Xi's symbolic meeting with Ma is Beijing's way of trying to pre-emptively
constrain the Democratic Progressive Party ahead of its likely victory in
presidential and legislative elections
Decades-long opinion polls show the Taiwanese have never been surer
about their identity. At this point, Beijing has decided to intervene.When Xi Jinping and Ma Ying-jeou shake hands on Saturday in Singapore, it
will be the first time in history that sitting presidents from the People's
Republic of China and the Republic of China will have met each other face to
face, even if they will not address each other as such. The symbolism is rich,
particularly on the PRC side, where the image of a Taiwan returning to the fold
is more powerful than scenes of Xi rubbing shoulders with US President Barack
Obama or being received in state by the queen in Britain. The meeting is
obviously a coup for Ma, a man driven by a keen sense of the Chinese nation and
his personal role in its preservation. It is also great news for Beijing to
serve up at home, with the Global Times pronouncing that "the
Taiwan problem is no longer a problem".
Beyond the warm and fuzzy
state media coverage, the timing of the meeting reveals a lot about the
intentions behind it. We are just two months away from elections in Taiwan that will almost
certainly see the Democratic Progressive Party win the presidency and a
legislative majority for the first time. For Beijing, which suspects DPP
president Tsai Ing-wen's "true intentions" and her capacity to keep
the "secessionist tendencies" of her party's factions in check, it is
an unnerving prospect.
DPP president Tsai Ing-wen currently
enjoys a double-digit lead over KMT rival Eric Chu in presidential election
polls. Photo: ReutersThe last time the DPP
controlled the presidency, despite facing an obstructive Kuomintang/People
First Party majority in parliament, Chen Shui-bian was able to widely cement
the idea of Taiwan's distinctness and separation from the rest of China. Now,
after eight years under a president who is unusually well disposed to the
mainland and, in his first term at least, powerful enough to push through
significant moves towards economic integration, the trends in Taiwanese public
opinion are unpropitious for advocates of closer ties. Decades-long opinion
polls show the Taiwanese have never been surer about their identity, and
identification with Taiwan is unequivocal among the young. At this point,
Beijing has decided to intervene.
The mainland will
frame the Xi-Ma meeting as the embodiment of the 'status quo': friendly
relations, dialogue and partnership, progress moving towards unification
In the short term, the
prospect of Beijing's intervention rescuing the KMT, which has for months been
sleepwalking towards catastrophic electoral defeat, is slim. Although the KMT
recently acted to remove its duly elected presidential nominee, the
unificationist Hung Hsiu-chu, the machinations needed to replace her with
chairman Eric Chu appear to have been a wasted effort. Tarnished by his ties to
Ma and the protracted drama over his decision to run, Chu's poll numbers are
little better than Hung's. Building on historic gains in last November's local
elections, the national campaigns have thus far been plain sailing for the DPP.
Tsai has staked out popular positions on China and the economy, and gave an
accomplished performance on her trip to the US. She currently enjoys a
double-digit lead. Given that Ma's unpopularity is mainly a product of a rush
to embrace China, combined with his opaque decision-making - the sunflower
movement was first and foremost about transparency in politics - it is
difficult to see how a clandestinely arranged surprise meeting with the Chinese
president will help the KMT at the polls.
However, taking a broader
geographical and longer-term view, the meeting serves multiple ends for both
parties. Ma gets his long-cherished milestone and may be able to convert it
into continuing relevance after he steps down. Much more significantly, for the
Communist Party, the meeting will serve to circumscribe what the DPP can do by
enhancing and solidifying "international society's" perception of
what the status quo in cross-strait relations is. Given that it is difficult to
read a newspaper report about Taiwan without seeing the words "renegade
province" or "province of China", one could say that the framing
war has already been won. But the mainland will frame the Xi-Ma meeting as the
embodiment of the "status quo": friendly relations, dialogue and partnership,
progress moving towards unification. The reality is nothing of the sort, but
that matters less than the image and the narrative that will be constructed
around it. The presentation of an "enhanced status quo" complicates
Tsai's position, during the campaign but more importantly after her likely
victory. Constraining the DPP, pre-emptively circumscribing its room for
manoeuvre and limiting the "damage" that a DPP administration could
do to the unification project is the aim of this meeting.
The losers in all this, surprise surprise,
are the Taiwanese people. Photo: ReutersThe losers in all this, surprise surprise, are the Taiwanese people. Yet,
contrary to the reaction of their hyperactive politicised media, Taiwanese
society appears fairly relaxed about it. Indeed, Taiwanese have reacted with
remarkable equanimity considering what is, to many, the galling spectacle of a
reviled leader pursuing his personal goals against the wishes of the
majority, and witnessing an outside power conspire to influence the outcome of
hard-won democratic processes. The "maturity" of this response is a
resounding rebuttal to Chinese, and some of the KMT elite, who complain that
Taiwan's democracy is undermined by the emotional and immature nature of the
people. Despite the exigencies of political competition and the heightened
sense of drama that accompanies Taiwan's hard-fought elections, there is
actually a high degree of consensus on Taiwan's status - functional autonomy
within the framework of the ROC with future endpoints still to be decided.
The majority of Taiwanese
identify themselves as Taiwanese, identify with the Taiwanese form of
democracy, enjoy the freedoms of Taiwanese society and distinguish very clearly
between Taiwan and the PRC. Taiwanese are angry but they also have sufficient
confidence in the robustness of their democracy to let their votes do the
talking. They know that, come January 16, their opportunity will come to
pronounce on Ma and the KMT's eight-year tenure. The worry is that the right to
sanction the KMT will be a pyrrhic victory if Taiwan's future has already been
influenced by something as decidedly undemocratic as an ad hoc meeting between
Mr Xi and Mr Ma.
Jonathan Sullivan is associate professor of
contemporary Chinese studies at the University of Nottingham
This article
appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Damage limitation
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