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Secret meetings and their dangers
A delegation led by Chinese Vice Minister of Public Security Chen Zhimin (陳智敏)
visited Taiwan between Sept. 13 and Sept. 18. The delegates met officials from
Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior, Coast Guard Administration and the executive
and judicial branches. They also visited local police units in Taoyuan and
Nantou counties, among others. Chen’s official title made the political
significance of the visit all too clear. The trip was first reported by a
Chinese state media outlet, the China News Service, on Sept. 27. The government
has remained silent on details of the schedule, what was discussed at the
meetings, and whether any agreements were reached, excluding even legislators.
Clearly, such secrecy has become the pattern for interaction between the Chinese
Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP). President Ma Ying-jeou’s
(馬英九) government has made a habit of preventing democratic monitoring of
cross-strait affairs and keeps the public in the dark while the KMT and the CCP
make their deals behind closed doors.
In China’s authoritarian one-party state, there is of course no need to
publicize information. Taiwan, however, is a democratic country, but the
government has chosen to emulate China and ignores both the public’s right to
know and the lawmakers’ right to monitor government policy, while colluding with
the Chinese government. According to some Taiwanese officials, the Ma
administration refrained from informing the Taiwanese media about Chen’s visit
at the request of Beijing because a good host should respect the wishes of a
guest. The government thus disgracefully turned its back on a basic principle of
democracy at the behest of China.
This raises the question of how many closed door deals have been reached between
the KMT and CCP over the past two years. Take, for example, Taiwan’s attendance
at the World Health Assembly. In closed-door KMT-CCP negotiations, China agreed
to allow Taiwan observer status, instead of membership, under the name of
“Chinese Taipei.”
After that, the two parties held secret negotiations about the Economic
Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), with the government revealing no details
to the Taiwanese people from the draft stages through to the signing of the
agreement. It even overruled requests to hold a referendum on the ECFA because
the content of the agreement had not been finalized.
After the agreement was signed, the government arrogantly demanded that the
legislature screen and approve the ECFA as a single package, denying the
possibility of a substantive legislative review. These are the few examples we
are aware of and there is no way of knowing how many agreements or
understandings have been reached between the KMT and the CCP in other instances,
like the recent secret visit by Chen.
All these signs indicate that Taiwan is in danger. The Ma administration may be
democratically elected, but it has departed from the democratic path completely
and uses its administrative powers to overrule the public, the true masters of
the nation.
The purpose is to supplant the will of the Taiwanese people with Ma’s will to
and substitute the KMT-CCP consensus for mainstream opinion.
This brazen political manipulation will deprive people of their right to speak
up and ensure the nation’s future is decided by the two Chinese parties, the KMT
and CCP.
To achieve this, the two have intentionally boycotted and blocked every
referendum proposal because they highlight the principle that sovereignty rests
with the people. A good example is how they collaborated to block the proposed
ECFA referendums.
What is frightening is that the KMT and the CCP are not satisfied at having
silenced the Taiwanese public. After all, Taiwan is a democratic state where
people have various channels through which to express different opinions from
the common understanding reached by the two parties. As a result, the CCP and
the KMT have resorted to closed-door, secret negotiations to deprive the
Taiwanese of their right to know.
When Chen visited, the Taiwanese government cooperated every step of the way.
How could the public and lawmakers have monitored the trip if they were told
nothing about it? If Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Premier Wen Jiabao
(溫家寶) make secret “inspection tours” to Taiwan in future, will the Ma
administration behave in the same way? The government might even secretly sign a
capitulation agreement with Beijing. If that happened and the two parties
collude to let China annex Taiwan, Taiwan’s fate will be sealed without the
knowledge of the Taiwanese people. How would the international community react
to such a development?
It is important that Taiwanese remain on their guard. During the visit of
China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin
(陳雲林), Ma sent a large number of police to drive protesters away — including
those holding national flags — in order to protect his Chinese guest. When Chen
visited, nothing of what he talked about or what agreements he may have signed
was divulged to the public. Many Taiwanese don’t even know he was here.
This secretive approach to negotiations is precisely what Beijing wants, because
it allows the two parties to decide Taiwan’s future without the consent of the
Taiwanese people. As the public pin their hopes on the special municipality
elections next month and the 2012 presidential election, the KMT and the CCP
have already moved on to the next stage where they collude to bring about
unification. The public must be aware of this two-faced strategy.
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