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Some pundits believe that the Chinese Communist Party leadership of the People's Republic of China learned self-restraint after its use of verbal attacks and military intimidation backfired in the March 1996 and March 2000 presidential elections by helping Taiwan-centric Lee Teng-hui of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) and Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party get elected.

Afterwards, Beijing shifted gears by pushing then United States president George W. Bush to pressure the Chen administration when the latter attempted to deepen Taiwan's democracy by introducing citizen referendums, promoting constitutional reforms and abolishing the KMT-era National Unification Guidelines.

However, the PRC has resumed playing sharply divergent tunes on the "Taiwan question" when addressing audiences in Taiwan itself or the world community after the China-friendly KMT administration of President Ma Ying-jeou took office last May.

In his "six-point" New Year's Day address, PRC State Chairman and CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao used sentimental rhetoric to appeal to the so-called to the so-called "Taiwan compatriots" by highlighting an alleged common cultural background and economic necessity for closer cross-strait integration, while PRC Taiwan Affairs Office Director Wang Yi last week held out a carrot of "cautious optimism" on the question of whether Beijing would permit Taiwan to join the World Health Assembly in Geneva in May as an observer.

Echoing the apparent "goodwill" emanating from Beijing, Ma said that his KMT government would soon hold talks with the Chinese side about the WHA accession.

Insiders and outsiders

For outsiders, the above developments would seem to confirm a positive evolution of cross-strait relations that offers hope for "peace" and "more room" for Taiwan's international participation.

Alas, simultaneous with this surface symphony of goodwill came ear-shattering discordant notes from the PRC side itself.

During a visit to Washington last week, PRC Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi reiterated Beijing's hard line during a closed-door luncheon at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) by trumpeting that "we will never compromise our opposition to Taiwan independence, two Chinas, or one China, one Taiwan."

Yang expressed his "hope" that Washington "will honor its commitments prudently and properly handle Taiwan related issues and take concrete actions to support the peaceful development of cross-strait relations" and repeated this instruction during his private conversation with President Barack Obama himself in the White House.

Actually, the smiling faces of Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao and Yang's angry demeanor are two sides of the same coin. Both Hu and Wen combined their anticipation for cross-strait "peace" talks with a rigid insistence on Taipei's prior acceptance of Beijing's "one China principle" before any political negotiations and excluded any possibility of arrangements for Taiwan's international participation that would hint of independent Taiwan or "one Taiwan, one China" or "two Chinas."

When speaking to foreign audiences, PRC officials, such as Yang, invariably refer to "peaceful development" or "new progress" through KMT-CCP cooperation and neglect to note that the precondition for such "cooperation" is Taiwan's surrender of its right of sovereignty.

Although it has been Beijing's long time strategy to present separate faces toward Taiwan and international society, the underlying reality is that the current PRC regime has no intention of making any concessions such as acknowledging the existence of an independent Taiwan or "Republic of China" or accepting the right of Taiwan's 23 million people to make their own free choice on their future.

What is surprising is how both Washington and the Ma administration seem to have been so befuddled by such an obvious "good cop, bad cop" routine and naively believe that Beijing has truly sent messages of "goodwill" to Taiwan.

Indeed, Beijing's "moderate" rhetoric merely aims to push the Ma administration into a political trap on the WHA issue, in which the most likely "solution" is for the PRC to "allow" Taipei to temporarily enjoy observer status but require that Beijing and the WHA Secretariat annually review Taiwan's "performance."

In other words, Taiwan will have to be a "good boy" as defined by the PRC or its WHA observer status will be revoked.

The end result of such a denigrating deal will be to further isolate the KMT government at home, especially if Ma agrees to it without the consent of the Legislative Yuan or the Taiwan citizenry, and thus enhance the KMT's political dependence on the PRC.

Moreover, the more that the Obama administration turns a blind eye to such dynamics and to Beijing's unchanged intention to annex Taiwan, the more voices among the Washington foreign policy establishment will rise in favor of not only "peaceful resolution" of the Taiwan Strait issue but also hint that "unification that is peaceful is also acceptable."

Such discussions should be a wake-up call to both the Obama administration and the rest of the international community to rethink carefully whether they really want today's "democratic Taiwan" to turn into a province of an authoritarian PRC.

from:etaiwannews.com