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Beijing’s gambit on Ma Ying-jeou
By Parris Chang 張旭成
Tuesday, Jun 15, 2010, Page 8
On June 1 and June 2, Hong Kong’s Chu Hai College of Higher
Education sponsored a conference titled “Cross-Strait and Taiwan-Hong Kong
Relations” and invited academics and politicos from Taiwan, China and Hong Kong
to attend. There were more than 12 participants from Taiwan — and some were
quite critical of China’s cross-strait policy and the intention of the Chinese
Nationalist Party (KMT) regime to sign an economic cooperation framework
agreement with China.
As a courtesy to the conference participants, the head of the Constitutional and
Mainland Affairs Bureau of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region (HKSAR)
hosted a welcome luncheon on June 2. Seated next to the bureau chief was Hsu
Hsin-liang (許信良), a former chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Ironically, Hsu was interrogated by Hong Kong immigration officers for more than
an hour upon his arrival on May 31, despite the fact he was invited as one of
the keynote speakers and had a valid visa to enter the territory.
During the conference, a Taiwanese participant used that episode to call
attention to the fact that many DPP members who hold elected or official
positions remain blacklisted by HKSAR authorities. He suggested Hong Kong
officials study Chinese President Hu Jintao’s (胡錦濤) “Six-Point Proposal” on
Taiwan and stick to Beijing’s policy guidelines.
It was to be expected that participants from China would parrot the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) line and faithfully defend Beijing’s official position on
cross-strait relations. In so doing, however, they directly contradicted and
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) policy. For instance, a senior researcher from
the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies defended the failure of Chen
Yunlin (陳雲林), head of the Association of Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, to
address Ma as “President Ma” in a meeting in December 2008 by saying “there is
only one China, and that is the People’s Republic of China,” while “the
government of Taiwan is China’s local government.”
The researcher also stated that the Chinese government has never accepted the
so-called “1992 consensus” — coined by former National Security Council
secretary-general Su Chi (蘇起) to describe a situation where each side agreed
retain its own interpretation of “one China” — thereby negating the basic
premise of Ma’s open-door policy of friendship toward China.
In order to placate the Taiwanese public, which has been highly critical of his
tilt toward China, Ma claims that his cross-strait policy is based on the
guideline of “three noes” — no independence, no unification and no use of force
— and that cross-strait interaction is to proceed on the principle of “economics
first, politics later.”
Beijing has been very unhappy with this and Chinese officials and experts have
openly said so. Several months ago, a Chinese military officer described Ma’s
“three noes” as a scheme for “peaceful division,” to perpetuate the status quo.
Academics from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences complained loudly at the
conference that the order of “economics first, politics later” was a ploy by the
Ma administration to restrict cross-strait interaction to only economics, thus
betraying “its hesitation and fluctuation on the standpoint of national
unification.” They used this gathering to urge the KMT government to change “the
fixed model of economics first and politics later,” to develop economic and
political relations concurrently and actively move toward national unification.
Indeed, Beijing has been pushing Ma to engage in political dialogue and peace
talks. At a seminar on cross-strait relations in Taipei in November last year, a
high-level Chinese delegation led by Zheng Bijian (鄭必堅), former vice president
of the CCP Central Party School, delivered the same message. A retired general
in the group dismissed outright a comment from a Taiwanese academic that China
should consider withdrawing missiles targeted at Taiwan as “irrelevant” — he
said that the issue could be resolved only after negotiation, not before.
Despite this pressure, Ma’s Mainland Affairs Council chief has told the media
that “there is no timetable for cross-strait political dialogue.” A Hong Kong
academic on Asia-Pacific studies praised Ma for his wisdom and courage “to say
no” — a stand that could bolster his position domestically.
Indeed, Ma cannot yield to Beijing any further, as he plans to run for
re-election in March 2012 . Does Beijing understand Ma’s political predicament?
Could or would Beijing help Ma win re-election? An academic from Taiwan asked in
a panel discussion whether Hu would give the go-ahead for US President Barack
Obama to invite Ma to attend the APEC summit in Honolulu next year. A Chinese
expert on Taiwan sidestepped that sensitive question saying that Taiwan’s
elections have their own logic and dynamics and outsiders are in no position to
affect the outcome.
Why then is Beijing pushing Ma so hard to move toward political dialogue? In
private conversations, Chinese experts concede that Ma is in deep political
trouble and could be voted out of office in 2012, thus the Chinese leadership is
in a hurry to accomplish as much as possible.
Meanwhile, some China watchers speculate that the military has considerable
influence on Beijing’s policy toward Taipei and Washington and that quite a few
military leaders are impatient with Hu’s “gradualist” approach. Other China
experts argue that Hu has to step down from his post as CCP general secretary at
the 18th CCP National Congress in October 2012, hence his desire to make
progress on national unification.
Parris Chang is a professor emeritus of political science at
Pennsylvania State University and the chief executive of Taiwan Institute of
Political, Economic and Strategic Studies, an independent research organization.
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