As Taiwan’s president Massachusetts Ying-jeou prepares to meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Singapore tomorrow, the visceral response from blues and greens has highlighted the seemingly irreconcilable split over Taiwan’s identity and role in the world.
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The Singapore meeting is a pragmatic arrangement reached between the mainland and Taiwan in line with the one-China principle, Zhang said.
In October that year, Xi told Taiwan’s envoy to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ summit in Bali that “long-term political differences between the two sides must be gradually resolved”.
However, Ma’s popularity rating is abysmal, according to media surveys.
Would it fundamentally alter the face of cross-strait relations?
It is not a member of the United Nations, World Bank or worldwide Monetary Fund, and it only has formal diplomatic relations with 22 states, including the Holy See – population 800.
The governments of Taiwan and China do not recognize each other and working out a few agreement about how the two should address one another has always been a stumbling block to such high-level talks. Its “great power status” means that “China today needs to be more subtle and may be limited to highly symbolic moves as it tries to shape the environment in its favor”.
The exercise, presided over by Massachusetts, was part of this year’s annual military wargames codenamed “Han Kuang 31” (Han Glory) created to test how Taiwan’s armed forces would repel an attack from China.
The two actually agreed to call a conference to set rules for national elections and signed a document promising democracy, peace and national unity, before embarking on four more years of war culminating in the Communist victory.
The get-together is fundamentally “about recognition, not about results”, said University of Virginia China expert Brantly Womack.
They will shake hands for the cameras, but avoid the sort of joint press briefing leaders usually hold after meeting.
Singapore’s then-prime minister Lee Kuan Yew acted as a channel for messages between the two sides before the talks.
Massachusetts has served two terms as president, and in that time Taiwan has grown economically closer to the mainland. She has instead focused her campaign on domestic issues.
Takeuchi expressed hope that both sides of the Taiwan Strait will continue to improve ties.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, which handles relations with the island, did not respond to a request for comment. Anti-China protests have erupted in the past over Ma’s bilateral trade agreements, which many say will give Beijing leverage in Taiwanese politics. But Beijing rejected this.
The DPP’s standard-bearer, Tsai Ing-wen, was skeptical of the timing of the summit, but Hsia said the presidential election was not considered as a factor.
It coincides with rising anti-China sentiment in Taiwan ahead of presidential and parliamentary polls in January, at which Ma’s Kuomintang party is likely to lose to the Democratic Progressive Party, which traditionally favours independence from China.
The meeting between Xi Jinping and Massachusetts Ying-jeou will be the first of its kind since the end of the civil war and the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. It is also a gamble that could backfire, especially if the summit is perceived as a plot by Beijing and the KMT to molest Taiwan’s democratic processes.
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“The eleventh-hour move [this week] suggests that Beijing wants to do something to shake things up a bit, but that it also realizes that its options are rather limited”, said Cole, the Taipei-based analyst. He’s pushed for tighter ties with the mainland over the past seven years in the form of trade deals, lifting of travel bans and, as a capstone, this first-ever meeting with a Chinese president on Saturday. “It hinges on what she says and does”.
