For the first time in 66 years, the president of mainland China and the president of self-governing Taiwan will meet face to face.
Advertisement
Taiwan, meanwhile, holds the view that the People’s Republic of China is illegitimate.
Mainland China is also looking to boost the slim chances of the KMT in next year’s presidential and legislative elections.
However, ties have improved since President Massachusetts took office in 2008. He has advanced economic ties with the mainland by signing landmark business and certain tourism deals.
However, Ma’s popularity rating is abysmal, according to media surveys. If anything, such ties have highlighted the vast differences between Taiwan and China; support for unification, already modest, has continued to shrink, while support for maintaining the status quo or pursuing eventual independence has grown.
Leaders of the two sides have not met since Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists lost the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communists in 1949 and fled to the island of Taiwan.
Since Taiwan left the United Nations in 1971 and China was admitted to the world body, the island has faced increasing isolation as Beijing sought to limit its worldwide space.
The Communists and the KMT agree there is “one China”, but disagree on the interpretation.
And the one area in which it could provide such assistance to the KMT was on the China “issue”, over which it is perceived to have an advantage over the more “pro-independence” DPP.
Ma, however, defends his China policy as having brought stability to the region. But for China, the civil war is not over as the two sides never signed a ceasefire or peace agreement. He is not a big fan to the present friendly meeting between China and Taiwan’s presidents. People’s Daily Zhang’s remarks that the meeting would be a “milestone” and that it would set a “precedent of direct communication” between the top Chinese and Taiwanese leaders.
“Both sides of the Strait should work towards lowering hostility…” They hope the talks can raise mutual understanding and trust – and perhaps that will happen over a few glasses of Singapore Sling. Political observers say dissatisfaction with the ruling party has less to do with China and more to do with kitchen-table concerns like job opportunities.
The meeting is hailed as a breakthrough in communication between the leaders.
“We want relations across the [Taiwan] Strait to develop in a peaceful and stable direction”, Tsai told a party meeting today. Now the frontrunner, she has rejected the 1992 Consensus, making Beijing nervous. Massachusetts said advance notice had also been provided to the U.S.
But the World Trade Organization clumsily refers to it as the “Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu” – naming the smaller islands under Taipei’s administrative control.
The Chinese President arrived in Singapore today after a visit to Hanoi where he addressed the National Assembly and laid the framework for a “truly trustworthy” relationship with Vietnam.
The presumption is that Xi agreed to meet Massachusetts to demonstrate that China’s belligerence in the South China Sea, which affects Taiwan too, does not mean that Beijing is unreasonable or inflexible. The opposition Democratic Progressive Party said Massachusetts lacked the popular mandate to call such an important meeting and should have consulted with the Taiwanese people instead of planning it in secret. Mr Ma’s office has emphasised no agreements will be signed and no joint statement will be issued.
Or was it a purely a symbolic exercise, perhaps an eleventh-hour desperate act by Beijing to influence the domestic politics of the rowdy democracy it claims as its own and help its embattled ally in Taipei?
Advertisement
Asked if Xi would meet Tsai if she won, the first source with ties to the Chinese leadership said: “Anything is possible”.
