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All quiet on the Crawford
front
By Laurence Eyton
TAIPEI - The story is that there is no story. In
that case, many Taipei pundits feel, make one up.
Such has been the result in Taiwan of the
meeting between US President George W Bush and his
Chinese counterpart Jiang Zemin at Bush's ranch in
Crawford, Texas, last week. There appears to have been
nothing said at the meeting that any half-awake observer
of the US-China-Taiwan triangle could not have predicted
beforehand.
Bush made the by-now-ritual
obeisance to the "one China" policy, said that the
United States did not support Taiwan independence and
that there had been no change in US policy toward
Taiwan.
Jiang raised concerns about the quantity
and quality of weapons being sold to Taipei, Bush raised
US concerns about the buildup of Chinese missiles in
Southeast China, and that was all.
It was, at
least as far as Taiwan went, as formulaic as it gets. In
terms of the Taiwan "issue", Crawford appeared to be a
non-event.
That hasn't stopped partisan
bickering in Taipei and endless seminars by Taiwan's
legions of cross-Strait analysts over what Crawford
"meant", with each side trying to spin an interpretation
that suited it.
Taiwan's unificationists crowed
over the "no support for Taiwan independence remarks"
and also noted the strength of Bush's reiteration of the
"one China" policy, saying this showed a new swing away
for the stronger US support for Taiwan that the Bush
administration had previously been showing.
The
independence lobby, knowing that no US president is
likely to endorse independence for Taiwan, were quick to
point out that the ritualistic reaffirmation of the "one
China" principle was also bound up with a statement to
abide by the principles of the Taiwan Relations Act
(TRA), which mandates the sale of US arms to Taiwan for
defensive purposes.
What has been seen as a
long-term trend in Taipei is, in fact, for Bush to
stress the TRA, which is a law of the US, rather than
the three diplomatic communiques agreed between the US
and China in the 1970s and early '80s that have for a
generation been considered the basis for interaction
between the two nations.
Unlike a lot of what
passes for analysis in Taipei, this is not wishful
thinking; the TRA has been winning out over the Three
Communiques in Bush's speeches as a recognized basis for
US-Taiwan interaction. The unanswered question is, Why?
Is it because the communiques refer to a state of
affairs that simply no longer exists? Certainly it is
not the case that "all Chinese on either side of the
Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that
Taiwan is a part of China" as the 1972 Shanghai
communique states. Or is it because Bush has a
legalistic turn of mind and is scrupulously aware that
US law always takes precedence over diplomatic
flapdoodle?
In any case, in Crawford Bush
referred to both the communiques and the TRA.
Prior to the Crawford meeting there had been a
lot of speculation In Taiwan about whether Bush would
make any concessions to Jiang on Taiwan. After all, went
the reasoning of the unificationists, he needs China's
help in the UN vote on Iraq and this is hardly something
that China can feel comfortable about - the threat of
"regime change" even without UN backing is about as
radical a rejection of China's traditional stated stance
of non-interference in the domestic affairs of other
states as one could wish to see.
The
independence lobby was certainly worried that
concessions were in the works. After all, in August Bush
appeared to curry China's favor by labeling the Eastern
Turkestan Islamic Movement a "terrorist organization",
thereby giving carte blanche to China for increased
repression in Xinjiang. it is true that this seemed part
of a quid pro quo for new Chinese restrictions on the
export of weapons technology. But of course China signed
a similar agreement in 1996 and never abided by it.
Then there was a more robust viewpoint that
argued that Jiang would be on the defensive since North
Korea's nuclear-weapons program, the most urgent issue
on the agenda, was a direct result of China's helping
Pakistan to build its bomb.
The end result at
Crawford appeared in fact to be a tacit agreement not to
mention China's role in nuclear proliferation as long as
Jiang was prepared to do something about North Korea.
Taiwan was barely an afterthought.
As
for the Taipei government's reaction to Crawford, it
immediately said that Taiwan's interests had not been
harmed, then reflected on this for two days and said
that nevertheless it was a pity Bush did not come out
more strongly against China's missile buildup.
Strangely, these second thoughts by the Foreign
Ministry pinpoint where the real Taiwan story at the
Crawford meet lies. Because it was unusual for Bush to
come out with quite such boilerplate about no support
for Taiwan independence etc, without adding the rider
that the US insists that all disputes between Taiwan and
China be handled in a peaceful manner. And the mention
of the communiques also struck an usually sour note;
there appeared to be a calculated chilliness in Bush's
remarks.
This was widely ascribed in Taiwan to
the US president's embarrassment over revelations in the
Taiwan media the day before the meeting about Taiwan's
First Lady Wu Shu-chen being searched - in defiance of
protocol - prior to boarding a flight in Washington
during her visit to the United States in mid-September.
It was not the search that was embarrassing, but the
carelessness of Taiwan officials in revealing that
Secretary of State Colin Powell had called Taiwanese
President Chen Shui-bian to apologize - a level of
contact between Taiwan and the US that is not supposed
to exist.
But this reporter thinks there was a
far more important message that Taiwan was supposed to
get and the search issue unfortunately muddied the
waters to the degree that message was lost. The real
story for Taiwan has to do with remarks made by US
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in late
August on a visit to China. At a news conference,
Armitage reiterated that the United States does not
support Taiwan independence. When asked by a reporter
whether this would still hold such a view if the people
of Taiwan decided they wanted to be independent,
Armitage said: "I think the wording is important. By
saying we do not support it is one thing. It's different
from saying that we oppose it."
This remark has
been greeted with delight by the pro-independence
parties - including the ruling Democratic Progressive
Party - and has also been a focus of positive comment
among the pro-independence media as an indication that
the United States puts democratic principles first. It
has been widely understood in Taiwan as a US declaration
that Taiwan's reunification with China is not something
it wants and also as an avowal of support for Taiwanese
self-determination.
In the wake of Chen's
comments earlier in August about a referendum on
independence - also, incidentally, hugely misunderstood
(see Chen's blow for democracy, August
10) - Armitage's comments have even been distorted into
an understanding that the US supports a referendum on
independence for Taiwan as a means of resolving the
Taiwan-China standoff.
This, of course, is as
far from the truth as it possible to get. Anyone who
paid attention to Armitage's further remarks - that "if
people on both sides of the Strait came to an agreeable
solution, then the United States obviously wouldn't
inject ourselves. It's something to be resolved by
people on both sides of the question" - would have
understood that the message is quite clear: the US has
no position on any agreement reached peacefully by China
and Taiwan. Also that there is no US support for any
unilateral move by Taiwan.
Yet this has been
almost entirely ignored in Taiwan, even by the
unificationist opposition, which might have been
expected to read Armitage's comments a little more
painstakingly. As a result there is a myth current in
even well-informed political circles that the United
States is far more supportive of self-determination for
Taiwan than is in fact the case. Bush's chilliness in
Texas might more usefully be understood as a subtle
attempt to correct that mistake.
(©2002 Asia
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