This montage shows Chinese
President Xi Jinping, left (Kyodo), former Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew and
Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou.
There was a
high-profile meeting in Beijing on May 4 between Xi Jinping, the general
secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and China's president, and Eric Chu,
chairman of Taiwan's ruling Chinese Nationalist Party, also known as the
Kuomintang.
The powwow marked the latest in a series of exchanges that the two
political parties have held since 2005, when they ended many years of
confrontation dating back to the civil war between Nationalists and Communists.
Lee Kuan Yew, the former prime minister of Singapore who died
March 23, helped to lay the foundation for the closer ties Beijing and Taipei
now have.
On March 24, upon returning from a one-day trip to
Singapore to pay tribute to the former leader, Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou
eulogized Lee as a great figure who made history.
Ma's quick junket may have struck some as
surprising, given that Singapore and Taiwan have never had diplomatic
relations.
Lee was an ethnic Chinese with a Chinese name. His
great-grandfather was an immigrant from China's Guangdong Province. Lee was
very interested in ethnic Chinese communities.
He hit it off particularly well with Chiang
Ching-kuo, who served as Taiwan's president in the 1970s and 1980s. Lee paid
his first visit to Taiwan in 1973 -- while he was prime minister. By March
2011, he had made 25 trips to the island.
Chiang decided to let Singapore hold military
exercises in Taiwan. Ma had a strong desire to pay homage to Lee in Singapore;
at one time, he was one of Chiang's secretaries and was in charge of exchanges
between Chiang and Lee.
Lee delayed establishing diplomatic relations with
China until 1990 due to his concerns with communism. But he made his first
visit to China in May 1976. Mao Zedong, who was elderly and infirm at the time,
talked with Lee.
Lee made 33 trips to China and had exchanges with
leaders of all generations, including President Xi, who belongs to China's
so-called fifth generation of leaders.
China dispatched Vice President Li Yuanchao, not
President Xi, to attend Lee's state funeral on March 29. China customarily
emphasizes the communist bloc in diplomatic condolence visits.
A Singaporean diplomatic source in Beijing said,
however, that the selection of Vice President Li as China's representative at
the state funeral showed Beijing's full respect for Lee, given China's
political system.
One of Lee's greatest achievements was the role he
played in 1993 getting representatives from Taiwan and China to meet for the
first time.
Chinese nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949
following the civil war with the Communists. Until the 1993 meeting, they had
rejected talks, with each side claiming to be China's legitimate regime.
Lee used his political connections, took the pulse
of Chinese and Taiwanese leaders, then invited the top official of the Straits
Exchange Foundation, a Taiwanese organization promoting better relations with
China, and the head of its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations
Across the Taiwan Straits, to Singapore.
Taipei and Beijing have continued the dialogue that
Lee helped to begin 22 years ago -- as exemplified a few days ago by the
meeting in Beijing between the top leaders from the Chinese Communist Party and
the Kuomintang.
The question here is: What were Lee's views on the
future of cross-strait relations?
Lee's book "One Man's View Of The World,"
a Chinese language-version of which was published in Taiwan last July, reflects
what he really thought about China and Taiwan.
The book portrays Lee as friendly toward China. For
example, he wrote that for 5,000 years, the Chinese people have believed
that the nation can only be secured by a strong central state.
Lee first met Xi in November 2007, at Beijing's
request. In the book, Lee praised Xi as a man of "great breadth,"
comparing the Chinese president to Nelson Mandela. Mandela, South Africa's
first black president, spent many years in jail as a political prisoner; Xi was
forced to work in a farming village during China's Cultural Revolution.
In stark contrast, Lee was cool to Taiwan. He wrote
in the book that Taiwan's reunification with China is only a matter of time and
that Taiwan's future will be decided not by the will of Taiwanese but by
Taiwan's strength in comparison to China's.
Lee Teng-hui, a former Taiwanese president, is the
only key figure on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait who raised questions
about Lee Kuan Yew's achievements when the former Singaporean leader died.
Lee Teng-hui said that his and Lee Kuan Yew's
philosophies greatly differ. Lee Teng-hui, who realized Taiwan's first direct
presidential election in 1996, said his belief in democracy is at odds with Lee
Kuan Yew's belief in "Asian values," which Lee Teng-hui
reportedly described as having their roots in China's dynastic system.
And, certainly, Taiwanese themselves would take
issue with Lee Kuan Yew's stance on reunification being only a matter of time.
In November, voters dealt a crushing blow to Taiwan's pro-China Kuomintang in
islandwide mayoral elections.
And a presidential election is coming up in January.
The pro-independence main opposition Democratic Progressive Party recently
named Tsai Ing-wen, its chairwoman, as its candidate.
When he was in office, Lee Teng-hui gave Tsai the important
role of policy adviser. The Democratic Progressives will seek to return to
power under Tsai, eight years after melting into the opposition.
The Chinese economy, the world's second largest
after the U.S. and a source of power that Beijing has been wielding on the
international stage, is now clearly slowing. The passage of time will not
necessarily favor China over Taiwan.
It is true that Lee Kuan Yew was well-versed in
cross-strait politics. But his matter-of-time prediction may prove to be a
statement of Lee's days more than a foretelling of the future. SHUHEI
YAMADA, Head of Nikkei's China Headquarters
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