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Hu’s red flag flies
over Taiwan
By Parris Chang 張旭成
According to a cable released recently by WikiLeaks, Chinese President Hu Jintao
(胡錦濤) is eager to make a breakthrough on Taiwan his legacy, the US embassy in
China learned from its sources in Beijing. The cable, dispatched by the US
embassy on Feb. 27, 2009, disclosed that Hu established a research team in 2006,
staffed by leading Chinese experts, to plot a “new way forward” on Taiwan and
fashion a modus vivendi on Beijing’s “one country, two systems” approach, which
was unacceptable to Taiwan, and “special state-to-state relations,” which
Beijing has rejected.
In the cable, the US embassy quotes its contact as saying that Hu, who will step
down from his top party post at the 18th Party Congress in the autumn of next
year, wants to “do something big” on Taiwan, just as the agreement to return
Hong Kong to China is part of the legacy of late Chinese leader Deng Xiao-ping
(鄧小平). The US embassy said the lack of a substantive response from President Ma
Ying-jeou (馬英九) to Hu’s six-point proposal on cross-strait relations is a
concern to China’s leaders.
Hu made the proposal in a speech on Dec. 31, 2008, which has been extolled by
Beijing’s Taiwan experts as China’s guiding principle “to promote the
normalization of overall cross-strait relations.”
The six points include: firm adherence to the one China principle; strengthening
economic ties and promoting joint development; cultivating Chinese culture and
fostering cross-strait spiritual links; promoting personnel visits and
broadening exchanges; increasing Taiwan’s “reasonable” participation in
international organizations under the principle of national sovereignty; and
ending cross-strait hostility and reaching a peace agreement.
More than two years have passed since the US embassy sent the cable. By now
China’s leaders do not need to worry about Ma’s “lack of substantive response”
to Hu’s proposal. Instead, they might be apprehensive that too many voters in
Taiwan resent Ma’s excessive concessions to China and could vote him out of
office in January.
As a matter of fact, Ma’s government has painstakingly adhered to Beijing’s
definition of the “one China” principle as the foundation of Taiwan-China
relations, and has completely repudiated former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝)
concept of “special state-to-state relations” and the formula “Taiwan and China
are separate sovereign states” promoted by former president Chen Shui-bian
(陳水扁).
While Taiwan now participates in the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an observer
under the name “Chinese Taipei,” the participation is under China’s auspices and
at the expense of Taiwan’s national sovereignty. A confidential memorandum of
understanding between Beijing and the WHO secretariat in 2009, which came to
light only recently, stipulates that Taiwan would participate in the WHA as “a
province of China.”
On the economic front, in the past two years Ma’s government has signed 15
cross-strait agreements, including the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement
(ECFA), to facilitate and strengthen trade and investment with China.
Ma may believe that closer economic ties with China can invigorate Taiwan’s
struggling economy and stabilize cross-strait relations, but Hu does not offer a
free lunch. After all, Hu’s ultimate goal is unification and he wants a return
on Beijing’s economic concessions. The ECFA, for example, is modeled on the
economic agreement between China and Hong Kong, and would eventually transform
Taiwan into a special economic zone of China.
Last year, China was the destination of 41.7 percent of Taiwan’s exports. In its
annual Taiwan White Paper released on June 8, the American Chamber of Commerce
in Taiwan commented that Taiwan’s over-dependence on one market is risky even
without political complications.
The paper also recommended that to balance its economic interaction with China,
Taiwan should strengthen trade and investment connections with other parts of
the would, and particularly the US, the world’s largest economy.
Notwithstanding burgeoning cross-strait relations, many people in Taiwan are
ambivalent, to say the least. As the ECFA liberalizes and fosters cross-strait
trade and investment, there is a flight of Taiwan’s capital to China.
Furthermore, a large number of Taiwan’s companies have moved to China and close
to 1 million blue-collar and white-collar workers have lost their jobs.
Taiwan’s GDP growth looks good on paper, but the ECFA mainly benefits a small
number of fat cats and the owners of Taiwan’s China-based companies. Ordinary
people do not fare well, as the unemployment rate remains high and their incomes
are shrinking. Consequently, the gap between the “haves” and “have nots” has
widened.
The polarizing effect has negative implications for Ma, because many people in
Taiwan feel alienated. Presently, Ma’s disapproval rating is higher than 50
percent, according to a survey by Global Views Monthly, an independent and
highly authoritative news organization, in the middle of last month. Many
informed observers believe that, if the presidential elections were held today,
Ma would be defeated by his opponent, Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), the presidential
candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
In a sense, China’s Hu and Ma are in the same boat. In Hu’s calculation, if the
DPP returns to power in January, ongoing cross-strait relations could unravel.
Hu could be subject to severe political attacks by his critics in China and his
leadership legacy would be seriously tarnished. Hence, Beijing must do its best
to help Ma get re-elected.
Despite the fact that the Chinese Communist Party’s previous attempts to
intervene against Taiwan’s pro-independence candidates in 1996, 2000 and 2004
backfired, they have learned from past experience that intervention must be
subtle and avoid any threat of force. This is exactly what China is doing —
using economic, social, media and diplomatic resources to target different
audiences in Taiwan and the US.
For instance, China’s municipal and provincial authorities, at Beijing’s behest,
have dispatched one procurement mission after another to southern Taiwan, the
DPP’s political stronghold, to purchase fruits, vegetables and other local
products. Large numbers of Chinese tourists now visit Kaohsiung and Tainan,
cities they were previously instructed to avoid.
Moreover, in their efforts to help Ma make inroads into the DPP’s political
base, Chinese Communists are going to the grassroots supporters in southern
Taiwan.
Last month, they invited thousands of village and township chiefs, heads of
clans and religious organizations from southern counties, many of them DPP
precinct captains, to attend cross-strait forums and similar gatherings in Amoy
and other coastal Fukien cities, where Taiwanese dialect is also spoken, hoping
to convert their support to Ma and other Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)
parliamentary candidates.
Other aspects of Chinese united front operations in Taiwan seem more
sophisticated and proficient.
In the past three years, Beijing has worked through Taiwanese businessmen in
China to acquire several of Taiwan’s newspapers and TV stations to wage
political, informational and ideological warfare. They propagate politically
“-correct” information, and portrait developments in China and cross-strait
relations in the best possible light.
On Taiwan’s politics, as a rule they defend and speak for the Ma government and
attack the DPP, Tsai and her policy platform.
Because the US sells arms to Taiwan and maintains a protective relationship with
Taiwan, Beijing sees the relationship as the most serious impediment to its
policy of unification and has, over the years, tried several approaches to
remove the obstacle and weaken Taiwan-US ties. One approach is to pressure the
US to end its arms sales to Taiwan.
A second approach is to call for the US to repeal the Taiwan Relations Act and
abandon its security commitment to Taiwan. This idea has been echoed and aired
by several US academics already; moreover, some in Washington policy circles,
including retired high-ranking admirals and generals, are also suggesting that
the time has come to recognize the reality of a rising China and reconsider US
security ties with Taiwan.
Most importantly, China has annually increased its military budget for more than
a decade and substantially expanded its military forces against Taiwan and, if
necessary, against the US, should the US try to intervene in any future
cross-strait conflict.
China’s military strategists do not seek a fight with the US, because they know
well that the US forces are far superior. However, they skillfully wage
psychological warfare, and use China’s military build-up for the following
purposes: to pressure Taiwan to start political talks; to deter any future
attempt to seek Taiwanese independence, especially if the Ma administration
should be voted out of office, and to further dissuade the US against
intervention by building up its “access denial” capability to raise the cost of
intervention for the US.
The reason China needs its overwhelming military preponderance to press the
issue of unification is because the vast majority of people in Taiwan do not
want to live under the communist regime.
Taiwan needs the US as a counterweight to China’s growing power and influence,
and has sought F-16A/B upgrades, submarines and F-16C/Ds from the US for many
years, yet US President Barack Obama’s administration continues to delay its
response to Taiwan’s requests.
If little or nothing is done to address the increasing military imbalance in the
Taiwan Strait, Obama would be sending Beijing the wrong signal. Both Beijing and
Taiwan are watching closely for signs of whether the US commitment has weakened.
Parris Chang is professor emeritus of political science at Pennsylvania State
University and former deputy secretary-general of the National Security Council.
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