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No blue monopoly on
Strait issue
By Lin Cho-shui 林濁水
Spurred by their ideological beliefs, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his team
have always believed that the cross-strait issue is their political strong
point. In the upcoming presidential election — as in the previous election in
2008 — their campaign is focused on picking a fight over cross-strait issues.
In 2008, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost the election because it
wavered between its radical Taiwanese independence position and its middle way
platform. After the election, Ma and his team felt their victory was proof that
the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) held the upper hand on cross-strait issues.
After taking power, Ma made cross-strait relations the focus of all his policies
as he began to lean completely toward China. He believed the three direct links
agreement and the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) would be two
strategic weapons that would make Taiwan’s economy take off and that he would be
able to convert that into political support.
However, things didn’t turn out the way he wanted: Not only has the nation
experienced its worst economic decline in 60 years, economic integration with
China has also caused the wealth gap to widen further. Even so, Ma and his team
continue to believe the cross-strait issue is the key to winning the January
election.
To find out whether this is true, let us divide the cross-strait issue into
three interconnected aspects: sovereignty, peace and economy and trade.
Until recently, the KMT believed it was the winner in all three areas, but
although Ma and his team would never admit that economic and trade reliance on
China is not all it was cracked up to be, they have now realized that it will
not be that easy to score popularity points off that reliance.
When it comes to the sovereignty issue, Ma and his team may not have changed
their opposition to Taiwanese independence, but they are now slowly beginning to
realize that they cannot only rely solely on the Mainland Affairs Council’s
opinion polls showing low support for independence, because they cannot ignore
polls from the TVBS news channel and the Chinese-language United Daily News,
which for a long time have shown support for Taiwanese independence hovering at
about 60 percent to 70 percent. That has substantially weakened the force of the
anti-independence argument.
In the end, Ma and his team have locked in on the cross-strait peace aspect for
their battle with the DPP and tried to defeat their opponent with a peace accord
proposal.
Taiwanese are peace-loving people, so who wouldn’t be happy to support a peace
agreement? That is why the peace proposal gained more than 60 percent support
when it was first broached. The DPP began to feel the pressure and some people
thought it was a pity that the party had not taken the initiative on the issue
to gain the upper hand.
However, while the peace agreement at first appeared to be a clever move on Ma’s
part, it soon turned sour as it became clear that the signing of any peace
agreement must deal with the sovereignty issue.
Whether it be East and West Germany which held no jurisdiction over each other,
South Sudan and Sudan splitting sovereignty, or even the Tibetan model
regulating the relationship between Beijing and the local government in Tibet —
all these relationships clearly defined where sovereignty lies. That is why the
sovereignty issue was unavoidably pushed to the fore as soon as Ma mentioned a
peace accord.
The DPP asked Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) whether the signatories of a peace accord
should be referred to as the “Taiwan area” and the “mainland area” in accordance
with the National Unification Guidelines. Wu’s response used both the word
“unification” and demoted the Republic of China to an “area,” causing a public
outcry as it became very difficult to explain how this was different from the
Tibetan model.
According to the Exchange of Future Events run by the Center for Prediction
Markets at National Chengchi University and xPredict, Ma enjoyed greater support
than Tsai for quite a while until the DPP used the sovereignty issue to attack
Ma’s peace accord proposal. At the time, support for Tsai surpassed that for Ma.
Since the sovereignty issue can no longer be avoided, a pressured Ma decided to
propose a referendum, which is something the DPP has insisted on for a long
time, but which the KMT had always opposed. Ma said a peace accord must first be
decided on in a referendum in order to safeguard sovereignty. According to the
Exchange of Future Events, this was an effective strategy, because it once again
gave Ma an edge over Tsai.
The DPP countered that if Ma were serious about a referendum, the two parties
should jointly push for changes to the Referendum Act (公投法). The suggestion was
rejected by Ma and his team, and as a result, support ratings fluctuated again.
An opinion poll by the Chinese-language China Times showed support for Tsai
continued to strengthen between Oct. 19 and Oct. 22, while support for Ma
slipped. According to a United Daily News poll, only 41 percent would be happy
to see the completion of a peace accord, while 67 percent were in favor of
holding a referendum on the issue, making it abundantly clear what the public
wants.
Looking at the battles between the government and the opposition over the
cross-strait issue in the past 20 years, we can see that during the early stage,
unification and independence slogans were hurled back and forth, and the ruling
party sometimes resorted to legal means — ie, locking up people — to resolve
disputes.
It was only after 2007 that the two parties gradually began to use policy to
continue their battle over sovereignty, peace and economy and trade issues.
Lately, their tactics have become even more refined and the current process now
involves the sensitivity and fluctuations of public support, which is a good
thing.
However, leaving fisticuffs behind for more refined interaction, we most also
move away from the illusory Taipei-centered discourse explicitly or tacitly
subscribed to by both the pan-blue and the pan-green camps, namely, the view
that the cross-strait issue is the pan-blue camp’s strong point.
Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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