All this has raised the question of how many channels of dialogue Taiwan has with the People’s Republic of China. There is the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), a Cabinet agency which is considered a decision-making body, albeit the decision is actually taken by the president with the help of his National Security Council. The SEF is a government-funded organization commissioned by the MAC to go to the negotiating table with the ARATS. The two organizations form the first channel of communication between the two sides of the strait.

Lien Chan opened the second, more intimate, channel of dialogue with his journey of peace to China in 2005, right after Beijing adopted an anti-secession law, which codifies an invasion of Taiwan if any move toward apparent de jure independence were found. He has cultivated friendship with President Hu. After their meeting, the Kuomintang established an economic forum with the Chinese Communist Party. So far, the forum has met four times to strengthen economic cooperation across the strait.

Wu’s must be a third channel, unless he fails to take over the one between Lien and Hu. The odds are that Wu may replace Lien in dialogue between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party, of which President Hu is the general-secretary. Then there will be two channels of dialogue, one semi-governmental and the other intra-party. And two is better than one, for the time being.

The reason is simple. Beijing wants two channels rather than one. China is a country where its ruling party — like in all Communist countries, or even Nazi Germany as well as Fascist Italy — leads the government. In fact, the government in Beijing is subsumed in the Chinese Communist Party. Hu is the party’s general-secretary first and the president of the republic second.

Things are not quite the same in Taiwan now. President Ma isn’t chairman of the ruling Kuomintang and he doesn’t want the party to lead the administration he has installed. But there is no government-to-government relationship between Taiwan and China; and that is the reason why the MAC, which cannot contact the Taiwan Office of the State Council in Beijing, has to have the SEF as its negotiating arm in the first channel of dialogue. On the other hand, the SEF has cut off the umbilical tie with the Kuomintang, which the Chinese Communist Party prefers to have as a partner in real dialogue.

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