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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

WASHINGTON — The agreement between the U.S. and China, signed during President Xi Jinping’s visit to the White House last month, aims to stop cyberespoinagee and promote international cyber norms, but many experts say the the four-point plan is symbolic without specifics.

Some called it a “paper agreement,” while some recognized the agreement as major progress but took a “wait-and-see” attitude about how China will honor the agreement.

What is the agreement about?

According to the White House, the agreement covered four aspects of cybersecurity: Providing timely response to assist each other’s cyberinvestigations; vowing not to conduct online intellectual property theft; working together on international norms in cyberspace; and establishing a high-level information-sharing mechanism on fighting cybercrime.

For Christopher K. Johnson, senior China studies adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the most significant component of the agreement was the second aspect on the list: that neither government would “conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property.”

“We can and should expect that the next time the U.S. has releasable evidence of this type of activity emanating from China, the administration will present such evidence to the Chinese, with the expectation that the responsible parties will be prosecuted to the full extent of Chinese law,” he testified at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Sept. 29.

However, David Inserra, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, argued it was “another paper agreement.”

He said that China had never admitted to engaging in cyberthefts. “They have agreed to stop a behavior that they deny ever engaging in. That doesn’t bode well as an indicator of their future behavior,” he wrote in Daily Signal, a website sponsored by the Heritage Foundation.

Nir Kshetri, management professor at University of North Carolina-Greensboro, said the two countries’ agreement to provide timely responses to requests for information and assistance related to cyberattacks was a major achievement.

“The lack of timely response has been the main point of complaint against each other,” he wrote in an email.

Kshetri gave two examples. “It was reported that in 2010, the FBI office in Beijing forwarded 10 letters through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and received responses to two. Likewise, in 2010, Gu Lian of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security had noted that China received no response in its request for cooperation from the U.S. on 13 cybercrime cases involving issues such as fake bank websites and child pornography,” he wrote.

Inserra was again skeptical. “Will the Chinese help the U.S. investigate the five Chinese military officers that the U.S. charged with cybercrimes last year? Doubtful.”

Why now?

For years, the U.S. and China have blamed each other for cyberespionages and competed in military cybercapabilities. In May 2014, the Department of Justice charged five Chinese military officers with computer hacking and economic espionage against U.S. nuclear power, metals and solar products industries.

In June, The Washington Post reported that Chinese hackers stole personal data from the Office of Personnel Management, affecting about 4 million federal employees.

China denied both accusations and blamed the U.S. for large-scale cybertheft, wiretapping and surveillance activities revealed by Edward Snowden.

Kshetri, said that the two nations view each other as major sources of cyberattacks and a cybersecurity agreement was “a logical way to proceed.”

How will it affect both sides?

Another witness at the Sept. 29 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Melanie Hart, director of China policy at the Center for American Progress, acknowledged that the agreement would not “completely eliminate” cyberespionages from China. But she projected that China might apply new restrictions and require higher-level approvals for cyberspace intrusions targeting U.S. commercial entities and therefore reduce harm to U.S commercial interests.

James Andrew Lewis, senior fellow at Center for Strategic and International Studies, called the agreement “a significant step forward” in another Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Sept 30. He said this was the first time the Chinese leaders addressed the issues of commercial espionage.

But he also said, “In talking to administration officials, they know they have wiggle room in the language. They told me they would be watching closely to see how well the Chinese would live up to their commitment.”

“What I was told by (an Obama) administration official is that sanction is still on the table,” he added.

Johnson said economic sanctions are the “most effective punishment” but carries risks. Imposing sanctions is a “naming and shaming” approach that gives China “very little room to react, which is not what we want,” he said. “We want them to change their behaviors.”