Taiwan’s failed bid to join Beijing’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) reinforces President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) reputation for “hasty, top-down decisionmaking,” a paper published by the US Foreign Policy Research Institute said.
“Ma’s critics object to the AIIB bid on substantive and procedural grounds,” said the paper written by Shelly Rigger, a professor of East Asian Politics at Davidson College in North Carolina.
Taiwan would have to accept Beijing’s terms for participation in the bank, including downplaying its sovereignty, Rigger wrote.
“Procedurally, the decision rankles, because there was little consultation outside the government,” she said, adding that the decision to apply was announced during a closely watched fight over legislation aimed at increasing transparency and accountability in the government’s conduct of cross-strait affairs.
“It was hard not to find irony in the Ma administration’s unveiling of the AIIB decision with barely a pretense of legislative oversight,” Rigger wrote. “While a letter of intent is far from a finished agreement, the juxtaposition highlighted the limited effect of last year’s Sunflower protests on the government’s modus operandi.”
Many observers saw what they described as Taipei’s rush to sign up as a charter member as a coup for China, who led the bank’s creation, Rigger wrote.
Beijing said it would welcome a new application — but only after the two sides agree on an “appropriate” name for Taiwan to use in the bank.
China’s move left the Ma administration — which spent “precious political capital” to apply — “out in the cold,” Rigger said.
Beijing’s insistence that Taiwan participate in international forums under a different name “implies the island is subordinate to China,” she wrote.
Rigger says Taipei apparently hoped that Beijing would accept its application and negotiate the name issue after the fact, “but that was not to be.”
Remaining outside the AIIB is not a “viable choice” for Taiwan, she says, because the nation seeks to participate in as many regional and international organizations as possible.
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