In his first weekly "Governance Dairy" issued Sunday, President Ma Ying-jeou maintained that Taiwan stands to win the lion's share of a "peace dividend" through "making peace and friendship" with the authoritarian People's Republic of China.
The first and most troubling question in the discourse by President Ma, who is also chairman of the ruling right-wing Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), is that there is no "peace" in the Taiwan Strait that can create a "dividend."
Despite several sets of "white gloved" talks between Ma's KMT government since May 2008 and the Chinese Communist Party-ruled PRC and the signing of 11 agreements and Ma's unilateral "diplomatic truce" and much talk of Taiwan ceasing to be a "troublemaker," the Beijing authorities seem to have no compunctions to reply in kind.
Instead, the PRC's People's Liberation Army continues to expand its deployment of tactical missiles and other offensive forces arrayed in Fujian and other coastal provinces and targeted at Taiwan to a scale approaching a "first strike" capability and has made no move whatsoever to reduce these deployments.
Moreover, the PRC retains its belligerent "Anti-Secession Law" under which the PLA is authorized to use "non-peaceful means" to secure Taiwan's unification and steadfastly refuses to abandon the use of force against Taiwan.
On the heels of statements made by one of his confidants in Taipei that acceptance of "unification" is a precondition for a cross-strait peace agreement floated by Ma, PRC State Chairman and CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao himself chose a New Year's Day tea party with the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference to push aside Ma's so-called "one China with separate expressions" notion and ringingly reaffirm the PRC's resolute commitment to compel Taiwan to accept "unification" under the "one country, two systems" formula rejected consistently by over 70 percent of the Taiwan people in opinion polls.
It would be unfair to deny that something has changed in the past 19 months since Ma's KMT "won back" rule over Taiwan after eight years of governance by the Taiwan-centric Democratic Progressive Party, which was indeed vocal about defending Taiwan's status as a "democratic independent state" and be sometimes even pushy about the right of the 23 million Taiwan people to be represented in the world community.
Break out the muzzles
The most obvious difference is that the president and the KMT government elected by Taiwan's 23 million people has ceased any effort to affiliate with the United Nations or secure distinct representation for Taiwan's people in the world community and have even dropped maintaining that Taiwan itself is a "state" in its own right.
Not muzzled like their Taiwan counterparts by any concern for a "truce," PRC diplomats continue to declare in public fora that the cross-strait "reconciliation" is taking place under Beijing's "one China principle" which posits that Taiwan is "part of the People's Republic of China" and now gaining far more backing in action for this position without any noticeable challenge from Taipei.
A disturbing example occurred in last month's global climate change conference in Copenhagen during which representatives of the Taiwan government sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute attended as part of the delegation from "China."
This type of "friendship" is not "peace-making" but nothing less than surrender without even the dignity of a flimsy fig leaf.
The Copenhagen case, which occurred after Ma had publicly announced a "pragmatic" policy aimed at securing Taiwan's "participation" in fora on global climatic change, also demonstrates the wishful thinking underlining Ma's strategy to ensure that Taiwan is not "excluded" from the regional trade bloc being formed around the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with the PRC this year ("ASEAN plus One") and the future "ASEAN plus Three" (including Japan and South Korea).
Claiming that Taiwan's path to avoid "marginalization" in the regional and world community is through making peace with the PRC and rapidly signing a controversial "Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement" with Beijing, Ma maintains that "the formation of this new situation will certainly open much more new space for Taiwan to expand, such as participating in international organizations or signing multilateral agreements."
But the experience of Copenhagen suggests that Beijing will only permit "participation" by Taiwan in international organizations or in signing multilateral agreements, including free trade pacts under the PRC's umbrella.
Ironically, this suspicion was confirmed Wednesday by the bizarre statement by Taiwan Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Wu-hsiung that the ECFA will allow Taiwan farmers to sell produce to ASEAN consumers duty free, a possibility that would exist only if Taiwan was treated by ASEAN as part of the PRC.
Ma declared that "cross-strait peaceful development can allow us in the next one or two generations to continue to enjoy the fruits of freedom, democracy and prosperity."
Under Ma's "Chinese peace," the Taiwan people may not even have one more generation before having to relinquish "freedom, democracy and prosperity" as part of the KMT's "peace dividend" to Beijing.
Source: Taiwan News Online - Editorial 2010/01/08
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