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In search of military consensus
By Wang Jyh-perng 王志鵬
On Dec. 12, retired military leaders from Taiwan and China met at the first
symposium on Sun Yat-sen Thought and the Whampoa Spirit at the 2010 Cross-strait
Sun Yat-sen Forum.
Participants from Taiwan included former director of National Defense
University, General Hsia Yin-chou (夏瀛洲), former military adviser to the
Presidential Office and former director of the General Political Warfare Bureau
Tsao Wen-shen (曹文生), former navy commander-in-chief Admiral Miao Yung-ching
(苗永慶), former deputy air force commander-in-chief Lee Kui-fa (李貴發), and former
president of the Graduate Institute of Strategic Studies at National Defense
University Tseng Chang-jui (曾章瑞).
The Chinese participants included former deputy director of the technological
research department at China’s National Defense University Wu Guifu (武桂馥),
former director of the Institute for Strategic Studies at National Defense
University Pan Zhenqiang (潘振強), former director of the Department of Strategic
Research at the Chinese Academy of Military Science Yao Youzhi (姚有志), deputy
director of the Department for Foreign Military Studies at the Chinese Academy
of Military Science Fu Liqun (傅立群) and researcher at the Department of Strategic
Studies at the Chinese Academy of Military Science Peng Guangqian (彭光謙).
This gathering grabbed the attention of officials and the media in Taiwan, the
US and Japan.
Recently there has been a change in the domestic view of cross-strait affairs.
When former National Security Council secretary-general Su Chi (蘇起) and Charles
Kao (高希均), founder and chief executive of Commonwealth Publishing Group,
participated in a Harvard University Forum in late May, they quoted an opinion
survey by CommonWealth Magazine showing that after the signing of the Economic
Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), 53 percent of respondents agreed that it
was still necessary to purchase better defensive weapons from the US. That was
an increase of 5 percent on the previous year.
Although President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has on several occasions demanded that
China remove the missiles it aims at Taiwan, both the incumbent and former
national defense ministers have told the legislature that doing so “is of no
substantial military significance.” Quite a few domestic and external observers
are already questioning Ma’s actions. In February US military expert Richard
Fisher said that the Ma administration’s national defense policies lacked both
pragmatism and vision and Mei Fu-hsing (梅復興), director of the US-based Taiwan
Security -Analysis Center, has penned articles questioning the government’s use
of the US administration’s indecision over arms sales as a bargaining chip.
It is worth noting that according to the transcript of a meeting between US
Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and former Singaporean prime minister
Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀) on May 30 last year recently made public by WikiLeaks, Lee
said that Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) would be pragmatic on Taiwan,
believing that the key is to first build economic links.
This corroborates what former deputy minister of national defense Lin Chong-pin
(林中斌) said at a forum on Taiwan Strait security and mutual trust in June, namely
that Beijing has realized that “it is cheaper to buy Taiwan than to attack it.”
Another thing worthy of note is that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) made
was less critical of cross-strait affairs during the recent special municipality
election campaigns than it has been in the past, and once they were over the DPP
announced its intention to establish a think tank aimed at initiating exchanges
with China. This implies an acceptance that regardless of which party holds
power, cross-strait exchange is now an unstoppable trend.
This unofficial, non-governmental exchange — the so-called second track —
differs from previous meetings between retired high-ranking military officers in
that it is organized and has a direction and an agenda.
Although retired Chinese officers still focus on the idea of national revival as
a way to resolve the Taiwan issue, retired military officers from Taiwan
emphasized the need to set up a mechanism for cross-strait military contacts
through non-military means rather than focus on the most intractable aspects of
the cross-strait relationship. They expressed the view that cross-strait
development should take precedence over the threats of the past, in the hope
that China would take a more enlightened approach to the promotion of mutual
trust.
Both the retired Chinese and Taiwanese officers had things that they insisted
on, but the Taiwanese side rejected the currently optimistic Chinese view,
stressing Taiwanese democracy and identity. They also suggested a multilateral
model to facilitate stability in the Taiwan Strait and deal with threats that
are not purely military in nature, including the removal of the missiles China
aims at Taiwan.
It is certainly more pragmatic and innovative to rely on simulation analysis as
a scientific basis for the promotion of practical and feasible cross-strait
military exchange.
Wang Jyh-perng is an associate research fellow at the
Association for Managing Defense and Strategies.
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