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WASHINGTON — Whether the historic meeting between the presidents of China and Taiwan earlier this month will have a lasting impact depends on whether Taiwan’s next president is willing to accept the “One China” concept, according to a leading political science expert in Taiwan.
Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, a pro-china leader who will leave office after the next election in January, met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Singapore 66 years after the civil war in China separated the two sides.
“The Ma-Xi meeting is only the first step to establish the dialogue platform between the leaders of Taiwan and China,” Chien-wen Kou, a politics professor at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, wrote in an email.
During his presidency, Ma pushed for closer ties with the mainland, including expanding trade and allowing more Chinese tourists and students to visit and study in Taiwan. In 2010, the two governments signed an economic pact to reduce tariffs.
“If the new president of Taiwan does not follow Ma’s footsteps and China shows no more goodwill in many issues, then the Ma-Xi meeting will be only a historical event without lasting impact on cross-straits relations,” said Kou, who regularly is interviewed about relations between the two sides.
However, opposition leader Tsai Ing-wen, the leading presidential candidate in the 2016 election in Taiwan, is more hostile to China.
She said the only result of the Ma-Xi meeting was “the use of politics to limit the choices of the Taiwanese public regarding cross-strait relations on an international stage,” according to Taipei Times.
She blamed Ma for not achieving any of the three goals she had hoped for: “Confirming the ability of the 23 million people of Taiwan to make their own choices, establishing that there would be no political preconditions in the development of cross-strait relations and ensuring equal footing and dignity in cross-strait relations,” Taipei Times reported.
The political preconditions she referred to are in the 1992 Consensus or the “One China principle,” which was the term used after a 1992 meeting between representatives of China and Taiwan. Ma’s Nationalist party and the Communist Party recognize the “One “hina” consensus, but Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party denies the consensus defining China exists.
“The meeting sends a strong message to the next president of Taiwan (most likely Tsai Ing-wen,), not the incumbent president, that the meetings of the leaders of Taiwan and China are all right if he or she accepts the 1992 Consensus,” Kou said.
Ma has advocated a meeting between leaders of Taiwan and mainland China for several years, ut Xi did not accept the proposal till now, probably in reaction to the likely victory of Tsai’s DPP in January, according to Kou.
“Xi wanted to stabilize cross-straits relations so that he could concentrate on other domestic and international challenges,” Kou explained.
“The stabilization of cross-straits relations is consistent with the U.S.’s national interests,” Kou wrote, “However, I do not think that the U.S. wants to see a situation in which Taiwan stands too close to China.”
Jerome A. Cohen, adjunct senior fellow for Asian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in an article that ”the U.S. government will undoubtedly want to push back at Xi’s attempt to exclude Washington from the Taiwan puzzle, as part of Beijing’s effort to reduce American influence in Asia generally.”
China-Taiwan timeline
1949 – Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party of China forms its own government in Taiwan after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists
1971 – Taiwan loses its seat at the UN to China
1979 – United States develops diplomatic relations with China and moves its embassy from Taiwan to Beijing
1987 – Taiwan allows soldiers to visit their families in mainland China
1993 – First talk between China and Taiwan is held in Singapore
2005 – China passes anti-secession law authorizing use of force if Taiwan declares independence
2008 – Taiwan’s vice president-elect and China’s commerce minister hold talks on economic cooperation
2010 – China and Taiwan sign an economic pact to reduce tariffs and commercial barriers between them 2014 – Students and civic groups protest the trade pact with China, arguing it would hurt Taiwan’s economy and leave it vulnerable to political pressure from Beijing
