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Domestic Determinants of Taiwan’s Mainland Policy By Su Chi A paper presented at the Peace Across the Taiwan Strait
Conference, May 23-25, 2002, The relationship across the Taiwan Strait has long been one of the most important issues in the world. However, the relationship has been so rigid and Taipei’s and Beijing’s policies toward each other have been so predictable that for decades they have attracted little attention. It emerged as a contentious policy issue-area and a field of serious academic study only in the late l980s when the peoples (not yet governments) began to interchange in various ways. Only then did the Chinese term for the relationship, liangan guanxi, come into use. And its English translation, cross-Strait relations, came ever later. So did the term for Taipei’s Mainland policy, dalu zengce. All “specialists” in this field are in this sense late-comers because they used to belong to other fields. The new field has thus not accumulated sufficient research findings over the past dozen years. The least satisfying is the question of the domestic linkage of Taiwan’s Mainland policy, for several reasons. First, information is
scanty. For a rapidly democratizing
society, some old habits die hard.
The government continues to treat any information related to the
Mainland with utmost caution and shares only a small proportion with the
people. The government agencies also continues to guard jealously their
“secrets” against one another.
Second, information explodes in the private sector. But what is true may not be printed, and
what is printed (including the quotes) may not be true. Third, due to the
highly volatile nature of Taiwan’s domestic politics in the last decade, any
available information tend to have a relatively short lifespan. These complications thus severely
constrain researchers’ input and output. This paper
represents an initial attempt to venture into this unknown field. I will
begin with a brief sketch of Taiwan’s Mainland policy in its different
stages, followed by a discussion of
the context in which the policy evolved.
The influence of the Ideas, Institutions, and Players moving the policy
will then be explored. Taiwan’s Mainland policy went through several stages since November 2, 1987 when some Taiwan residents (mostly veterans of the civil war) were allowed to visit their relatives in the Mainland. Confusion, experimentation, and improvisation characterized this initial stage of Taipei’s policy. After nearly forty years of separation and confrontation, only a small number of people in Taiwan then had any experience in dealing with the Mainland. Fewer knew how to interact peacefully. The ministry in charge of coordinating and policy-making, the Mainland Affairs Council, was not to be established until January 1991. And its precursor, the Working Group on Mainland Affairs, was only beginning to draft regulations with the hope of injecting some order into the chaos. However, the direction of the policy was unmistakably toward more opening and more contact with the Mainland. Recent disclosures pointed to the onset of a direct, secret channel between then President Lee and the Beijing leadership in 1990 – a channel that preceded and later co-existed at least until 1995 with the “officially unofficial, and unofficially official” channel between the Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF) and the Association of Relations across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS). <1>
The pronouncement of the end of the period of the martial law on April 30, 1991 by President Lee marked the beginning of the second stage. As a declaration, it made two breakthroughs. One, democratization was to begin in earnest as the martial law period was over. Two, the Mainland would no longer be treated as a “rebel group,” but as a “political entity” more or less on an equal footing with the Republic of China on Taiwan. In both senses, the declaration represented a change of paradigm. Henceforth, the Taiwan people could openly visit, trade, marry and otherwise interact with the people on the Mainland without fear of being accused of “aiding the rebels.” And the ROC government would no longer be bound by its past paradigm which prohibited any contact with their counterparts in the People’s Republic of China and could proceed to negotiate over issues of mutual concern. In 1992, during the first encounters of both sides in decades, the SEF and the ARATS haggled over the most difficult issue of “one China,” culminating in a compromise whereby each side would state its own definition of “one China” and then leave the issue aside at that. This compromise, later dubbed “the l992 consensus” led to the meeting of the two venerable Chairmen, Koo Chen-fu and Wang Daohan in Singapore in April 1993, which paved the way for two full years of talks alternating between Taipei and Beijing. <2> In retrospect, this stage is the only period of thaw in the five decades of tension in the cross-Strait relations. The third stage began with President Lee’s visit to the Cornell University in June 1995 and the PRC’s furious reactions to that visit. In rapid succession, the PRC discontinued the SEF/ARATS talks, threatened Taiwan with missile firings and military exercise and demonized Mr. Lee and his government in its domestic and international propaganda. The three agreements (on illegal immigrants, hijackings, and fishing disputes) that were near completion at the time of the Cornell visit remained unsigned to this day. Beijing’s saber-rattling brought in world sympathy for Taiwan and two U.S. aircraft carrier groups to its vicinity. More importantly, it gave Mr. Lee a clear majority in the four-way race for the presidency. The taste of victory was rather short-lived, however. The domestically invincible President soon found his hands bound from the outside. Viewed as a “trouble-maker,” Mr. Lee and his government no longer enjoyed the world (and the US) goodwill. While continuing to cold-shoulder Taipei, to the point of partially denying the existence of the political compromise of 1992, the PRC quickly moved to improve its relations with the US. President Bill Clinton’s remarks about the so-called “three nos” (i.e. the US does not support Taiwan independence; it does not support “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan”; it does not support Taiwan’s membership in any international organizations that require statehood) was especially alarming for those in favor of eventual Taiwan statehood, because it was thought to be foreclosing its preferred option. The heightened tension during this stage even spilled over to the economic and cultural exchanges. The policy of “go slow and be patient”(September 1996) was announced partly with this trend in mind. Under those circumstances, the visit of Mr. Koo to Shanghai and Beijing in October 1998 was more an exercise in damage control than anything else. For President Lee was by then gearing up to break out of the bondage by changing the paradigm itself. The fourth stage spans from July 9, 1999, when Mr. Lee made his remark about the “special state-to-state relationship” to a German radio reporter, to this day. The “special state-to-state relationship” was nothing short of a “new paradigm.” But due to enormous pressures from all sides he had to return to the ROC’s long-standing position about “one China, with respective interpretation,” without implementing any portion of its original design up to the end of his presidential term. However, President Chen has been doing just the opposite since May 20, 2000. He and his administration officials have made no mention of the “special state-to-state relationship” but have, slowly but surely, put into practice the suggestions contained in the yet undisclosed policy study commissioned by President Lee to Dr. Tsai Ing-wen in August 1998. <3> The continuity of the “new paradigm” from Lee to Chen was made possible by three factors. First, the core of the “special state-to-state relationship” study of July 9, 1999 was nearly identical to that of the “Resolution on Taiwan’s Future” of the Democratic Progressive Party passed by the DPP Party Congress on May 8, 1999. <4> For both, “Taiwan is a sovereign country whose name, according to the present Constitution, is the Republic of China.” Hence, “Taiwan”, being a sovereign country, is not a part of China; and the “Republic of China” is being reduced from a sovereign country to merely a label for the sovereign Taiwan. As such, the later President Lee changed, in 1999, the paradigm set by the early President Lee in 1991. And the self-identity of the “Republic of China” was transformed from a sovereign country representing the entire China (1949-1991), to a sovereign country within the historical, geographical and cultural China (1991-1999), to merely a label for the sovereign Taiwan (1999- ). The identity of the “People’s Republic of China “was transformed from a rebel group (1949-1991) to a political entity, “another part of China” more or less equal with Taiwan (1991-1999), to another sovereign country with special relationship with the sovereign Taiwan (1999- ). And the self-identity of “Taiwan” was transformed from the seat of the ROC Government and a model province (1949-1991) to the sovereign ROC, a political entity and also “a part of China (1991-1999), to a sovereign country who still bears the name of the Republic of China (1999-).<5> The fact that the Resolution on Taiwan’s Future was upgraded by the DPP in October 2001 to the level of the Party Charter indicates that, as far as the party members are concerned, this Resolution is equal in importance with the Party Charter which has openly advocated Taiwan Independence. There is no evidence to suggest that there was a secret channel between the framers of Lee and Tsai’s study group and the initiators of the DPP Resolution, even though the timing of their births, July and May of 1999, was curiously close. What seems clear is that the DPP basically inherited the core thinking behind Lee’s “special state-to-state relationship” study. Whether by design or by coincidence, President Chen picked up where President Lee left off. Two other factors helped ensure the continuity of the paradigm. Strong opposition at home and hostile PRC leadership across the Strait made the Chen-Lee alliance, however tacit, a political necessity. Time and again, President Chen has failed to split the Kuomintang-People First Party (PFP) alliance and/or the Kuomintang itself. Time and again, he had to seek the support of Mr. Lee and his TSU (Taiwan Solidarity Union) followers. Consequently, despite occasional invocation of the so-called “new middle road,” Chen had no choice but to follow Lee’s old road. . The third factor had to do with President Chen’s personnel choice. As is now known, nearly all the members of Tsai’s study group, including Tsai herself, were non-KMT members, even though the study was commissioned by the KMT Chairman (Lee Teng-hui) and paid for by the KMT administration (as disclosed recently, a secret fund known to Lee and a few others). After Chen replaced Lee as the President, he retained the services of nearly all the members of Tsai’s group in Mainland Affairs Council, the National Security Council, and other advisory roles where they would implement their own suggestions from first-hand knowledge. As a result, whether by ideology, political necessity or personnel choice, President Chen’s Mainland policy is built on the “later Lee’s” unrealized legacy, which is not only different from the policy of the Chiang Ching-kuo years, but from that of the “early Lee’s” to which the KMT/PFP basically still hold up now. How did the transformations take place? Who and what have influenced the process? These are the questions to be answered below. The Context
Taiwan’s policy toward the Mainland is, generally speaking, shaped by the Beijing factor, the international (especially the US) factor, and the domestic factor. As Taiwan democratizes itself over the years, the domestic factor gains in weight and complexity. Within the domestic context, the Mainland policy has never stood alone. In fact, its evolution has been inextricably intertwined with three other parallel processes: the democratization process beginning in the late 1980s, the desire and pursuit of greater visibility and participation in the family of nations, and the effort to promote continuous economic growth. There are several special features about these four processes. First, three out of the four processes were completely new to Taiwan, even the entire Chinese people. For instance, the entire Chinese people have not experienced anything like democratization during their thousands of years of history. Hence, Taiwan had to experiment on its own, building on the basis of four decades of “guided democracy” in Taiwan, borrowing from the West and Japan, and improvising here and there. The same was true with the opening to the Mainland and the “pragmatic diplomacy.” The confrontation across the Strait and in the international arena has gone on for so long that no one remembered anything else. Everything had to start anew. And everyone had to learn to adjust – rapidly. Secondly, Taiwan did not have the luxury of handling these new-born things one by one, but had to juggle them all at once. What it entailed was that the issues were linked up; emotions flew high; and consensus was difficult to come by. Last but not least, the relationship among the four processes became critical. For example, greater or lesser emphasis on Mainland policy or foreign policy would have very different consequences for the domestic politics and economic growth. The debate on economic issues would most likely have implications for mainland and foreign policies. Hence, over the past dozen of years, the people in Taiwan were doing several things at the same time: adjusting their relations with the outside world, rearranging the domestic order, redistributing power among the elites, and fighting for different policy mix. Among the three other processes, democratization process appears to have exerted the greatest influence on the Mainland policy. As said earlier, the origin of Taiwan’s Mainland policy has often been dated to November 2, 1987 when Taiwan residents were allowed by the government to visit their relatives on the Mainland. That was only two months away from the death of the late President Chiang Ching-kuo (January 13,1988) and the ascendance of Mr. Lee Teng-hui as the President. So, from the very beginning, the Mainland policy has been framed and shaped by the democration process and its built-in transfer of power – from generation to generation, from mainlanders to “native Taiwanese,” and from one political party to another.
Normally, politics is about reallocation of values and power. And democracy is a form of popular participation in this process of reallocation. Yet, different countries tend to develop different types of democracy according to their history and culture. Taiwan is no exception. In Taiwan’s case, three unique features stand out. First, as Table 1 shows, between 1988 and 2002, there has been at least one election each year, except only 1988 and 1999. Table1: Taiwan’s Election（1988～2002）<6>
*In 1990, the President was still elected by the National Assembly, not by the populace. This is because, according to the Constitution, the ROC has four levels of government (central, provincial, county and village) until the end of 1998 and three (minus the provincial) since 1998. Each level has executive and legislative branches. And the central level had had, until 2000, two legislative bodies: the Legislative Yuan (LY) and National Assembly. So, at its “highest” point, Taiwan’s democracy had ten elections. Since each office has different lengths of term (three years for the LY Legislators, six years for the pre-1996 presidency and National Assembly, and four years for the rest), Taiwan’s voters have to go to the voting booth nearly every year to register their preferences. And since Taiwan is relatively small in size, densely populated, and has a highly opinionated population, no election is considered too small and too local to be hotly contested. The high frequency of elections thus tends to permeate the otherwise “rational” policy-making process with a high degree of political content. The emotion-laden Mainland policy is particularly susceptible to this tendency. Second, Taiwan is the only democracy in the world that still uses the single non-transferable vote under Multi-Member-District (SNTV-MMD). This system is conducive to the survival of small parties and/or radical wings of the large parties. It tends to radicalize the campaign debate because one needs perhaps only three percent of the total votes in a large district to win. It also undermines party discipline, because candidates compete not only with members of other parties but with their own comrades. As a result, negative campaigning seems to be a norm, rather than an exception. Rational debate tends to be drowned out by simple sloganeering. Again, the Mainland policy, being at once highly complex, emotional and consequential, has been a prime subject for campaign manipulation. Third and perhaps most important has to do with the nature of the public political debate in Taiwan’s democracy. Theoretically in any democracy, debates could take place on three levels. The highest level is that of boundary and identity of a state. The perennial debate over “reunification” and “independence” in Taiwan is a case in point. The second level is over the political system, such as democracy versus dictatorship, the presidential system versus parliamentary government, etc. During the 1990s, the ROC went through six rounds of constitutional versions, each involving power redistribution among government organs. The third level concerns public policy, such as trade, environmental protection, war and peace, and mainland policy, etc. Most of the mature democracies have resolved the issues on the first and second levels and conduct political debates only on the third level. For instance, the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) had been a subject of heated debate for years before it finally won US congressional passage by a one-vote margin. The debate was never raised to either of the first two levels, however. Canada is a rare exception because of Quebec separatism, but there has been no debate on the systemic level. Some other countries, in the process of democratization, would debate over constitutional arrangements on the systemic level, but there always exists consensus on their status as nation-states. In contrast, Taiwan is experiencing heated debate involving all three levels simultaneously. This is a unique phenomenon. Generally speaking, quasi-religious fervor marks the debate involving the first level. The second and third levels tend to highlight struggles for power and a conflict of interest respectively. An open debate on one level alone is usually sufficient to fuel fierce partisanship among the general public. One can imagine how divisive a debate can be while involving all three levels – state, system and public policy – simultaneously as is now on Taiwan. Here lies the knot of political – and for that matter, Mainland policy - predicament in Taiwan today. In many ways, the ROC’s |