Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Cheng Li-wun/Facebook
AN EXCHANGE between the CCP and KMT, framed as paving the way for further cooperation between the two parties, was held earlier this week. This took the form of what was termed a think tank forum.
All eyes are on whether the forum is intended to pave the way for a future meeting between President Xi Jinping of the CCP and KMT chair Cheng Li-wun. Cheng has made no secret of her desire to meet with Xi in her capacity as KMT chair, following suit on previous meetings between Xi and preceding KMT chairs, such as Eric Chu and Hung Hsiu-chu, as well as former president Ma Ying-jeou.
At the forum, the two sides touted cooperation in terms of tourism, economic cooperation, and environmentalism. Taiwanese tour companies were present at the forum, calling for the resumption of cross-strait tourism and a return to the era in which Chinese tour groups were a common sight in Taiwan. Although it is the Chinese government that has halted group tours to Taiwan, Chinese authorities have tried to pin the blame on the Lai administration, as though it were the Lai administration that shut out Chinese tour groups.
Likewise, it is common to hear rhetoric from the KMT and CCP that asserts that Taiwan’s economic–and by extension, political future–lies with China. Even so, concerns are on the rise about Chinese industrial espionage designed to steal away trade secrets that keep the world invested in Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, which global industry is reliant on.
It is newer, however, to hear suggestions that environmentalism is an avenue for cooperation between both sides of the Strait. Even as China has sought to depict itself as an environmental superpower, particularly with the push toward renewables occurring under the ideological framework of “ecological civilization,” the KMT does not seem very interested in the issue of environmentalism. Indeed, one has often seen attacks on renewables from the KMT, with the suggestion that the DPP pushes for green energy development in Taiwan only because of graft from the renewable sector.
Taiwan Affairs Office Director Song Tao and KMT Deputy Chairman Hsiao Hsu-tsen were both present at the forum, emphasizing the need for Taiwan to accept the 1992 Consensus. Song, too, lashed out at the forces of “Taiwanese independence” in Taiwan. Even as comments by KMT chair Cheng Li-wun in the same timeframe suggested that it was premature to speak of reunification, the emphasis by the KMT and CCP at the forum was clearly on the 1992 Consensus as the bedrock for cross-strait peace.
Cheng may be hoping to moderate the image she has since gained for starkly pro-unification views. After all, even as Cheng was the one who originally clamored for a meeting with Xi, such a meeting may potentially alienate the Taiwanese public by reminding them that the KMT fundamentally still holds pro-unification views, and that the party is willing to circumvent democratic institutions to meet with an unelected autocrat who threatens those institutions. Indeed, such a meeting may benefit the DPP, which is expected to otherwise decry the KMT’s actions but, in fact, privately welcome them because they boost the DPP’s electoral odds.
Yet the ball may not be in the KMT’s court about whether to hold such a meeting. After all, it is the CCP that holds the cards here, and it is the CCP that will decide if the meeting takes place or not. This decision will be made on the basis of whether Xi decides that a meeting with Cheng is beneficial or not to the PRC’s designs on Taiwan.
But with a meeting planned between Xi and US President Donald Trump in April, Xi may have more on his plate at the moment, even if Xi did raise the issue in a phone call with Trump this week. Or it may be that Xi realizes that Cheng may not be the best political proxy for the CCP to back in Taiwan at this juncture.
Either way, one notes that the CCP has a way of throwing the KMT under the bus when it comes to the KMT conducting meetings with Chinese government officials under the pretense that this decreases cross-strait tensions. After all, cross-strait exchanges between Taipei and Shanghai under the mayoral administration of Chiang Wan-an were insufficient to prevent Chinese military exercises that took place in late December, never mind the claims by the Chiang mayoral administration that city-based exchanges between the two cities facilitate peace.