TAIPEI - When Raymond Burghardt, the chairman of American Institute in Taiwan
(AIT, the de facto United States mission on the island) visited Taiwan this
month, he did not appeal to President Chen Shui-bian's administration to
abandon a controversial plan of holding a referendum on the island's bid for
its United Nations membership in the name "Taiwan" instead of its official
title - the Republic of China.
Instead, Burghardt noted in a press roundtable that Washington wants to ensure
that the outcome of the referendum will neither
block the new president's leadership and flexibility nor be portrayed as a step
toward de-jure independence.
Burghardt's approach, which deviated from that of other US officials in recent
months, may have signaled that Washington has reluctantly decided to change
course after concluding that its efforts to compel Taiwan's ruling party, the
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), to drop the referendum were futile.
Washington now appears willing to "tolerate" the referendum but is hoping to
encourage its failure so that it will not be over-interpreted with expansive
and elaborate statements on what the referendum means.
Some US-based analysts believe that Burghardt's comments reflected a shift in
attitude, prompted by Washington's realization that it could not have high
expectations that Chen would drop the referendum.
Bonnie Glaser, senior associate at the Washington-based Center for Strategic
and International Studies, said she sensed that Washington had shifted to
acceptance of the referendum after a meeting with a senior US official a few
weeks ago.
The view is echoed by Richard Bush, former chairman of the AIT and director of
the Washington-based Brookings Institution's Center for Northeast Asian Policy
Study. "The attitude [of Washington] has been shifting for some time," Bush
said, as the US government has known for a while that the chances were pretty
low that the DPP would abandon the referendum.
"So why should we have much expectation? If the DPP did drop it, that would be
great. But I don't think we had our hopes up," he said.
Claiming that he was fighting for Taiwan's future, Chen proposed in May a
referendum on "joining the United Nations using the name 'Taiwan' " to be held
concurrently with the presidential election in March 2008. He further fueled
the idea by writing a letter to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in
July asking him to consider admitting Taiwan to the world body as a full
member.
Partly as a reaction to Beijing's repeated expressions of concern and anxiety,
US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack urged Chen "to exercise leadership
by rejecting such a proposed referendum" in a news briefing on June 19.
Then, deputy Secretary of State Department John Negroponte said in an interview
with Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV on August 27, "We oppose the notion of that
kind of a referendum because we see that as a step towards the declaration -
towards a declaration of independence of Taiwan, towards an alteration of the
status quo."
Days later, Dennis Wilder, the National Security Council's senior director for
East Asian Affairs, said it was "a little bit perplexing as to why [the
referendum] would be useful", while describing the Republic of China, Taiwan's
official title, as "an issue undecided".
None of the remarks deterred Chen and the DPP administration from holding the
referendum. Chen, furthermore, has offered some broad interpretations of the
referendum's significance, saying it would give Taiwanese voters a chance to
reject unification with China and would force Washington to reconsider its
"one-China" policy. Beijing raised concerns over those interpretations and
pressured Washington to straighten them out.
In response to Washington's criticism, Chen has recently argued that he would
neither change the status quo nor declare independence, and contended that the
referendum would preserve rather than upset the status quo across the Taiwan
Strait.
He also reiterated these assurances to Burghardt recently, but with his record
and lack of credibility in the US, few officials take his word seriously, and
the assurances have done little to diminish Washington's anxiety.
"For Chen Shui-bian to say he won't declare independence may not be
particularly comforting because there are other things that he might say that
Beijing would regard as the functional equivalent," said Brookings' Bush.
With the previous controversial incidents initiated by Chen, Alan Romberg,
director of the East Asia Program at the Henry L Stimson Center, elaborated,
"Clearly Taipei's aim with the referendum is to get the international community
to accept that Taiwan is a sovereign, independent state, and to force the PRC
[People's Republic of China] to live with that."
Washington's concerns have resulted from Beijing's successful lobbying effort
and its relatively accurate forecasts of Chen's tactics to Washington. China
opted for this indirect method of pressuring Taiwan in recognition, based on
past experience, that directly interfering in Taiwan's affairs would only
backfire.
In this year alone, China's Taiwan Affairs Office director Chen Yunlin paid two
visits to Washington, while his deputy Sun Yafu has also made frequent visits
there. In the latest high-level meeting on November 28, Chinese Foreign
Minister Yang Jiechi tried to urge condemnation of Taiwan from a higher level,
such as from US President George W Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice.
Beijing has told Washington repeatedly that Chen would use the outcome of the
referendum as a legal basis to declare de-jure independence between March and
May, when Chen's second and final term in office ends. Some Beijing-based
academics, however, believe that even if the referendum passes, it will go
nowhere in the face of China's diplomatic power.
"We could simply initiate a round of international denunciation of the
passage," said Lu Xiaoheng, a Beijing-based Taiwan affairs analyst. "If Beijing
means to invade Taiwan, Beijing would do it without even talking about it."
Beijing's unpredictability toward Taiwan, therefore, is the main source of
Washington's anxiety, despite the belief that Beijing has yet to reach any
conclusion on the likely scenarios.
Washington, meanwhile, has chosen to disclose its concerns directly to Taiwan's
voters, to lean slightly toward the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), and to take an
interest in the voting process, hoping to lower turnout to below the 50% of
eligible voters needed for the referendum to be valid. It has also focused on
how the referendum's passage would be interpreted legally.
The KMT is insisting on a "two-step" voting process where ballots for the
referendums would be collected and cast only after voters had cast ballots in
the presidential election. It believes the "two-step" process, which was
rejected by the Central Election Commission, would likely lower turnout for the
referendum. In 2004, two referendum questions held concurrently with a bitterly
contested presidential election failed to reach the 50% turnout threshold.
In a close-door meeting between Burghardt and KMT vice president candidate
Vincent Siew during Burghardt's visit, the two reportedly discussed ways to
block the referendum's passage. After the classified minutes of the meeting
were leaked, the DPP and Chen accused the KMT of selling out Taiwan's
interests. Others argued that Washington was again interfering in Taiwan's
domestic politics.
Harvey Feldman, retired senior official and senior research fellow at the
Heritage Foundation, recalling the tactic of modifying the then KMT
administration's harsh action taken against dissidents by threatening to delay
arms requests to Congress, acknowledged that interfering in Taiwan's domestic
politics has been a regular practice of Washington and defended it. "So as far
as the Bush administration - and I think most in Congress - are concerned, this
is not interfering in something which is solely a domestic Taiwan issue," he
said.
This is not the first time that Washington has shifted its attitude on a
referendum being held in Taiwan. In 2003, after intensive back-door
communication and numerous public statements, Washington abandoned its drive to
stop Taiwan from holding its first-ever referendum. At the same time, it
reiterated its opposition to the so-called defensive referendum that it
believed would raise tensions across the strait.
With the presidential election and referendum still months away, analysts
believe that the future of Taiwan-China relations remains too uncertain to
predict. "I would judge that, like the US, PRC reactions will depend
importantly not only on the fate of the referendum on March 22, but also on
what is said and done in the immediate aftermath by Chen and by the
president-elect," Romberg said.
Ting-I Tsai is a freelance journalist based in Taipei.
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