Northeast Asia Projects
Trapped: The Difficult Situation Facing President Chen
After the Enactment of the Antisecession Law
Erich C. W. Shih
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Introduction
On the surface, Cross-Strait relations at the
beginning of 2005 appeared to be the most hopeful
in recent years. The two sides agreed to permit
charter flights for the Chinese New Year.
Beijing also dispatched two senior officials to
Taipei to attend the funeral of Koo Chen-fu, senior
adviser to the president and chairman of the
Taiwan Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF).
Amid those hopeful signs, however, the Beijing
leadership enacted the Antisecession Law (ASL).
It dealt a serious blow to the positive momentum
that had been building between the two sides and
made further Cross-Strait progress difficult. The
leaders in Zhong Nan Hai sought to weaken Taiwan
President Chen Shui-bian’s position by engaging
the Kuomintang (KMT).
Chen may still harbor the hope that Taiwan
can somehow manage to distance itself from the
mainland, but the economic integration of the two
seems to make that vision all but impossible to
realize. Since Chen’s political initiatives have
been taken away by the KMT and Beijing, he has
faced the difficult challenge of regaining the initiative
in order to play political chess on his own
terms, whatever the goals of the game may eventually
turn out to be.
The Political Atmosphere Before the Spring Festival
The single most important element that contributed
to the positive political atmosphere at
the beginning of 2005 was President Chen’s reaction
to the 2004 legislative election results.
Chen tried to elevate the level of the debate during
the campaign from traditional, locally oriented
issues to issues of Taiwan’s identity by
becoming personally involved. If the strategy bore
fruit and the Greens won a majority in the legislature,
Chen would become the undisputed political
leader in Taiwan in a situation like that of
U.S. President George W. Bush after the midterm
elections of 2002. In congressional and gubernatorial
campaigns, Bush was widely credited for
displaying unusually strong personal involvement
for a sitting president, which further solidified
the Republican majority at the levels of the central
government and the state governments.
For Chen the legislative election results not
only were considered a disappointment, but they
also were widely interpreted by friend and foe
alike as a major “defeat” for Chen. This was where
President Chen might have temporarily lost his
nerve, balance, and confidence. Instead of taking the blame while
acting as a steadfast leader to
rally the Greens, he uncharacteristically began
to promote the idea of rapprochement, in which
the Bush administration and former President
Lee Teng-hui certainly played a role, even though
the fundamental political landscape had hardly
shifted after 2001.
This approach might have had the immediate
effect of reducing political tensions in Taiwan
and buying Chen time to ponder his next move.
It also, in effect, ceded the initiative on Cross-Strait
issues to the media, the business community,
and the opposition that favored better relations
with the mainland. They exploited the
situation, believing that President Chen was unlikely
to pick up the gauntlet and continue the
fight on certain issues when an atmosphere of
reconciliation permeated the island.
The net result was that Chen Shui-bian had
to endorse and then implement the proposal of
charter flights during the Chinese New Year period
in February—a deal that was initially
brokered by a KMT delegation to Beijing. The
death of senior elder Koo, the respected chairman
of the SEF in early 2005, also provided an
opportunity for Beijing to send two senior officials
to attend Koo’s funeral. The combined effects
of these developments raised many hopes
among observers that Taipei and Beijing would
build on this rare opportunity of positive momentum
and bring the two sides closer together in
the coming year.
China’s Antisecession Law
When Beijing announced in December 2004
that the Chinese National Congress would deliberate
on proposed antisecession legislation, it did
not generate widespread concern in Taiwan. The
feeling of optimism, however, was gradually replaced
by increasing concern after the Spring
Festival period was over. The collective sentiment
in Taiwan toward the law was negative and varied
only in the degree of intensity. The Greens
were angrier than the Blues.
The Chen administration’s response in February
to this development was uncharacteristically
low key, lacking the usual rhetorical
lambasting of the People’s Republic of China
(PRC). It appears the Bush administration’s consistent
calls, both in public and in private, that
Taipei not engage in the “action and reaction
cycle” played a major role in influencing Chen
Shui-bian and preventing the situation from escalating.
There were signs that Chen and his
national security advisers had hoped the Bush
administration would either dissuade Beijing
from passing the law or issue public condemnation
should the previous effort fail. It was widely
believed that Chen intended to make the best
use of the situation by cooperating with Washington
in hopes of improving U.S.–Taiwan relations,
which had been badly strained since late
2003.
The determination to improve bilateral relations
was indeed strong. The Chen administration
announced it would stage a mass rally to
protest the passage of the law on March 26—
roughly two weeks after the law was scheduled
to be passed by the Chinese People’s Congress. It
did so even with the knowledge that the United
States was not going to go beyond what it had
already done vis-à-vis the ASL and after the language
of the draft law was made public in early
March. By planning the rally later in March,
President Chen relinquished the opportunity to
stage the rally first to help to offset the long-planned
mass rally by the Pan Blue on March 19
to protest the shooting incident a year ago, which
the Blues claimed was staged by the Greens to
help Chen win the presidency.
In addition, by withholding the planned response
until hearing what Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice would say on her trip to Beijing
immediately after the ASL was enacted, Chen’s
reactive strategy could show the international
community that Taiwan was the victim of Chinese
aggression, and hence the rally planned on
March 26 could generate more widespread sympathy
for Taiwan. Chen also could use this mass
demonstration to regain the political initiative in Taiwan as
well as to define the nature of the PRC
and Cross-Strait relations in his favor.
Although this may appear to have been a
sound strategy, it cannot alter the fact that the
strategic balance of power between the two has
decidedly shifted in Beijing’s favor. The Chinese
leadership may have misjudged the timing, the
intensity of negative reactions from the international
community, and the opportunity to exploit
the positive momentum within Taiwan by enacting
the ASL. It was, however, an operational blunder,
not a strategic one.
It can be argued that by passing this law
Beijing was finally able to regain the initiative it
had long lost to Taipei and define the nature of
Cross-Strait relations in its own terms. The time
had passed for Taiwan’s leadership—especially former
President Lee Teng-hui, who possesses a bold
vision and the ability to execute brilliant political
maneuvers—to threaten the foundation of Beijing’s
one-China policy. From now on Taipei will
have to react to the framework imposed by the
PRC. Beijing can say goodbye to the days of reacting
to every move made by Taipei. Recent history
has shown that the former Chinese leadership’s
reactions toward Taiwan were generally
ill-conceived, executed abrasively, lacked strategic
clarity, and greatly facilitated the sentiment
for independence among the people on Taiwan.
The KMT Delegation’s Trip to the Mainland
In effect, by enacting the ASL, Beijing accepted
as a fait accompli all the political inroads
that Taiwan’s leadership had been able to make.
Nevertheless, President Chen’s position was
weakened by two subsequent developments.
The first occurred on March 26, the day of
the rally. Hsu Wen-long—a business guru in Taiwan
known for his extensive business investments
on the mainland, his staunch belief in
Taiwan independence, his political contributions
to Presidents Lee and Chen, and his role as a
senior adviser to the president—renounced his
political beliefs in public. Hsu, in a written statement
that appeared in Taiwan’s print media—a
pronouncement many believed had been prepared
by mainland officials—praised President Hu
Jintao, lauded the enactment of the ASL, and
supported “one China,” among other things. His
renouncement had the immediate effect of undercutting
the message the mass rally intended
to deliver. It also served as an indication to many
that Beijing was determined to use its enormous
economic pull on Taiwan to encourage business
leaders to distance themselves from the Greens.
The effect of this development was further
strengthened by the KMT’s decision to send a
delegation to the mainland soon after the March
26 rally. Beijing extended high-level treatment to
the delegation, including not only allowing but
also encouraging extensive media coverage of the
group throughout the duration of its trip. The
delegation also signed a “10-point consensus”
with Beijing that primarily focused on agriculture,
business, and other practical issues. By skillfully
receiving the KMT delegation, which had
embarked on what was essentially a defensive trip
designed to avoid being rendered irrelevant after
President Chen and Chairman James Soong of
the People First party (PFP) forged a cooperative
relationship in principle, Beijing showed
Chen that it could choose with whom in Taiwan
it wants to talk as well as the subject and the
timing of the talks. Moreover, the issues so far
being discussed or floated by the Chinese are
mostly of practical concern to many in Taiwan. A
marginalized Chen might have felt he was being
forced to face a choice of either succumbing to
the Kuomintang/Chinese Communist party
(CCP) alliance, thereby weakening his own perceived
political position by adopting practical
measures that benefit many in Taiwan, or trying
to fight and break out of the two-sided envelopment.
President Chen chose the latter.
The operational strategy and style Chen employed
to extract himself from this political trap
reflected both his personality and the limits of
the resources at his disposal. Unable to take the issue directly
to the Chinese leadership, Chen
chose to direct his administration’s firepower toward
the KMT. First, it was declared that the
so-called 10-point consensus reached by the
KMT delegation on the mainland provided probable
cause for prosecutors to launch a criminal
investigation, for the KMT might have violated
a clause in Taiwan’s penal code that prohibits
unauthorized “treaty signing” with “foreign
government[s].” The print media in Taiwan by
and large gave this a lukewarm response, and the
KMT chose to ignore the charge, which they
claimed was nothing more than a political witchhunt.
Appearing unintimidated, the KMT proceeded
with preparations for KMT Chairman
Lien Chan’s trip to the mainland as a guest of
President Hu.
Unable to gain political traction by threatening
to launch a criminal investigation, Chen
then publicly called on Lien to meet with him
before the latter’s departure for the mainland in
May, ostensibly for the purpose of reaching a consensus
for the good of Taiwan. But Chen’s tone
was considered by many to be overbearing and
condescending, which in general was not inconsistent
with Chen’s character under similar circumstances.
It also made it difficult for the
recipient[s] of the message to swallow the humiliation
and respond positively to the suggestion.
Because Lien’s trip was part of a logical extension
of the KMT’s survival strategy to remain
relevant in a post-Chen–Soon alliance environment,
it was unlikely that Chen’s gesture would
be well received by the intended audience. What
Lien chose to do before departing for the mainland
was to call “Mr.” (not “President”) Chen and
“inform” (not “report to”) him about the trip.
Lian’s and Soong’s Trips to the Mainland
Coinciding with the State Department’s position
that the United States considered Lien’s
trip as a “positive” development was Chen’s declaration
that he was supportive of Lien. Many
in the Green camp, however, took a different
position.
Hundreds of fanatic Green supporters under
the “leadership” of several DPP legislators and a
TV call-in show host flooded the lobby of CKS
Airport before Lien’s planned departure. Lien and
his delegation were able to board the plane without
incident by steering the motorcade away from
the demonstrators. But in the lobby Green and
Blue supporters—the latter had converged at the
airport to “counter” the Greens—engaged in a
number of skirmishes. Some were bloody, but no
fatalities were reported.
Judging from the high profile Lien enjoyed
throughout his trip—augmented by the saturated
and positive coverage provided by the Chinese
media; the special, “no delay” live television transmission
of his speech at Peking University; the
meeting with Hu; and the arguably balanced con-tent
of the CCP–KMT press communiqué—it is
clear the Beijing leadership was determined to
make Lien’s trip a success. Chen was inconsistent
in maintaining a positive tone toward this
development, and the Executive Yuan and the
DPP were critical of it, in contrast to poll results
that showed a majority of the population in Taiwan
saw Lien’s trip as a step in the right direction.
The ways in which Lien conducted himself
before, during, and after the mainland trip created
his reputation as a respectable and selfless
political figure whose goal is to promote Cross-Strait
reconciliation.
Compared to Lien’s trip to the PRC, which
he undertook purely as an opposition leader,
James Soong’s mainland trip was deemed to have
official connotations. It is open knowledge that
Soong tried to become the “Taiwan envoy” on
Cross-Strait issues. After President Chen and
Soong signed the so-called 10-Point Consensus in
February 2005, it was clear the two had forged a
counterintuitive political partnership especially
focused on Cross-Strait relations in which Soong
would play the role of “unofficial” official representing
Chen in an effort to bridge differences
between Taipei and Beijing.
This arrangement offered both Chen and Hu,
especially the former, the opportunity to be creative
without the fear of being set up by the other,
but it also left the door open for Chen to back out
of the deal should he decide to do so, and that is
precisely what happened.
Chen was under pressure from the Deep
Green’s political party, the Taiwan Solidarity
Union (TSU), for betraying the cause of Taiwan
independence. Within Chen’s own DPP, many
constituents and most rank-and-file political figures
were at a loss to understand why Chen suddenly
decided not only to work with Soong but
also to use him to test the water across the strait,
presumably in search of reconciliation at a time
when many Greens still harbored the hope of
eventual de jure independence. In addition, it was
clear that support for the DPP in the upcoming
special election for the National Assembly (NA)
was dropping substantially. Chen, living up to his
political reputation as a perennial flip-flopper,
first began to distance himself from Soong right
before the latter’s trip to the mainland. Then he
decided to participate in several television interviews
in which he attacked Lee Teng-hui and Lien
Chan and accused Soong of disloyalty to the country—
a tactic apparently designed to shore up
voter support on the eve of the election. It proved
to be effective. Soong did not help himself by
working out with Hu a “two-shores, one-China”
formula as a possible foundation for restarting
the Cross-Strait dialogue. Not only Chen but the
Greens and even the KMT rejected it as a minor
step backward from the “one-China, different-interpretations”
formula that the KMT later abbreviated
as the “’92 Consensus” and that Chen
has repeatedly rejected as the basis for restarting
talks with Beijing.
The fact that the DPP did better in the NA
election than had been expected and that the
Greens interpreted the result as a victory over
“China Fever” and a rejection of reciprocating
Beijing’s outreach on practical issues, as well as
the inferred suspicion that the giant pandas to
be sent to Taiwan might be “Trojan Pandas,”
showed that Chen did not wholeheartedly embrace the idea of rapprochement
with Beijing as
a political vision. The pursuit of detente with the
mainland was not an endeavor worth committing
substantial capital to but had become an expendable,
tactical trial balloon that Chen could float
to probe the possibility of a Chen–Hu summit. If
feasible and successful, it could elevate Chen to
the status of Anwar Sadat or Menachem Begin
and give him a shot at the Nobel Peace Prize.
Short-Term Outlook
Hu’s current management of Cross-Strait relations
shows the intention of preventing
Taiwan’s de jure independence and maintaining
the status quo for the medium term. The ultimate
goal is reunification, and the immediate goal
is a relatively stable Cross-Strait environment
that will enable Beijing to concentrate its energy
and resources on a “peaceful rise.” Hu demonstrated
tactical acuteness by initiating talks with
the KMT, which made the New Year charter
flights a reality. He also seized an opportunity to
dispatch two senior officials to Taipei for senior
elder Koo’s funeral. By enacting the ASL and
pursuing his strategic objective at the cost of a
not insignificant tactical setback in the forms of
international condemnation and Taiwan’s political
backlash, Hu also showed his political tenacity.
The fundamental dilemma facing President
Chen is this: What Beijing has proposed and the
people of Taiwan by and large have responded to
warmly can be considered a win–win arrangement
for people on both sides of the strait. On a government-
to-government level, however, it appears
so far that Beijing does not have an immediate
plan to pursue dialogue with Chen. Even though
this pattern is similar to what happened during
Chen’s first term, the overall momentum within
Taiwan to push for practical progress with the
mainland has become much stronger, to the degree
that Chen has difficulty containing it. Chen
managed to drive a deep wedge between the KMT
and the PFP by supposedly agreeing to cooperate
with James Soong on Cross-Strait issues, therefore rendering the
Pan-Blue alliance ineffective.
In the grand scheme of things, however,
the Chinese were able to weaken Chen’s bargaining
positions by enacting the ASL and choosing
to cooperate with the KMT.
On the road toward the next chapter in
Cross-Strait interaction, Chen will no longer be
the man behind the wheel. He will be a passenger.
Under these circumstances, it does not matter
what Chen’s ultimate plans or vision for Taiwan
might be—whether de jure independence or
detente with Beijing. Certainly, the Chen administration
can and will deal with the Chinese on
various issues, but participating in such interactions
will reflect Beijing’s decision—which is its,
not Taiwan’s, to make. When dealing with Taipei
the Bush administration recognized that President
Chen is almost impervious to persuasion but
is very sensitive to pressure backed by immense
raw power. On Cross-Strait relations, Chen can
still withstand pressures from inside and out
while deploying various countermeasures. Pressure
is mounting by the day. It will be interesting
to see where and how the Chinese leadership will
choose to apply the next wave of pressure on
Chen. By the same token, it will be interesting to
observe whether the Chen administration’s response
will become more sporadic, piecemeal, and
less coherent.
About the Author
Erich Shih is the Washington bureau chief of
TVBS Network in Taiwan. In this position he
covers and provides commentaries on political
issues such as American foreign policy, the war
on terrorism, and U.S. presidential elections, as
well as regional diplomatic and security issues
involving the United States and Northeast Asian
countries. Before assuming his current position
in July 2004, Mr. Shih was the visiting fellow at
the Brookings Institution’s Center for Northeast
Asian Policy Studies (2003–2004) and the Washington
correspondent for TVBS (1996–2003).
Among the articles he has published are “The
Conduct of U.S.–Taiwan Relations, 2000–2004”;
“Taiwan’s Military Transformation: Evolution
and Implications”; and “Chen’s Inaugural
Speech: Pleasing Washington but Troubles Still
Ahead.”
