|
2012 ELECTIONS: US
worried by closeness of Ma to China: expert
BATTLING ACADEMICS: Gerrit van der Wees said
that the root cause of cross-strait instability was that China does not wish to
have a democracy on its doorstep
By William Lowther / Staff Reporter Washington
White House officials and members of the US Congress are concerned that
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is becoming too close to China at the expense of
relations with the US, says Gerrit van der Wees, a senior policy adviser to the
Formosan Association for Public Affairs.
In an online article, van der Wees argues that these officials are pleased with
DPP chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) vision of “rebalancing” Taiwan’s relations
and moving closer to the US and its allies in the region.
Replying to an article posted last week by US academic Bonnie Glaser of the
Center for Strategic and International Studies, van der Wees disputes her
contention that the administration of US President Barack Obama has a “clear
preference” for Ma. “I cannot agree,” he said.
Glaser wrote that the US announcement of Taiwan’s candidacy for the Visa Waiver
Program (VWP) and the recent spate of high-level US visits to the country were
signals that Washington wanted Ma to win a second term in office.
However, “US officials have clearly stated that the VWP announcement had its own
timeline, and was simply the result of Taiwan fulfilling a set of criteria set
by the US,” van der Wees says. “Indeed, the negotiations on Taiwan’s
participation in the Visa Waiver Program were initiated by the [former
president] Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) administration and took several years in coming.
Of course it is likely that the Ma administration has worked harder to fulfill
those criteria with the upcoming elections in mind.”
In addition, the high-level visits could be a result of the Obama administration
listening more closely to Congress where members have been increasingly vocal in
arguing for more such visits, he added.
Van der Wees said that Glaser’s article was “problematic” because it portrayed
US officials as having “lingering worries” and being concerned about “Tsai’s
unwillingness to be forthcoming about concrete policies towards the Mainland
that she would pursue if elected.”
“Perhaps these US officials should wonder aloud whether the Chinese leaders are
both willing and able to continue the stability in cross-strait relations the
region has enjoyed in recent years. They might add that it is far from clear
that the leaders in Beijing and their advisers fully appreciate the depth of the
mistrust of their motives and PRC [People’s Republic of China] aspirations in
countries surrounding China and particularly in Taiwan,” he added.
“Dr Tsai has shown herself to be a creative and pragmatic thinker, but the
response — from Ma and from Beijing — has been to revert to old and empty ‘One
China’ mantras,” van der Wees said.
The root cause of cross-strait instability, he added was that China does not
wish to have a democracy on its doorstep and that it sees Taiwan as a
springboard for its power projection into the Pacific.
“Taiwan is not threatening China in any way, except by being a vibrant
democracy,” he said.
It is a fiction to believe that by accommodating China on the Taiwan issue,
Washington could get it to be more cooperative on other issues, van der Wees
said.
“China will play hardball on those other issues no matter what happens in
Taiwan,” he said. “The only way to get it to play by international rules is for
the US to play hardball in return.”
|
