Editorial»
Tension across the Taiwan Strait
DEC 17 - Much angry rhetoric has been exchanged between Taiwan, on the one hand, and, China and the United States, on the other triggered by Taiwan President Chen Shuibian’s insistence that, come March 20, 2004, he would oversee a referendum asking voters to demand that China remove hundreds of missiles aimed at Taiwan.
REFERENDUM
The “anti-war, anti-missile” referendum, Chen argues, is defensive because of the nearly 500 missiles that China is pointing at Taiwan. Significantly, Chen has stuck to his guns despite the China’s outpouring of wrath and strong criticism by the United States to which Taiwan has crucial defence linkages. His latest reiteration came on Saturday in the wake of his confirmation as the official candidate of his party in the March 20, 2004 presidential election to which the referendum will run alongside.
That Chen’s repeated calls for the controversial referendum are an integral part of his re-election campaign is pretty transparent, even at this distance. In fact, as opposition Kuomingtang (KMT) chairman, Lien Chan, charged in an interview to the New York Times, Chen is “misusing” the referendum mechanism as a tool “to boost his own campaign by provoking China. “Chen is prioritizing his own victory over national security. This irresponsible behaviour of his has escalated tension across the Taiwan Strait.”
As news reports have it, Chen intends to hold another referendum in 2006 on a new constitution which both Beijing and Washington fear would eventually lead to a vote on Taiwan’s formal independence from China. Furthermore, it would seem that Chen’s game plan, provocatively if naively, envisages that the new constitution would come into effect in 2008, the very year that Beijing will host the Olympics.
Of course, no serious student of international relations would bet that Beijing would hold the Olympics “at the cost of territorial integrity,” as one Chinese international law expert was quoted to have stated in China Daily. Be that as it may, a measure of Chen’s brinkmanship can be gauged from the fact that he has even gone to the extent of leaking military secrets, as indeed an MP for the opposition People’s First Party, has charged.
The lawmaker in question, Lin Yu-fang, was responding to Chen’s publicly pinpointing the numbers and locations of missiles said to be aimed at Taiwan from the Chinese mainland, totaling 496, in bases within a 600-km radius of Taiwan. As per Chen’s disclosure: China has 96 missiles each in Leping and Ganxian of Jiangxi province, Meizhou of Guangdong province as well as 144 in Yongan and 64 in Xianyou of Fujian province.
CHINESE/AMERICAN REACTION
Predictably, China’s reaction to Chen’s repeated threats on the referendum has been sharp and swift since Beijing considers it the thin edge of a wedge to push for independence of Taiwan which Beijing rightly regards as a Chinese province. As history will bear out, it has been governed separately since 1949 when China came under the control of the Communist Party of China under the leadership of Mao Zedong.
Until quite recently, Taiwan was governed by the KMT which, following the defeat of its Army to the People’s Liberation Army on the mainland, fled and set up shop across the Taiwan Strait. The Chinese civil war had pitched the Communists under Mao and the Nationalists, or the KMT, under Chiang Kai-shek.
In New York, two days after Chen announced he would hold the said referendum, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, as per Xinhua, warned Beijing would not allow Taiwan to use democratic aspirations as a cover for separatism. He said that he understood “the aspiration of the people in Taiwan for democracy. However, the essence of the problem now is that the separatist forces within the Taiwan authorities attempt to use democracy only as a cover to split Taiwan away from China and this is what we will never tolerate.”
Notably, even before Wen arrived on American shores for a three-day official visit to Washington – his first since assuming his high office last year – the Chinese foreign ministry had warned the United States against sending “wrong signals” to Taiwanese politicians advocating independence from the mainland.
Thus, spokesman Liu Jianchao, as per the ministry’s website, was quoted as emphasising that “American leaders should honour its words.” That was interpreted by Western China watchers as a direct response to US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage’s remarks in Washington that the United States is bound by law “to keep sufficient force in the Asia Pacific area to be able to keep the area calm.
Armitage had noted that the said legislation, the Taiwan Relations Act, also obliges the United States to provide Taiwan with “sufficient defence articles for her self-defence.” Subsequently, however, after Chen’s threat on the referendum, US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in an obvious attempt to pour oil on troubled Sino-American waters, asked reporters in the American capital not to be alarmed about increased signs of Taiwan-China tension, soothingly saying that he was confident that both sides would realise “where their interest lie and will be careful about what they say.”
The most significant moment in the context of heightened tensions across the Taiwan Strait, of course, came when American President George W Bush, with Wen at his side in front of a crackling log fire at the Oval Office, publicly rapped Taiwan over the referendum proposal. His stunning personal rebuke for Chen came couched in these terms: “We oppose any unilateral decision by either China or Taiwan to change the status quo. And the comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally to change the status quo, which we oppose.”
No wonder, then, that the Chinese government was forthright in expressing its appreciation for Bush’s strong, clear-cut opposition to any unilateral moves by Taiwan towards independence. Although Chen has attempted to make political capital of Bush’s comments that he opposed “any use of force against Taiwan”, what deserves attention is that while China may have upped the rhetoric in recent months, threatening war, Wen, in a recent CNN interview, stressed that Beijing would pursue “peaceful reunification” under its “one-country, two systems” policy. He reiterated that in the presence of Kofi Annan at the UN.
ARMS CONTROL TALKS?
How the imbroglio untangles itself remains to be seen. What is worth mulling over, in the meantime, are two considerations. The first is that Sino-American relations, important as they are to Beijing, take second place to its long-time objective of reunification of Taiwan. The second has reference to the suggestion by KMT chairman Lien that Taipei and Beijing follow in the footsteps of the United States and the Soviet Union whose arms reduction talks beginning in 1969 led to peace between the Cold War rivals.
Clearly, if the Taiwan crisis gets out of hand not only would Armageddon ensue but it could lead to a disastrous reversal of China’s carefully nurtured, post-Deng Xiaoping policy of moderation/modernisation the repercussions of which will be felt far and wide, including here in Nepal on Tibet’s southern flank. Chen must thus not be allowed to push the world over the brink. America’s leadership role here is clearly called for. Posted on: 2003-12-17 02:41
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