Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

For some time now, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has said the government will seek to sign free-trade agreements (FTA) with other countries in the Asia-Pacific region after it signs an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China. The rationale is that somehow, after an ECFA is signed, Beijing will be more amenable to Taiwan signing FTAs with other countries.

It is inconceivable, Ma said recently, that in the entire region only Taiwan and North Korea — the two extremities of global integration — have yet to sign FTAs. True enough. Pyongyang, an isolationist and pseudo-communist regime, has done so by choice. By not providing any context to his statement, however, Ma is hinting that Taiwan is in the same situation for the same reasons, and implying his predecessors didn’t seek to sign FTAs with other countries.

On the first day of the fourth meeting of "semi-official" envoys from Taiwan and the People's Republic of China in Taichung City, it is essential to recall the fundamental problems in the policy adopted toward the authoritarian PRC regime adopted by President Ma Ying-jeou and his Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) administration, namely transparency, Taiwan-centric policies and the need to form a domestic consensus to counter the Chinese Communist Party's divide and conquer strategy.

On the eve of the meeting between Taipei's Strait Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Ping-kun with Beijing's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin, ovr 100,000 Taiwan citizens marched and rallied peacefully to "protect our rice bowls and break the black box" of secretive talks between the KMT and the PRC's ruling Chinese Communist Party.