DPP
swallows pride, hooks up with
CCP By Jens Kastner
TAIPEI - Acting as an icebreaker to the
traditionally very testy relations between Beijing
and Taiwan's anti-unification Democratic
Progressive Party, former Taiwanese premier and
DPP heavyweight Frank Hsieh Chang-ting on Monday
wrapped up a high-profile - though labeled by
himself as "apolitical" - five-day trip to
mainland China, making him the highest-ranking DPP
figure ever to cross the Taiwan Strait.
That Hsieh has been wined and dined by top
mainland officials was hardly surprising, as his
move is certain to be to the profound benefit of
two political figures. While Chinese President Hu
Jintao is steeled against domestic criticism
before his retirement, Hsieh has made himself a
nearly indispensable Taiwanese opposition leader.
But it is much less clear how whatever the
DPP might gain from
Taiwan's moderate voters
who appreciate closer ties with Beijing will
eventually compare with what the party loses by
turning away from its hardcore independence
supporters.
'Family reunion' The
two sides of the Taiwan Strait were pretty much
constantly on the brink of war from 2000 to 2008
when the DPP was in power on the island. But in
recent years DPP officials, just like their
domestic rivals in the Kuomintang (KMT), have been
visiting the mainland in droves. While on the
island, DPP city councilors, mayors and petty
chiefs of districts and boroughs might argue
vociferously against cross-strait rapprochement,
when on the mainland, they are said to look after
their families' lucrative businesses, invest in
the stock markets and establish a firm foothold in
the booming property market. But none of these
"fact-finding" trips, as they are often justified,
has produced nearly as much media hype as Frank
Hsieh's recent visit to the mainland.
On
the five-day trip that took him to Xiamen in
Fujian province and to Beijing, Hsieh and his
entourage paid tribute to his ancestors' graves
and met with elite think-tanks, as well as top
bureaucrats and Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
officials. On the illustrious list of Hsieh's
hosts were State Councilor Dai Bingguo, Chen
Yunlin, chairman of the Association for Relations
across the Taiwan Straits, and Wang Yi, director
of the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, among
others.
"That Brother Chang-ting came
today is an important step to solve cross-strait
differences," said Yu Keli, head of the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Taiwan
Studies. "And we also welcome all other DPP
members to come to the mainland in their private
capacities for exchanges."
That the
mainland side rolled out the red carpet
particularly enthusiastically for Hsieh had to do
with his political stance, which is
extraordinarily Beijing-friendly for a DPP
official. Because straying from the DPP's official
line, which sees the Republic of China (ROC) as a
foreign regime imposed on Taiwan by the retreating
KMT troops after the Chinese Civil War, he calls
on the party to recognize the ROC's legitimacy
formally, thereby through the back door
acknowledging that Taiwan is indeed part of China.
In the run-up to Taiwan's last
presidential and legislative elections in January,
opinion polls stubbornly presented the incumbent
President Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT and his main
challenger, the DPP's Tsai Ing-wen, as being tied
in a head-to-head race. It wasn't until Ma's
campaign strategy abruptly shifted, telling the
Taiwanese that a DPP win would harm cross-strait
relations and in turn the economy, that Ma
overtook Tsai, beating her handsomely. The DPP's
long post-election soul-searching process
delivered a nearly uniform verdict: Tsai had
failed to show the electorate that meaningful
DPP-CCP communication channels had been
established. Hsieh's trip aimed at correcting just
that.
Observers agree that such a trick is
necessary if the DPP ever wants to regain power.
But its two most prominent members, who both are
ambitious to run as the party's contender in the
2016 presidential elections, party chairman Su
Tseng-chang and his predecessor Tsai, look on
Hsieh's advance with a good portion of suspicion.
"Su and Tsai aren't pleased but cannot
stop him. They also want to reconcile with the CCP
but don't know how and when," Chen In-chin, a
professor at Taiwan's National Central
University's Graduate Institute of Law and
Government, told Asia Times Online. "While Hsieh
has already been an important figure within the
DPP, he becomes even more important through this
trip."
Chen added that it was not yet
clear whether Hsieh wanted to position himself to
become the party's presidential contender or if he
was satisfied with the role of kingmaker. But if
he were to opt for the latter, it would most
likely come to the benefit of Tsai, "as she can
offer him more goodies", according to Chen.
Cushions for Hu's departure Hu
Jintao is scheduled to retire from his
presidential post at the CCP's 18th National
Congress, to be held in early November. However,
if he, as widely expected, is to stay on for at
least another two years as the chairman of the
very important Central Military Commission (CMC),
he and his faction will still have to conduct many
attritional negotiations with the people around
his presidential successor Xi Jinping. That the
outcome of Beijing's power struggles can easily be
a matter of life and death was recently once again
impressively illustrated by the high-profile
downfall of CCP shooting star Bo Xilai.
In
Hu's case, the outgoing president has reasons to
be concerned with how his political legacy will be
reviewed by future party leaders and people. In
the past decade under his leadership, China's
economy has made remarkable progress, but many
serious problems have become even more acute, such
as official corruption, social injustice, a
widening wealth gap and an irrational economic
structure. Even before his retirement, his failure
to address such problems is being discussed and
criticized, openly or privately, inside China.
Many may see Hu's hallmark "soft-handed"
approach toward Taiwan, which with an
unprecedented outreach to all elements of
Taiwanese society has produced the spectacularly
improving cross-strait ties of late, as his one
major achievement. But to some in the CCP, and in
particular the powerful faction of Hu's
predecessor Jiang Zemin, the way Hu has been
handling the Taiwan issue is too slow in producing
results, as the prospect of eventual unification
is still nowhere to be seen on the horizon.
"Hu can say his policy is much better than
Jiang's [who in the 1990s mainly placed his bets
on military intimidation] if the DPP-CCP relations
improve," Professor Chen said. "For the closer
these ties, the more leverage Beijing gains to
influence Taiwan's domestic politics."
Also, when taking into account that
President Ma's somewhat clumsy governing style
could well cost the KMT the next elections,
hedging tools are clearly needed from Beijing's
perspective. Ma, whose approval ratings stand at
around a dismal 17%, blunders frequently, the last
time in late September when his newly hand-picked
top official in charge of cross-strait relations,
Mainland Affairs Council Minister Wang Yu-chi, was
caught by DPP lawmakers only being able to
identify the photographs of two of the nine
members of the CCP's all-important Politburo
Standing Committee.
On his landmark trip,
Hsieh had in his luggage a small present for the
CCP and affiliated academia in form of the
catchphrase "constitutional consensus". The major
hindrance to cross-strait exchanges has always
been that the two sides do not formally recognize
each other's existence, let alone legitimacy, but
as Beijing made it clear that it was not going to
move in the slightest in this regard, it was up to
Taiwan's political caste to churn out ever newer
concepts that in Beijing's eyes could pave the way
for unification but to the generally very
unification-wary Taiwanese majority actually
signify quite the opposite.
Examples of
slogans so cryptic that not even the very
politically versed among the Taiwanese could
easily grasp what they actually mean are abundant.
There is the "1992 consensus", the "agreeing to
disagree", "one country, two areas" as well as the
"one country, two cities", "constitutional one
China", "one constitution, two interpretations"
and "constitutional consensus", the latter four of
which apparently being Hsieh's brainchildren.
Behind all this stands the idea that Taiwan is
indeed a part of China that nonetheless is not of
the People's Republic of China, a notion a
significant part of the Taiwanese population, as
well as the DPP, has so far rejected.
As
Hsieh visited the mainland in his private
capacity, he did not speak for the DPP, but if the
party as a result of his trip agrees on taking his
direction, those Taiwanese who do not want to see
unification at any time or under any circumstances
will likely turn their backs on the DPP. And who
the beneficiary will be under such a scenario is
clear.
"If the DPP gives up on
independence, it's good for the Taiwan Solidarity
Union [TSU], as the population's political
attitudes are unlikely to change easily in their
essence," Chen said. He added that this phenomenon
became very apparent in the last elections when
the staunchly anti-Beijing fringe party
unexpectedly managed to become a credible third
player in Taiwanese government.
"Many
pro-independence voters did not trust Tsai, and
that's why the TSU pocketed an astonishing 9% in
the legislative elections," Chen said.
Jens Kastner is a Taipei-based
journalist.
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