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 negotiations 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.
Generally speaking, cross-Strait relations would be affected by three factors, which are Taiwan's internal politics, China's internal politics and U.S. concern. U.S. major concern on the cross-Strait relations is that neither China nor Taiwan should takes unilateral action to change the status quo; otherwise it would take action against it. During the Chen Shui-bian administration era, the U.S. sent lots of signals to persuade Taiwan not to suspiciously take unilateral action of changing status quo across the Taiwan Strait. When former President Chen decided to terminate the National Unification Guideline (NUG) and the National Unification Council (NUC) in 2006, which he promised not to change in his first augural address and reaffirmed at the beginning of his second term as president, the U.S. sent a strong signal to urge Taiwan's government to change its policy on termination of NRG and NRC, which might be interpreted as a way of changing the status quo and might cause troubles in the cross-Strait area.
Taiwan finally used the term “cease to apply” and “cease to function” instead of “terminate” to deal with the NUG and NUC issue under the strong pressure from the U.S. State Department. It seemed that the turmoil between Taiwan and the U.S. had passed since Taiwan changed the term, but mutual trust between Taiwan and the U.S. was damaged very much as a result of the event. In the last two years of President Chen's second term, transit through U.S. on trips to visit Taiwan's allies in Central and South America was no longer as convenient or comfortable as it used to be. The NUG and NUC event proves that the U.S. still has a strong influence on Taiwan's policy even without formal diplomatic relations. However, the unhappy time between the U.S and Taiwan seemed to be over after Mr. Ma became the President of ROC.
John Dimitri Negroponte, former Deputy Secretary of State of the United States, visited Beijing in January 2009 and made this point in reference to the cross-Strait situation: “there has been an improvement in that situation, particularly since the election of the new authorities in Taiwan last year, and I expressed welcome for what seems to have been a diminution of cross-Strait tensions since that election and since various initiatives that have been undertaken by the government of the Peoples Republic of China and Taiwan. So I would say there's been an improvement in that situation in the past eight or nine months.”
Negroponte is not the only one in the United States government to give a positive response to the current development of Cross-Strait relations. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State of the United States, remarked on her trip to Asia “what I'm pleased about is the decreased tension across the Taiwan Strait and the increasing cooperation that we've recently seen. We obviously want to support and promote that, and I think that the current Chinese Government and the current government in Taiwan also have that as an objective.”
This kind of welcome remarks about cross-Strait relations also appeared in President Obama's speech during his first state visit to China. When he met with future Chinese leaders at the Town Hall in Shanghai and said that “I am very pleased with the reduction of tensions and the improvement in cross-Straits relations, and it is my deep desire and hope that we will continue to see great improvement between Taiwan and the rest of -- and the People's Republic in resolving many of these issues.” It seems that U.S. concern will not affect cross-Strait relations very much, since the U.S. government so readily welcomes the recent developments of cross-Strait relations. However, Hillary Rodham Clinton's new statement implies that U.S. - China relations might face some bumpers in 2010, which could also influence the future of cross-Strait negotiations.
As Hillary Rodham Clinton embarked on her first diplomatic trip of 2010, she said that relations with China may be entering a rough period, as the United States pledges to sell weapons to Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province, and President Obama plans a meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, over the objections of Beijing, which considers him a separatist. If US-China relations enter a rough period, then cross-Strait relations might be affected by this new trend. It would not be too surprising to see cross-Strait negotiations reach a plateau because China would not desire to see U.S. continuously sell arms to Taiwan while the tensions of cross-Strait relations have eased.
When China and Taiwan resumed negotiations in June 2008, both sides set and consented to the “easy and economic issues first, difficult and political issues later” formula for negotiating. The “easy” part means that agreement is easily reached on certain issues that are more or less overlapping with economic issues, because those issues are not so much concerned with sovereignty or high politics. The “difficult” part means that to reach agreement, the two sides need to take more time on certain issues that more or less overlap with political issues. Based on the formula, China and Taiwan have signed twelve agreements in the four Chiang-Chen Talks. The twelve agreements are all related to easy and economic issues. However, this negotiation formula seems to be under challenge by recent events.
Firstly, a group of leading Chinese scholars, who are believed to have a close personal relationship with people in the decision-making circle, came to Taiwan to attend the conference entitled “60 Years of Cross-Strait Relations.” Not only was the one China principle, which is regarded as allowing no breathing room for the Republic of China by the Taiwan side, mentioned a lot by Chinese scholars in the conference, but also political issues. For example, several Chinese scholars emphasized that a peace agreement should be put on the agenda for negotiation and the sooner the better. Scholars' ideas may not necessarily imply government policy direction, but it is not appropriate to consider those Chinese leading scholars' points solely as personal views without any policy implication. If their ideas more or less reflect official views about the political issues, it means that both sides need to take the difficult and political part of negotiations into consideration in the near future. If that is the case, it is no surprise to see that cross-Strait negotiations have reached a plateau.
Secondly, Chen Yunlin, President of the ARATS the Taiwan Strait, also the head of the Chinese negotiation team said that Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) is concerned with many complicated issues and more time is needed to bridge the gap of differences as reported on 14 Jan 2010. He emphasized that if both sides cannot work out a long term mechanism for operating negotiation procedures, ECFA may not be signed in the Fifth Chiang-Chen Talk due to the time limit. To negotiate and sign ECFA in the Fifth Chiang-Chen Talk is one of the consensuses of the Fourth Chiang-Chen Talk, and past experience tells us that should be finished as routine work. ECFA is an economic issue not much related to political affairs, so it should have been considered an easy part; however, it seems to be another story in reality. Chen's remark indicates that even the easy part of negotiations is not so easy to negotiate. This also means that cross-Strait negotiations could have reached a standoff.
According to Chinese government power transition regulation, President Hu of PRC will step down as president in 2013. If he wants to leave a stronger legacy on the cross-Strait relationship for his historical status by the end of his term, to further guarantee Taiwan not drifting away from China or at least remaining politically much closer to China is one of his options. In other words, he probably would like to push cross-Strait negotiations from the easy and economic part into the difficult and political to be able to reach the goal. Taiwan may not want to tangle with Hu according to his agenda. It is quite natural for cross-Strait negotiations to reach an impasse if one side does not want to enter the difficult and political negotiation field as fast as the other side expects.
Cross- strait relations are much concerned with Taiwan internal politics. As understood by many people in or outside of Taiwan, the current opposition party, Democratic Progress Party (DPP), is more or less pro-Taiwan independence, which is different from ruling party, Kuomintang (KMT), whose position is anti-Taiwan independence. Due to the fundamental discrepancy in settling Taiwan's political future with China, cross-Strait relations therefore become a very important party competition issue in Taiwan, which makes it hard for the KMT and DPP to reach a consensus on this
Take the Chiang-Chen Talks as an example, they were held twice in Taiwan. The opposition party mobilized tens of thousands supporters to protest these two Talks on the streets in Taipei and Taichung respectively. The main theme of the street protests were not to give away Taiwan sovereignty to China. As mentioned above, based on the “easy and economic issues first, difficult and political issues later” formula, the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have signed twelve either easy or economic agreements that have nothing to do with sovereignty or political issues. However, the opposition party and its supporters worried that there might be something going on in the negotiation black box, so they sense the need to use street protests as a tool to force the ruling party and negotiation team to publicize detailed information about the Talks in order to check and balance the negotiation process.
Take ECFA as another example, ECFA is more or less the first stage of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which will mean no tariffs or a non tariff barrier for trade between the two partners. If the two entities sign the FTA, both will have to give away some economic rights, such as charging tariffs, in exchange of benefits from the agreement. That is a kind of economic trade-off and has not much implication for sovereignty. However, the opposition party insists that ECFA has something to do with sovereignty that needs to be checked closely. Apart from possibly damaging sovereignty, enormous importation of agriculture goods and cheap labor is likely to happen after singing ECFA which is another reason for the opposition party and its supporters to not be happy to see it in practice.
In the 2009 year-end local city and magistrate elections, some opposition party candidates used anti-ECFA as the main theme of campaign and won the election in southern Taiwan. People might have voted for those candidates for other reasons, but their intention could be easily interpreted as supporting the anti-ECFA idea when anti-ECFA candidates were elected. One election may not have a significant effect on adjusting the negotiation policy for the ruling party. None the less, if the ruling party members feel that they may not gain winning ground for the year-end five municipal city elections from signing ECFA or other agreements with China in 2010, it definitely means that cross-Strait negotiation have reached the deadlock, even though the elections have nothing to do with ECFA.
In conclusion, three factors affecting cross-Strait negotiation seem to be not so much on the positive side for further negotiation. If this trend does not change, then cross-Strait negotiations will likely reach the plateau very soon. This is especially true with the year-end five municipal city elections just at the corner, since these will very much decide what party is the ruling party in 2012. Under the circumstances, no Taiwan party will dare to propose to sign a new agreement with China, if it is not helpful for the election.
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