Belgian envoy recounts 20 years in Taiwan

Only a reasonable compromise on the fundamental principles of the “One China” policy can relieve cross-strait tensions, he said during a recent exclusive interview with The China Post.

“As long as both parties can negotiate democratically, Taiwan and China could envisage a “model of understanding,”

Mr. Mignot said, quoting a Belgian politician’s remarks on reaching an agreement on a new Belgian government — that to save a wedding, “husband and wife must sometimes sleep separately.”

“Some in Taiwan favor a European Common market model,” he said. In view of Europe’s experience, his could work if both parties concede some sovereignty.

Yet no one today seems ready for this, he adds, so Beijing and Taipei will have to seek other ways of reaching a “rapprochement” than the “principles” each of them has been so adamant to defend over the years.

Mignot previously worked as a banker in Belgium and Hong Kong. His Asian career started in the mid-1960s with several internships in Belgian embassies throughout Asia.

Arriving in Taiwan on Dec. 16, 1985, he succeeded Mr. Edgar Roux, his Belgian predecessor in Taiwan since 1953. At the time in 1985, the DPP was still an informal “tangwai” opposition party, he said, and in February 1988 he witnessed for the first time the “deep emotions” of the Taiwanese population at President Chiang Ching-kuo’s funeral.

Following the Tiananmen incident of June 1989, he explained, Europe developed a growing interest for Taiwan’s new democracy and impressive economic performance. This resulted in the opening of a growing number of European Trade Offices to assist the numerous political and economic missions visiting Taiwan.

In the 1980s and early 90s, Taiwan’s China policy was still locked in a strict “no contact, no compromise” doctrine, which gradually relaxed over the years. Taiwan was locked into its geographic and cultural proximity with China, he said. Not surprisingly, China soon became Taiwan’s main trade and investment partner.

After President Chen Shui-bian was elected in 2000, Sino-Taiwanese economic relations continued to expand despite the different political views of Taiwan’s future and place in the world.

“If in 1996 China fired missiles north and south of Taiwan prior to the presidential election,” today Beijing instead interferes more indirectly in Taiwanese politics by way of its U.S., European and Japanese allies.

“Danger of a military confrontation, if real, remains on the whole remote,” he added, as he feels since the Sino-American normalization in 1979, the United States has been largely successful in managing a balanced relationship with the purposely ambiguous “status quo doctrine.”

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