The Direction of U.S.-China-Taiwan Relations

A few days ago, the Taiwan Foreign Affairs ministry said that ever since President Ma Ying-jeou took office, U.S.-Taiwan relations have improved substantially, as seen from examples of unprecedented behavior. However, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate for Taipei mayor Su Tseng-chang expresses an opposing view.

The Liberty Times reported yesterday that during a trip to the U.S., Su Tseng-chang indicated that since taking office, Ma Ying-jeou has bragged that U.S.-Taiwan relations were better than they had been when the DPP was in power. However, there is yet to be a free trade agreement (FTA) between America and Taiwan, the Taiwanese people have yet to enjoy the privilege of traveling to the U.S. without a visa, there has been no visit from a high-ranking U.S. government official, and the purchase of F-16C/D fighter aircraft fell through. But the fact that election opponent Su Tseng-chang is nit-picking at the incumbent administration of the Nationalist Party is hardly surprising.

The Taiwan Foreign Affairs ministry retorted that in January, when the chairman of the Board of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), Raymond Burghardt, and President Ma passed through the United States on a trip abroad, Burghardt publicly stated that at present, U.S.-Taiwan relations were excellent and in good shape. The Foreign Affairs ministry stated that after the August 8 typhoon disaster of last year, the U.S. sent helicopters, disaster relief professionals, and active duty soldiers to aid in disaster relief, which was a first since the break in diplomatic relations between Taiwan and the U.S. Additionally, a “Republic of China” C-130 military aircraft stopped at an American military base to refuel while en route to Haiti to provide disaster relief. This is also historically unprecedented, and proves the depth of mutual trust between Taiwan and the U.S.

The Taiwan Foreign Affairs ministry emphasized that high-level U.S. government officials, including U.S. President Barack Obama, have all publicly affirmed Taiwan’s Cross-Strait policy, something rarely seen in the past. The United States has also publicly supported Taiwan’s status as an observer at the World Health Assembly (WHA) for the past two years. Many high-level officials have publicly supported the position that there is significance in Taiwan participating in the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). As for ongoing negotiations regarding the signing of a U.S.-Taiwan FTA and Taiwan entering the U.S.’s Visa Waiver Program, the Taiwan Foreign Affairs ministry stated that both parties would continue to push forward.

But what is really remarkable is the assessment of Ma Ying-jeou. On August 12, Taiwan’s China Times published an article by Liu Bing. The article stated that from May 20 to today, both the United States government and academics gave President Ma Ying-jeou “midterm” grades. He scored very highly. American administrative authorities praised him in every way, giving him an “A,” a score that has not been received by a Taiwanese leader in many years. More significant are the words of Joseph R. Donovan Jr., Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, and David B. Shear, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the same department. Both men spoke at different times and at different venues, yet used the same positive phrases to praise the Ma administration, neither hesitating to give a detailed breakdown of the past two years’ achievements of the Ma administration.

Most worth mentioning is the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), which the DPP has criticized the most severely; yet in the United States, it is the Ma administration’s most representative achievement. The U.S. went as far as considering it as “the height” of cross-strait relations “in the past few decades.” Official Chinese media has always asserted that the U.S. definitely does not want the two to reunite and rather sees Taiwan as one of its unsinkable aircraft carriers. Why, now, does it welcome the two sides’ close contact? Does Uncle Sam not know that the mainland Chinese government has lowered its stance and allowed Taiwan many advantages, restraining itself and allowing Taiwan additional conditions, tacitly allowing it to participate in the FTA that ASEAN signed with many other countries in the world, to make Taiwan determined to sign the ECFA; and with this win, starting with the economy, the Chinese government seeks to eventually politically reunify mainland China and Taiwan?

Indeed, by no means did mainland China interfere recently when Taiwan and Singapore decided to discuss an FTA. For the U.S., this development is also not unexpected. From the point of view of the U.S., the purpose of an FTA is to lower tariffs and eliminate trade barriers, and that the ECFA “aids in realizing this goal” is also an important reason for the U.S.’s support of the ECFA. However, from the observations of the author, more important is the fact that the United States is using this to build a modern version of the “Trojan horse”!

For a country as enormous as China, the price of subjugation by American military force is too high and the American people will not allow it. For the last 60 years, beginning with Dean Acheson, the U.S. has engaged in a policy to peacefully change and develop Red China. At the time, they put their hopes in “individual liberalists,” but after half a century, the so-called “individual liberalist intellectuals” of the mainland were almost completely exterminated by Mao Zedong. Their descendants, successors, and followers were few and scattered, and under high pressure, they found it difficult to form the suitable climate. Therefore, they pinned their hopes on overseas Chinese, especially the Chinese of Hong Kong and Taiwan. Taiwan, with Ma Ying-jeou as the head of the Nationalist Party, is the most ideal and most promising force for changing the politics of the mainland. It is currently working on the ECFA, and then following, a bilateral peace agreement which will encourage Ma Ying-jeou’s Nationalist Party to raise the idea of the “Third United Front” between the Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Naturally, this will allow the various democratic parties of Taiwan to enter mainland Chinese politics, completing the CCP’s long-cherished wish of a reunified China.

As for the entrance of the American “Trojan horse,” it will be precisely the ECFA that the CCP has pushed so strongly, the “bilateral peace agreement” and the “Third United Front”; which is a clever way to gain leverage from the current situation.

Therefore, while the DPP has many misgivings about the ECFA, the U.S. government has a completely different view. From “deep-felt boost in morale” and “aiding in the stability of Asia” to “hoping for continued development,” the U.S. has made the ECFA a precursor to a peace agreement between Taiwan and mainland China. In the past two years, even when complications frequently arose between the two parties, the U.S. has not uttered a word of negative sentiment. Worry has risen from Taiwan itself once in a while, for example, that “the U.S. would be concerned that Taiwan and China are becoming too close.” In reality, the U.S. government has never made such a statement.

Why would the U.S. worry if the two sides grew too close? Because China would unite? It depends on what kind of unification. If in the unified China, the Nationalist Party and the DPP will have abundant political space to talk and act, then for the Western world — with the U.S. as its leader — in the context of current trends and the development of human society, this is undoubtedly an optimistic end. Hence, the United States has repeatedly asserted that the worry isn’t in China’s emergence and strength, but rather in the Nationalist Party discarding Sun Yat-sen’s and the two Chiangs, Chiang Kai-shek’s and Chiang Ching-kuo’s, wishes.

For today’s Taiwan, which lies outside of the People’s Republic of China, yet is not completely independent from China, the most important things to rely on are its way of life and its core values, such as democracy, rule of law, and culture. This is the biggest difference between Taiwan and mainland China, and it is in these ideas that the U.S. and Taiwan have the most confidence. An American expert on the White House notes, “Will the American people wake up one morning and suddenly find that China has missiles stationed in Taitung? Forget about it.” The U.S. is not worried about unification. There is another, more important basis for its easiness with the issue: Ma Ying-jeou is trustworthy and is deeply influenced by Chinese traditional ethics as well as Western concepts of humanity. “No unification, no independence, no war” is his current strategy, with “ultimate reunification” brooding in the background. The U.S., no doubt, has already analyzed the fact that the Chinese people, aside from officials, businessmen, and academics with other vested interests, generally look favorably on Ma Ying-jeou.

*Editor’s note: The quotes in this article, while accurately translated, could not be verified.