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Ma angers Beijing
over ‘one China’
By Lin Cho-shui 林濁水
With his popularity at an all-time low, it was almost inevitable that President
Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) inauguration speech would be weak and dry. Still, the
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was not at all pleased to discover that,
“over the past two decades, the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have been defined
as ‘one Republic of China (ROC), two areas.’”
This definition did not do much to please Beijing, either.
What displeased Beijing was not the idea that the two areas were on an equal
footing, but that they were placed under the ROC heading. Not long ago, the
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), through
former KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤),
agreed that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait both belong to “one China.” As
Beijing sees it, Ma’s speech was a great step back from the Wu-Hu agreement.
The KMT has always stressed that it and the CCP had reached the so-called “1992
consensus,” saying the spirit of this “consensus” was to “seek common ground
while reserving differences” and that it was the foundation for cross-strait
exchanges.
Not only do the political systems differ between the two sides of the Taiwan
Strait, despite the three main parties being diametrically opposed to each other
in terms of values and national identification, their ability to “seek common
ground while reserving differences” has been crucial to the development of
almost miraculously enthusiastic cross-strait trade and cultural and social
exchanges since 1990. The government and opposition parties in Taiwan have
stressed this ability, and Beijing also brings it up frequently.
At the meeting between Hu and former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) on April 29,
2005, Hu advocated building mutual political trust and respect and the need to
“seek common ground while reserving differences,” and when he met with Wu on May
28, 2008, he reiterated the same phrase.
The Ma administration is hoping that while they go on “seeking common ground
while reserving differences,” they will be able to maintain the current “status
quo”: no unification, no independence and no use of force. This is very
different from Beijing’s view of what “seeking common ground while reserving
differences” means, namely that it develops in stages, and the next stage will
be to resolve those differences and move toward unification, because when the
existing joint cross-strait development matures, it will be time to resolve
differences.
Then, on June 12, 2010, just over two years after Ma took office, Hu changed his
tune at another meeting with Wu, saying that he “sincerely hope[s] that the two
parties will consider the long-term interests of the Chinese nation and create
even better conditions for the peaceful development of cross-strait relations by
improving mutual trust while seeking similarities and dissolving differences.”
When Ma won the presidential election in January this year, Beijing felt that
differences could be further resolved, from two different angles.
First, Beijing feels it made a great contribution to Ma’s electoral win in the
face of his low approval ratings and that Ma therefore should offer China
something in return. On March 15, Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) director Wang Yi
(王毅) stressed that “mainstream cross-strait public opinion” bringing Ma his win
was not accidental, but had been consolidated through the shared cross-strait
struggle over the past four years. “Shared cross-strait struggle” stands for
“KMT-CCP cooperation.”
Second, and even more important, is that public support for the KMT and the CCP
means that Taiwanese independence is becoming marginalized among Taiwanese. This
point is conceded even by many DPP leaders. One after another, they have
promoted the idea that the DPP accept the “1992 consensus” and the “one country,
two areas” formula, and some even go so far as to suggest the revision of the
party’s Resolution on Taiwan’s Future (台灣前途決議文), which states that the ROC is an
independent and sovereign state whose territory does not include China.
It was with this understanding that Wang Yi stressed that China wanted to
improve mutual political trust, build a clearer recognition of the two sides of
the Taiwan Strait as part of “one China” and protect the “one China” framework
based on the “1992 consensus.” In other words, China wants to further resolve
differences based on recognition of the “1992 consensus.”
As could be expected, a week later, on March 22, Ma sent Wu to meet with Hu and
the two agreed that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to “one China,”
and that they therefore make up two areas of one country, rather than enjoying a
state-to-state relationship.
The crucial difference between the KMT and the CCP is that the KMT advocates the
view that there is “one China,” with each side of the Taiwan Strait having their
own interpretation of what that China is, and that the “one China” is the ROC,
while Beijing feels that the formula should be cut short after “there is one
China,” because it recognizes neither the ROC nor the whole formula.
With the Wu-Hu agreement, the KMT has now fully accepted Beijing’s request that
differences be resolved, and this greatly diminishes the space left for any
“1992 consensus.”
On the eve of Ma’s second inauguration, Beijing continued to say that it wanted
to “improve mutual political trust,” but the main point really was that it
wanted Ma to say that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait were part of “one
China” in his inauguration address. However, the “one country, two areas”
formula created a public uproar and because Ma’s popularity took a sharp turn
for the worse, he was unable to resist public opposition to the idea.
Even though Wu has kept repeating Hu’s formula that the two sides should “seek
similarities and resolve differences,” Ma had to go back to “one China with each
side having its own interpretation” and “seeking common ground while reserving
differences” and the view that there is “one ROC, two areas.”
This disappointed Beijing, embarrassed the people in the DPP who accepted the
“one country, two areas” formula and drew criticism from the DPP’s mainstream
faction. However, the public in Taiwan and the US let out a sigh of relief.
Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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