President Ma may bring himself to talk with the opposition party leader for talk’s sake to raise his record-low 20 percent approval ratings a couple of percentage points up. Such dialogue will be no dialogue at all.

The reason is simple. Tsai has to keep her party’s Taiwan independence line. The charter of the opposition party states clearly its ultimate goal is to found a republic of Taiwan that has no umbilical cord relationship with China. If she deviates from that line, her party loses its raison d’etre. Of course, the charter can be amended but no amendment is possible under the existing circumstances — for the party is almost fully under control of hardcore independence activists — and in any foreseeable future. Incidentally, all of them know an independent, sovereign state of Taiwan wouldn’t come by, unless the People’s Republic would agree. Chinese President Hu Jintao, who had an anti-secession law rammed through the National People’s Congress, and his successors will never try to violate that legislation which codifies an automatic invasion of Taiwan if Taipei takes any move toward separation, which is their codeword for independence. China is a rising world power, and even the world superpower United States needs its help in coping with the global financial and economic crisis.

Ma, on his part, has no vision on the future of Taiwan. He offers a “three-no” China policy. (Does he want to emulate his political benefactor and mentor, President Chiang Ching-kuo, who had a different “three-no” China policy, by at least getting the number of points to agree?) Whereas Chiang insisted on “no contact,” “no compromise” and “no negotiation” between Taiwan and China, his protege wants “no unification,” “no independence” and “no war” across the Taiwan Strait. All Ma wants is to maintain the status quo between Taiwan and China, which is fast tilting in the latter’s favor. As a matter of fact, Chiang’s “three-no” China policy was scrapped by his successor President Lee Teng-hui, under whom Taiwan began a brief detente with the People’s Republic. Lee switched to a “two-country” doctrine towards the end of his rule, putting the detente to an end and freezing cross-Strait relations. He was succeeded by President Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party who promised to write a constitution for a republic of Taiwan and put it in force before he stepped down on last May 20. To be honest, President Ma has no plausible China policy objectives. He just wants to muddle through.

1|2|Next Page>>

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Enter your comments - 1000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos Respond to this email