CHINA: Seeking Economic Route to Taiwan Reunification

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Mar 25 2008 (IPS) - China is betting that a formula of economic rapprochement with the self-ruled island of Taiwan would advance its ultimate goal of political re-unification better than emphatic claims of sovereignty hammered home by Beijing.

The weekend landslide victory of opposition presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou who favours warmer cross-strait relations presents Chinese politicians with an opportunity to boost economic integration with Taiwan and work on resuming political talks across the strait.

The victory of Ma Ying-Jeou returns power to the Nationalist party (KMT)after eight turbulent years of ups and downs under the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which pursued a course of independence for Taiwan and resisted closer economic relations with mainland China. China claims the island as its territory and has vowed to reunify it, by force if all else fails.

Both the KMT candidate Ma Ying-jeou and the DPP presidential hopeful Frank Hsieh have said they will not push for outright independence and promised closer ties with Beijing, differing only in how quickly and to what degree they would strengthen relations. Both have strived to chart a course different to that of the departing president Chen Shui-bian, whose confrontational stance had angered Beijing and irritated Taiwan’s staunchest ally – Washington.

Ma won on promises for accelerating the pace of cross-strait economic integration and ending the hostility and tension between Taiwan and China. His convincing victory, which took 58.45 percent of the vote, illustrates a perception among Taiwanese public that the island should benefit from rather than shun economic interdependence with the mainland.

“For an island economy like Taiwan’s it is impractical not to want to be part of China’s economic boom,” says Taiwanese Raymond Ma who manages a real estate company in Beijing. “I sense potential and possibilities here every day and I think keeping political barriers between Taiwan and China seems rather outdated these days”.

After his election, Ma Ying-jeou – a Harvard-educated lawyer and former mayor of Taipei – said he would seek to establish direct travel links with China and allow for more mainland tourists to visit Taiwan. He had promised earlier to permit Taiwanese firms to invest more than 40 percent of their assets in China.

During his campaign, Ma floated the idea of a loose economic entity between China and Taiwan, modelled on the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement that Hong Kong has with the mainland.

“I will lay the foundation for a century of peace and prosperity,” Ma said in a news conference after the election results were announced.

During the weekend vote Taiwanese voters rejected two controversial referendums calling for Taiwan to apply for membership in the United Nations, one put forward by the DPP and one by the KMT.

DPP’s vote has specifically called for the island to apply to the U.N. as Taiwan and not under its formal name of Republic of China, which in DPP’s view reflects the principle that Taiwan and the mainland still form one China. Beijing has condemned the referendum as a step towards declaring formal independence.

“Chen Shui-bian’s administration has put forth a referendum to join the United Nations under the name of Taiwan, but that referendum has failed, which goes to show that the people are not in favour of those who advocate Taiwan independence,” Li Weiyi, spokesman of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said in Beijing.

But apart from Li’s officially sanctioned remarks on the referendum, the state media has exercised restraint before the elections and in their immediate aftermath. While daring newspapers like the Southern Weekend have run lengthy features on the Taiwan elections, explaining the background of the two candidates and the mood of the electorate, no comments have been published for fear of influencing political developments.

Experts say Beijing has learned its lesson from previous elections and has developed much more sophisticated approach to dealing with the volatile and proud Taiwanese electorate.

When the island held its first democratic election for president in 1996, China fired dozen of missiles into Taiwan waters, hoping to deter the island’s voters from choosing the pro-independence candidate Lee Teng-hui. A native-born Taiwanese, Lee campaigned on a platform for fostering Taiwanese identity and won.

But this year Beijing opted for a hands-off approach, which analysts here credit to a change in mainland’s policy towards Taiwan to emphasise pragmatism over idealism that has occurred under the leadership of president Hu Jintao. The crux of the policy is no longer political reunification by all means but opposition to independence.

“Since the year 2000, when the Democratic Progressive Party gained power in Taiwan, ‘reunification’ as the focal point of the mainland’s strategy toward Taiwan became unrealistic and untenable,” said political scientists Chu Shulong and Guo Yuli in an article published in the China Security magazine.

“The decision to adjust the mainland’s strategy to one of ‘opposing independence’ was driven by circumstances of the situation: the political realities and a change in social attitudes in Taiwan.”

Under Hu Jintao’s rule, Beijing has also raised the status of defence modernisation in China’s national strategy, making preparations for a possible conflict over Taiwan. The defence budget has seen rapid increase ow over five years with a sizeable chunk going to missile development, submarines and electronic warfare capabilities.

At the just concluded annual session of the parliament, China said its military spending this year would rise nearly 18 percent to 57.2 billion US dollars.