Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo Credit: KMT/Facebook
THE LAI ADMINISTRATION has moved to expand bans on Taiwanese government officials traveling to China to participate in the annual Straits Forum, traditionally a venue for signaling between the CCP and KMT.
Though bans on attending the Straits Forum previously only applied to public servants working in the central government, the ban will now also apply to public servants working in local governments. Elected officials at high-ranking levels of government, such as city mayors and county magistrates, or individuals working in national security roles, already needed to seek approval before traveling for the Straits Forum.
The Lai administration is broadly moving to tighten laws regulating travel to China, Hong Kong, and Macau for public servants, with the Mainland Affairs Council proposing to require all public servants to seek approval before travel. At the same time, it is not clear if public servants and police officers below a certain threshold will require approval under the new system for travel to China, when previously they only needed approval from the agencies they worked for. Indeed, what is of note about the Lai administration’s expansion of bans is also what appears to be the attempt to create a centralized regulatory authority over approving travel to China.
Even so, it is to be expected that what any centralized regulatory authority–which would be under the Mainland Affairs Council–carries out would be subject to partisan contestation between the pan-Blue and pan-Green camps. This itself could be seen in that the Lai administration has already indicated that it does not intend to approve any travel to the Straits Forum, framed by it as a platform for the United Front.
If this occurs, only members of the KMT who are party officials but do not hold public office will be free to travel to China. The move could, in this sense, be an effort aimed at hitting out at efforts by the KMT to route around the central government and democratically elected institutions of governance to conduct meetings between the KMT and CCP on a party-to-party basis. The most recent high-profile example of when the KMT has engaged in such behavior is the April meeting between KMT chair Cheng Li-wun and Chinese president Xi Jinping, which led to warnings that Cheng was attempting to directly negotiate with China on behalf of Taiwan despite the fact that she holds no public office.
For its part, the KMT is expected to hit out at any such ban. KMT politicians who are now unable to travel to China because of the Lai administration’s refusal to approve travel to the Strait Forum, such as Taitung County magistrate Yao Ching-ling, have already expressed disappointment, when the Strait Forum could have proven an opportunity for dialogue.
The KMT has, after all, traditionally asserted that it is the only party in Taiwanese politics able to communicate with the CCP and, in this way, reduce cross-strait tensions. At the same time, that this is the case is primarily because the CCP refuses to engage with any political party other than the KMT, even when democratically elected by the public–and in spite of that the DPP has made overtures in the past.
The Lai administration would find itself accused of politically suppressing the opposition if it were to prevent trips to China by the highest echelon of KMT politicians who hold public office. Examples include Taipei mayor Chiang Wan-an–who has continued the precedent of city-based exchanges between Taipei and Shanghai begun by his predecessors. This would also be true regarding KMT legislative caucus leader Fu Kun-chi, who has raised eyebrows in the past for efforts to conceal travel to China, and past incidents in which members of Fu’s delegation were detained after crossing the border, but in which Fu apparently did not react.
The Lai administration may feel empowered to hit out at the Strait Forum, in line with controversial actions such as invalidating the residencies of Chinese streamers married to Taiwanese who expressed support for unification between Taiwan and China by force. But its actions will probably be more constrained when it comes to the highest echelon of KMT politicians. Nevertheless, it should also be clear that the Lai administration is attempting to set up red lines for the KMT to cross down the line, as a means of attacking the KMT when it does so.