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Al-Ahram Weekly 2 - 8 September 1999 Issue No. 445 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 2 - 8 September 1999 Issue No. 445
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Focus Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Liberating Taiwan?
By Mariz TadrosTaiwanese President Lee Teng-hui dropped a bombshell on China when he casually told the German radio station, Deutsche Welle, that ties between Beijing and Taipei must be considered as "state-to-state relations or at least special state-to-state relations". Since then, China has declared that it will retain the possibility of literally dropping its own bombs on Taiwan, should the island's administration continue to pursue a separatist line. Lee's two-state theory has infuriated the government in Beijing, which has long held Taiwan to be a province of China, not least because he chose to make his declaration on Deutsche Welle.
The China Daily, a pro-government English language paper, explained that, "Lee deliberately chose German radio to indicate that cross-Straits relations fell into the same model as those between the 'two Germanies'" -- a comparison, the paper said, that was ludicrous since, historically, Taiwan has supposedly always been a part of China. To rub salt into the wound, the Taiwanese administration submitted an official application for membership of the WTO (World Trade Organisation), which -- although it is likely to be refused -- nonetheless emphasises Taiwan's ambitions to statehood.
In retaliation, Beijing launched a full scale media campaign against Lee's government. But beyond the combative language, press commentary has become more like psychological warfare targeting Taiwanese separatism.
Zhu Bangzao, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and director-general for the Information Department, told Al-Ahram Weekly that Chinese "sovereignty and integrity are indivisible... the PLA [People's Liberation Army] will not allow the break-up of the motherland. Lee should realise that the central government has a strong determination to safeguard the sovereignty and unity of the motherland."
Does that mean the use of any military action against Taiwan soon? "We have already reacted and will continue to react," Bangzao said. Will the reaction be of a military nature? It will "include various measures," Bangzao asserted.
Military officials quoted in the Chinese press this month already boasted that the People's Liberation Army could take the island within five days if it wished. Around mid-August, elite PLA units were transferred to the Fujian province facing Taiwan, while thousands of militiamen and reservists, belonging to the 2.5 million-strong Chinese army underwent intensive training. According to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, nearly 10,000 PLA officers and soldiers wrote to the Central Military Commission volunteering to help in the "liberation war" against Taiwan. Bangzao indicated that China would exert efforts to bring about unification through peaceful co-operation. However, he also asserted that "when peaceful unification becomes impossible, we will have to use force to ensure a peaceful settlement. We do not renounce the use of force. It is not directed against the people of Taiwan but against those pro-independence factions and foreign policymakers who want to interfere in the process of reunification."
However, plans for reunification have soured since Lee trumpeted his two-states theory. When Wang Daohan, president of China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan (Arats), sought an explanation for Lee's "separatist remarks" from Koo Chen-fu, head of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) in Taiwan, he received a letter asserting that Lee "fully reflects the will of people in Taiwan." Daohan was scheduled to visit Taiwan in October, but Bangzao said that the visit has been cancelled.
"In recent years there has been some contact between Arats and SEF to bring about closer relations across the straits. However, the announcement of the two-states theory and the insistence of Taiwan's administration on [parity with China] have nullified relations between ARATS and SEF because the One-China principle was the foundation of the relations between [SEF and ARATS]. The Taiwanese authorities must therefore give up the two-states theory and stop actions aimed at splitting the motherland."
But it is not just the Taiwanese authorities that China accuses of splitting the motherland. The US has been censured for supporting Lee's separatist aspirations for a long time. It was on a visit to the US in 1995 that Lee preached the separation of Taiwan from China. Following his speech, the PLA conducted a large-scale military exercise in the Taiwan Straits. Recently, the US Congress agreed to sell a large number of advanced weapons and equipment to Taiwan -- a decision that China insists flagrantly violates previous Sino-US communiqués.
Bangzao insists that the decision particularly violates the communiqué of 17 August 1982, which stipulates that the US government "does not seek to carry out a long term policy of arms sales to Taiwan, that its arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed either in qualitative or quantitative terms the level of those supplied in recent years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the US," and that it intends gradually to reduce the sale of arms to Taiwan, "leading over a period of time, to a final resolution".
Bangzao added that US arms sales to Taiwan "constitute a gross interference in the internal affairs of China and will severely damage relations with the US. We have expressed our strong protest against this action. It is an act that can only be described as perfidious. On the part of China, we are ready to extend and improve relations with the US. But the principles enshrined in the communiqués must be respected, and only when the US does not violate them, can relations be improved. We hope that the US will realise the gravity of its action and the damage it has caused to relations with China, cancel the arms agreement and adopt measures to correct its mistakes."
However, this is a request which the US government is unlikely to meet, especially with the ever louder protests of the anti-Beijing lobby in the American Congress which wants the US to intervene militarily in case China does invade Taiwan.
On a regional level, China also has Japan to contend with. The New Japan-US Defence Guidelines issued last April are believed to also address the question of Taiwan.
"We are much concerned with and opposed to intervention in China's internal affairs through the incorporation of Taiwan in this US-Japanese agreement. We depend on Japan to honour its commitment to the treaty signed between the two countries in 1978...We demand that Japan does not interfere in China's domestic affairs. This is the only way that Japan can remove the doubts and worries of neighbouring countries and ensure peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region," said Bangzao.
But many analysts suggest that China's muscle-flexing is not likely to win Taiwanese hearts. A commentary in the South China Morning Post suggested that "the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] leadership seems oblivious to the fact that its quasi-hysterical reaction to Lee's two-state theory has alienated more and more ordinary Taiwanese, including those who have reservations about their shoot-from-the-hip president."
Although Bangzao believes that "it is the common aspiration of the government and the people across the Straits to see unification", he may be exaggerating. Certainly, members of the business community have heavy investments in the mainland and are therefore anxious not to see their government provoke Beijing. But others fear that China will seek to impose its own political and economic choices on Taiwan. China has already threatened to achieve unification through a "forced marriage" -- a point that Lee is likely to play on in the next presidential elections in March.
Assurances that China will not force its own political system down Taiwanese throats probably would have been much more appreciated than threats of force. Nonetheless, it is also true that China has so far kept its word on upholding the One-China, Two-Systems principle that has maintained Hong Kong's capitalist market system since the end of British colonial rule two years ago -- a formula which China may choose to implement in Taiwan as well.
Bangzao suggested that in the event of unification, Taiwan is likely to enjoy more liberty than Hong Kong. "It will enjoy autonomy over its administrative and executive powers, its judiciary, and its court of final appeal. Taiwan will have its separate foreign policy and will continue to have its army and military, since it is a Chinese army anyway. Taiwan will also be able to send people to work for the central government in China. The central government will not place any restrictions on them... which is far more lenient than in the case of Hong Kong," he pointed out.
However, whether Taiwan will be incorporated as peacefully into China as Hong Kong in 1997 is questionable, if the current state of relations across the straits is to be taken as a sign of things to come.
