Have Cross-Strait Negotiations Reached a Plateau?

The two sides of the Taiwan Strait were supposed to sign four agreements in the Fourth Chiang-Chen Talk (the meeting between Chiang Pin-kung, Chairman of Strait Exchange Foundation and Chen Yunlin, President of Association for the Relations Across the Taiwan Strait), but one agreement wasn't signed at the end of the talk. This raises the question about whether cross-Strait negotiation have reached a plateau. If that is not the case, all four of the agreements instead of three should have been signed. This is the first time the two sides did not sign agreements as planned in the past four talks. Therefore, a lot of guesswork focus on whether the honeymoon between President Ma of Republic of China (ROC) and President Hu of People's Republic of China (PRC) is over.

In order to answer the above question, firstly this article reviews the cross-Strait relations as a whole after President Ma took office. Secondly, it tries to explain why one agreement wasn't signed as planned to understand how it will affect the future cross-Strait negotiations. Finally, based on the assessments of the above questions, this article discusses whether cross-Strait negotiations have reached plateau and what hurdles need to be jumped if the two sides want to push negotiations forward........(繼續閱讀)