverse the force that is pulling Taiwan away from China — and might even have the opposite effect.
The public seems to be mentally prepared for the loss of all of its allies.
After the loss of Panama and in reference to the loss of Sao Tome and Principe — which cut ties just six months ago — Formosa Television conducted a live opinion show that asked viewers to respond to the statement: “I would rather Taiwan had no allies than waste money trying to stop any more from switching allegiances.”
An overwhelming 99.5 percent agreed with the statement and some respondents even reacted positively to the cutting of ties with Panama, saying: “Taiwan will save a huge amount of money.”
With the loss of Panama, Taiwan is left with 20 diplomatic allies, all with a population smaller than Taiwan’s. Furthermore, aside from the Vatican, none of the other allies wield any clout on the international stage.
Given this, there is now a body of opinion that says the nation must pursue a different course and focus on improving relations with nations such as the US and Japan: friendly nations that already have close ties, but are not diplomatic allies, and have international influence.
Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) has also proposed “diplomacy by the people” and encouraged Taiwanese to increase the nation’s visibility and support abroad by forming international connections.
Additionally, former premier Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃) has said that the nation should dispense with the “ROC,” rename itself ‘Taiwan” and start afresh by building diplomatic relationships around the world.
Of its 20 remaining allies, Taiwan maintains diplomatic relations through use of the ROC moniker. Yu’s suggestion demonstrates how Beijing’s flat refusal to accept even “China” in Taiwan’s official title is one of the contributing factors toward Taiwan’s increasing localization and support for independence.
Beijing, which has constantly insisted upon unification, has begun to say that it “places its hope on the Taiwanese public.”
If by this, Beijing means that it is willing to follow Taiwanese public opinion, that would certainly be a positive development.
However, Beijing’s oppressive tactics, posturing and its determination to “punish” the nation by curtailing its international presence have proved useless in closing the psychological gap between the public and China.
Beijing’s orchestrated Panama drama is a double-edged sword. While it might prove effective in slightly blemishing the reputation of the Tsai administration, it has also further damaged public sentiment toward China.
The Panama incident neatly encapsulates Beijing’s muddled thinking and the abject failure of Chinese leaders over the past seven decades to construct a convincing argument to persuade Taiwan to unite with China.
John Lim is an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Modern History and an adjunct associate professor at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Edward Jones
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