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Ma’s East China Sea
peace plan is huge risk
By Lai I-chung 賴怡忠
During a visit to Pengjia Islet (彭佳嶼), about 140km from the contested Diaoyutai
Islands (釣魚台), on Friday, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) provided details on his
East China Sea peace initiative. He said he wanted to see a series of initial
bilateral talks between Taiwan and Japan, Taiwan and China, and China and Japan
as a basis for later trilateral talks.
This is not going to happen. Japan will not agree to trilateral talks for fear
of being pincered between Taiwan and China. This means Japan is likely to only
enter into bilateral talks with China and Taiwan separately. And given that
China is so much more powerful than Taiwan, it is certain to concentrate on the
talks with China. As a result, even though Ma initiated China’s involvement,
Taiwan would only be further marginalized.
However, that is not all. This is the first time Ma has included the contentious
Diaoyutai issue, which involves relations with third parties, on the
cross-strait agenda, and this goes beyond the bottom line he promised he would
keep to: that talks with China would deal with economic issues before they dealt
with political ones, and that he would address the simpler problems first.
Not only is the Diaoyutai issue political, it is a prickly one, and talks would
go ahead only if Beijing found their political basis acceptable. One could read
this as the Ma administration, under considerable pressure from Beijing, trying
to usher in cross-strait political talks under the guise of diplomatic
discussions involving a third party, as opposed to exclusively concerning China
and Taiwan. However, considering the way things are evolving, it does not look
like things will go according to plan. In fact, they might have the opposite
effect.
China has already replaced the so-called “1992 consensus” with the formulation
“two sides, one country” (兩岸一國). If this becomes the basis for future
cross-strait relations, Beijing will demand that Ma openly follow the “two
sides, one country,” “one country, two areas” (一國兩區) concepts in cross-strait
negotiations over the Diaoyutais. Beijing will also expect the outcome of the
talks to reflect this, otherwise it will simply not sign any agreement.
In addition, China may well want to include the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands,
南沙群島) issue. This will reinforce the impression in the international community
that Taipei and Beijing have already commenced talks on the Diaoyutais and the
Spratlys based on “two sides, one country.” The Finlandization of Taiwan will
have become an established fact. Beijing will hold up its hands and say it had
nothing to do with it, but will be quite content to allow Taiwan to stand with
it against Japan, ASEAN and the US.
Any talks on the Diaoyutai issue would be political talks. If Ma declares that
there is no disagreement between China and Taiwan on the issue, and if he
defines the cross-strait relationship as “one country, two areas,” it will mean
that as soon as he commences talks on the Diaoyutais with Beijing, which
advocates “two sides, one country,” it will be tantamount to declaring to the
world that Taiwan has agreed to enter talks with China as an area of China.
By using a foreign relations issue as an excuse to start political talks with
China, Taiwan will be faced with having to turn its back on the US, Japan and
ASEAN. Ma is either walking into this with his eyes closed, in which case it is
exceptional stupidity, or eyes wide open, in which case it is devious in the
extreme.
Neither the opposition nor the public can just sit by and watch as Ma goes about
trying to unilaterally change the “status quo” so radically.
Lai I-chung is an executive committee member of Taiwan Thinktank.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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