The nation needs to carve out a niche for itself in the power struggle between the US and China, Mainland Affairs Council adviser Liu Shih-chung (劉世忠) said yesterday.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in her inaugural address on Wednesday highlighted the increasing complexity of international relations amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Liu said.
As she started her second term, Tsai reiterated that “peace, parity, democracy and dialogue” are the conditions for cross-strait exchanges and rejected Beijing’s “one country, two systems” framework.
The pandemic has affected global public health and weakened the global economy, Liu said, but the global economy is poised for a sweeping transformation as companies worldwide seek to decouple from the Chinese market by moving their production lines to other countries.
The US and China are like “two elephants wrestling” and Taiwan must tread carefully in the power struggle, he said.
A theme of Tsai’s speech was the challenges facing the nation — such as reviving the domestic economy, responding to changes within China and diversifying exports — but the more complicated international politics and economics become, the more diligent the nation should work at navigating them, Liu added.
Just as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co is planning to build a US$12 billion semiconductor plant in Arizona and Taiwan is teaming up with private firms to export masks, the government should collaborate with tech companies to tap into foreign markets, he said.
The nation’s robust information technology and precision machinery sectors coupled with its successful COVID-19 response mean that the nation is well poised to expand its international space in the post-COVID-19 era, Liu said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is likely preoccupied with the domestic economic fallout of the pandemic, as factories struggle to obtain orders after resuming work in February, which could seriously hurt China’s GDP growth, he said.
Perhaps out of consideration for China’s misfortune, Tsai’s speech did not present a new narrative of cross-strait relations, he said, adding that Beijing would hopefully read between the lines and sense Tsai’s goodwill.
US professor Tario Ong (翁達瑞) said that Tsai made no mention of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in her speech, meaning that the party is “not in the president’s blueprint for the nation.”
The world order has been reshaped by the pandemic and more members of the international community sympathize with Taiwan, Ong said, adding that this — compounded by a successful recall vote against Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) on June 6 — could be the undoing of the nation’s “conservative forces.”
The KMT is likely to have few roles, if any, in Tsai’s “Taiwan Utopia,” he added.
Tsai’s second-term inauguration speech reiterated the cross-strait policy introduced in the speech she gave after winning January’s presidential election, which expressed her hope that Xi would rethink his cross-strait policy, said Bonnie Glaser, director of the Washington-based think tank Center of Strategic and International Studies China Power Project.
Beijing, instead of pushing cross-strait relations in its hoped-for direction, should avoid a worst-case scenario, as Tsai would never accept the so-called “1992 consensus” or that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one China, she added.
Beijing’s Taiwan policy lacks flexibility, which might not improve, she said, predicting that it might increase military, diplomatic and economic pressure on Taiwan.
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