China's Quiet Rise by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780739169087
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic

All’s Quiet on the Front: Latin America as Proving Ground for a Diplomatic Truce between Mainland China and Taiwan

From 2000 to 2008, Latin America had been a diplomatic battlefield between China and Taiwan. During the eight years of his tenure, Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian “pursue[d] identity politics—at the heavy cost of international isolation, inflamed cross-Strait tensions and economic stagnation.” His tactics were often unnecessarily provocative, ranging from calling for independence to renaming public buildings to emphasize Taiwanese identity. Taiwan-U.S. relations are, as a result, at their lowest ebb in decades.37 In his final gambit, Chen insisted on holding a national referendum on whether the island should seek to join the United Nations under the name of Taiwan instead of its legal name, the Republic of China. Of course the Security Council, where China has a veto, would never have accepted Taiwan’s application.38

In March 2008, Taiwan’s voters rejected the referendum by a substantial margin and produced a government more favorable to the security across the Taiwan Strait. The mandate of President Ma Ying-jeou is founded on his promise to deliver tangible benefits from better relations with Beijing, including direct airline flights, an economic accord protecting investments, more tourist visits by mainlanders to Taiwan and a peace accord under which China would withdraw the thousands of missiles it aims across the strait.39

According to U.S. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, a retired admiral who heads sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies, the United States must continue to make sure that military adventures are unattractive to both sides of the Taiwan Strait. He also cautioned that “Taiwan has to realize that its long-term security lies in some sort of an arrangement with China. It does not lie in military defenses.”40

But Taiwan has long held justifiable complaint about its international political isolation and about Beijing’s efforts to force nations to choose diplomatic relations with either Taiwan or China. The Taiwanese fear that if China’s policy prevails and renders them completely isolated, Beijing would face minimal international opposition to increased hegemony over the island and, ultimately, to Taiwan’s unwilling absorption into the mainland.41 Therefore, according to Chong-pin Lin, president of the Foundation for International and Cross-Strait Studies and Taiwan’s former Deputy Minister of National Defense, Beijing needs to think creatively about how to gradually allow Taiwan international space. This is a crucial subject and necessary to win the hearts and minds of Taiwanese people.42

Proposed by President Ma Ying-jeou, the policies of diplomatic truce and modus vivendi diplomacy have successfully improved cross-strait relations. China also deserves some credit for sharing some international space with Taiwan. In November 2008, APEC issued a list of countries and leaders on which Taiwan was referred to as Chinese Taipei and Ma was listed with his official title and photo. This was the first time that the country’s president was introduced in an APEC document and it shows that we have adopted the right strategies of no unification, no independence and no use of force, according to President Ma.43

In addition, Lien Chan, Taiwan’s former vice-President, was able to attend the APEC meeting in Peru.

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