Taiwanese wary of China
IN an historic meeting, Chinese President Xi Jinping last Saturday met Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou for talks and dinner. The encounter was the first between leaders of China and Taiwan since 1949.
While the meeting was applauded by most global audiences, it triggered powerful emotions in Taiwan, where opposition party members see it as an attempt to interfere in elections to be held next year. That may well be an accurate characterisation of Beijing’s intentions, but the people of Taiwan plainly can see through such machinations. Cross-strait conversations are to be encouraged, however, as long as Taiwan’s democracy is respected. The top leadership in China and Taiwan has not had a direct conversation since the end of the civil war that brought the communists to power in 1949.
There have been many meetings of their representatives, but the symbolism of the two leaders together has been too powerful for the Communist Party leadership; for Beijing, the leader of Taiwan is the head of a renegade province, whose status is a challenge to the very legitimacy of the ruling party on the mainland.
Ma is a stalwart member of the Kuomintang (KMT), or Nationalist Party, which lost China to the communists and fled to Taiwan after the end of the civil war.
He came to power in 2008, pledging to stabilise relations with China, and forging a good relationship has been the hallmark of this administration.
Beijing has used the opportunity afforded by the Ma government to push for stronger links across the Taiwan Strait, opening trade, tourism and communications links. The Chinese government has tried to win the hearts and minds of Taiwanese with concessions that boost trade among groups, such as farmers, that have been suspicious of its intentions.
The result has been increased trade and ties — along with growing suspicions. Many, if not most, Taiwanese do not share Ma’s readiness to consolidate ties across the Taiwan Strait.
They fear that Ma and the KMT are more interested in unification than the preservation of Taiwan’s democracy, and suspect that Beijing aims to make Taiwan dependent on China as a way of reducing its freedom of manoeuvre.
Most Taiwanese favour independence from China; they know, however, that Beijing would not tolerate such a declaration and are, therefore, content to live with a “strained but separate” status quo. Tokyo, November 10.