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Peace agreement
nothing but a trap
By Paul Lin 林保華
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has hit a snag in his re-election campaign with
talk of a cross-strait peace agreement revealing his intentions to “replace
independence with gradual reunification.”
No one is opposed to peace, but no one wants it to come at the price of having
to serve under a new dictatorial regime. Are we to suppose that we can live in
peace and security if we become part of China? When we talk about cross-strait
peace, it is important to keep an eye on the differences between the system we
live under and that in China.
In the final years of his presidency, former US president Bill Clinton became
more pro-China in his cross-strait policy. However, during a visit to Taiwan in
2005, speaking in a private capacity, he said signing a mid to long-term peace
agreement with China would be inadvisable for three reasons. First, he said, it
is not really possible to set a term for peace, and that there could be no
genuine guarantees. Second, it would be leaving the problem for the next
generation. And third, when the agreement expired it would actually be an excuse
for China to attack Taiwan.
Clinton’s first point concerns how exactly one defines the medium or long term.
However you choose to define these, the fact remains that it will be a finite
period and that China won’t sign a permanent peace agreement. This would lead to
the following preposterous situation: There is currently already peace in the
Taiwan Strait and if we were to now sign a peace agreement with a finite term,
that would imply that once the agreed period is up, China and Taiwan would enter
a state of war. For Ma to sleepwalk us into a state of war with China is
insanity by any measure.
When China regained the territory of Hong Kong it promised no changes for 50
years. I do not know if that is supposed to be considered long or mid-term, but
the fact of the matter is that changes have already happened. The agreement
signed in 1984 between the UK and China on Hong Kong’s future was a
state-to-state agreement subsequently registered with the UN as an international
treaty. However, China already regards Hong Kong as a domestic issue. This shows
why Clinton doubted the ability to obtain any genuine guarantees after an
agreement is signed. What would possess Taiwan to walk into such an obvious
trap?
China and Japan also dispute the sovereignty of the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), but
there is no talk of a peace agreement between them. Former Chinese leader Deng
Xiaoping (鄧小平) said the issue should be left to the next generation of leaders.
Deng was the second generation and China is now led by a fourth generation, yet
the issue is still to be resolved. Why doesn’t Ma just leave it to the next
generation?
When any potential agreement expires, the politicians of the future will be
haunted by Ma’s legacy, with no option but to re-sign the agreement or consign
the country to a state of war. Furthermore, China would be sure to come up with
new demands and conditions during the negotiation process, and if the talks
failed to yield results, it would be just as Clinton said: China will have an
excuse to launch an attack. Therefore, Ma’s intention to sign a peace agreement
with China at this juncture is tantamount to selling out the next generations of
Taiwanese.
One thing is for certain; if Taiwan did decide to go ahead and sign a peace deal
with China, the negotiations would likely be laborious and drawn out, unless we
agreed to all their demands. If we did not, China would stir up public opinion,
saying how Taiwan had sabotaged the talks, and therefore hopes of peace, in such
a way that it would have an excuse, with the public’s blessing, to start a war.
Basically, once we go to the negotiation table, it would be very difficult to
leave. Hasn’t the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) learned its lesson yet?
Paul Lin is a political commentator.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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