|
|
|
|
China's law preempts Taiwan
independence
By Jianwei
Wang
The
US administration of President George
W Bush is now famous, or infamous, for its "preemption
doctrine", which warns rogue states against
providing safe haven for international terrorists
or possessing weapons of mass destruction.
The Chinese government is following in
the United States' footsteps when it comes to Taiwan. The
difference is that at least for now, Beijing's
instrument for preemption is not force or
firepower, but rather the law.
Last
Wednesday, the Standing Committee of China's main
legislative body, the National People's Congress
(NPC), voted unanimously to submit the draft of an
anti-secession law to the full NPC plenum this
coming March. The law is aimed at preventing
Taiwan from formally declaring political
independence one way or another. For many
cross-strait observers, Beijing's timing in widely
publicize this legislation is puzzling. After all,
the opposition pan-blue camp, which is leaning
toward recognizing the "one China" principle, just
unexpectedly made significant gains in the recent
legislative election. It was anticipated that
Beijing would feel relieved by the pan-blues' good
showing, and consequently would seize the
opportunity to soften its policy and even offer an
olive branch to Taiwan.
Such a scenario,
however, apparently is not in China's plans.
Beijing took little comfort in the parliamentary
election result, immediately moving to make public
its consideration of the anti-secession law, the
subject of much speculation. In a broad sense,
Beijing's move represents a significant change in
its strategic mindset in dealing with Taiwan. In
the past, Beijing took an approach of "striking
only after the enemy has struck", a typical
reaction to the ever-changing Taiwan political
landscape. Among the Chinese elite, Taiwan affairs
officials were often criticized as lacking in
initiatives and responding to Taiwanese President
Chen Shui-bian and and his Democratic Progressive
Party's (DPP's) dazzling political maneuvers in a
"too little and too late" fashion. After Taiwan's
March presidential election in which the pan-blue
ticket was defeated, Beijing was more determined
to reclaim the initiative in cross-strait
relations by preempting, rather than just reacting
to the anticipated policy changes in Taiwan. A
statement on May 17 by the Taiwan Affairs Office
of the State Council, just before Chen Shui-bian's
inauguration speech, manifested this tactical
adjustment.
In this latest election
Beijing attempted to establish legal benchmarks of
red lines to forestall Chen's declared goal of
passing a new constitution through referendum in
2006 and put it into force in 2008 - in Beijing's
view, this would pave the way for Taiwan's de jure
political independence. A narrow pan-blue victory
in the legislative election is simply not enough
to allow Beijing to sit back and relax when it
comes to the issue of Taiwan independence. Indeed
some Chinese analysts predicted that Chen might
further intensify his campaign of
"de-sinicization". With the pan-blues' inability
to put their own acts together and their tendency
to move closer toward the governing pan-greens'
positions on cross-strait relations for the sake
of political expediency, Beijing can no longer
afford to count on the Nationalist Kuomintang
(KMT) and its ally, the People First Party (PFP),
to halt the DPP's thrust toward political
independence. (Pan-blues are so called because of
the color of the KMT emblem; the pan-greens are so
called because of the color of the DPP emblem.)
The proposed anti-secession law also
indicates a subtle change in Beijing's priority in
its Taiwan policy. For a long time, Beijing's
slogan has been "anti-independence and promotion
of unification" (an du cu tong), as if these
two aspects of the policy could be achieved simultaneously.
Jiang Zemin, who just resigned his
last formal military post in September, attempted several
times when he was president to set up a
timetable for unification. Political reality in
Taiwan, however, forced the new Chinese leadership
to realize that the goal of unification with
Taiwan was unattainable in the short term.
Although the long-term objective of
unification should never be forgotten, the more
immediate and urgent challenge for the Chinese
leadership is to thwart or at least slow down Chen
Shui-bian's schedule for independence, de facto or
de jure. In other words, opposition to
independence does not necessarily mean visible
progress toward unification. For the foreseeable
future, if Taiwan could retain its current status,
so much the better. That is one of the reasons why
the title of the proposed legislation was changed
from the unification law to the anti-secession
law.
It is on the issue of opposing Taiwan
independence that Beijing perceives some common
interest with Washington. Although many Chinese
are still deeply skeptical that the United States
will ever be willing to see a China formally
unified with Taiwan, they are convinced that
Washington does not want to see Taiwan move too
far toward de jure independence. This is not
necessarily because Washington supports Beijing's
long-term goal of unification; rather it is
because Taiwan independence would provoke a
military conflict with China and drag the United
States into a disastrous military confrontation
with Beijing. The US has pledged to defend Taiwan
from military moves by China. The prospect of an
armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait is
particularly undesirable at a time when the United
States is mired in Iraq. That is why President
Bush was reportedly so annoyed by Chen's political
envelope-pushing before the Taiwan presidential
election on Taiwan identity and opposition to
Chinese missiles targeted at the island, which
Beijing considers part of China. Bush has
reportedly developed a personal disdain for the
Taiwanese leader.
In this regard, the
recent comments by senior US State Department
officials on the Taiwan issue certainly please
Chinese leaders. Secretary of State Colin Powell
and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, on
various occasions, more explicitly endorsed the
position that Taiwan is part of China; they showed
more understanding of unification as China's
national aspiration, and expressed limitations of
the US commitment to defend Taiwan, departing from
the traditional strategic ambiguity on these
issues. These remarks, to the extent that they are
a reflection of consensus within the Bush
administration rather than slips of the tongue,
reassure China's leadership that on the
anti-independence issue, the United States and
China share the goal of reining in Chen Shui-bian.
Obviously encouraged by Washington's signals,
Beijing concluded that the current US
preoccupation with Iraq and the Middle East, and
its conflict-averse mentality in the Taiwan Strait
provide a "window of opportunity" for China to
establish its legal threshold to stop Chen before
his pro-Taiwan identity and de-sinicization
crusade reaches a point of no return.
Furthermore, Beijing's preemptive move by
proposing and certainly adopting an anti-secession
law points to a painful realization that the
Taiwan issue is not only a political and military
battle, but also a legal wrangle. Ironically, this
is a result of learning from Washington and
Taipei. In its dealings with China, Washington
often put Beijing on the defensive by evoking the
Taiwan Relations Act, US domestic legislation that
obligates the United States to help Taiwan in case
of a mainland military assault. Beijing has
witnessed with dismay America's diminishing
adherence to the three communiques that defined
the US-China relationship in the early days.
Most US policymakers deem the
domestic Taiwan Relations Act as more important
and binding than the Three Communiques between
China and the United States. The law-authorizing
referendum passed by Taiwan last year also alarmed
Beijing. Although the current referendum law does
not cover issues related to unification or
independence, it could always be amended for that
purpose. In contrast, Beijing has only rhetoric
and policy statements such as "Jiang's Eight
Points" (expressed in a January 1995 speech,
putting forward eight points for reunification of
Taiwan with the mainland) rather than laws.
Another purpose of the anti-secession law,
therefore, is to level the playing field among the
three sides in order to wage this so-called "legal
war" on Taiwan and forestall or prevent moves
toward independence.
Some pundits in
Washington and Taipei jumped the gun in declaring
the anti-secession law to be a provocative action
by China aimed at changing the cross-strait status
quo. In one sense, that is a fair assessment.
However, one should not forget that this is the
logical consequence of Chen Shui-bian's agenda of
"making a new constitution through referendum".
Indeed, crafted discreetly, the anti-secession law
could serve the function of preserving, rather
than disrupting the status quo by creating a new
triangular system of checks and balances, with
each side possessing a legal "lethal weapon" to
punish another's misbehavior. Washington could use
its Taiwan Relations Act to deter the mainland's
unprovoked use of force against Taiwan. Beijing
could invoke the anti-secession law to prevent
Taiwan from slipping out of hand. And finally
Taipei could use the referendum law as a last
resort to legalize the separation from China if
Beijing treats the Taiwanese people too harshly.
Thus a fragile but viable status quo might be
sustained in the Taiwan Strait for some time to
come. While this is not ideal, for the present it
nevertheless is in the interests of all three
parties involved.
Jianwei Wang
is a professor and chair of the Political Science
Department, University of Wisconsin at Stevens
Point. He is also a senior research associate at
the Shanghai Institute of American Studies and
Shanghai Center for RimPac Strategic and
International Studies. He is the author of
Limited Adversaries: Sino-American Mutual
Images in the Post-Cold War Era (Oxford
University Press, 2000). He can be reached at j2wang@uwsp.edu.
(Copyright
2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2004 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
Asian Sex Gazette China Sex News
|
|
|
