(圖片來源：Underbar dk Wikimedia Commons)
China is getting impatient. It must be, for no sympathetic response it's been eliciting has come from Taipei over the past year.
So Beijing let its unofficial spokesperson on Taiwan affairs urge Taipei to at least say something again on a peace agreement President Ma Ying-jeou said he would like to conclude with China while he was still campaigning for the nation's highest office.
Yu Keli, director of Taiwan studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, came out the other day to openly remind Ma of his campaign promise and warned the time has come to talk about it.
Shortly after Ma's election, U.S. President George W. Bush and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao talked about relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait and were agreed Beijing and Taipei must get negotiations get under way in line with what is known as the one China principle with different interpretations.
That principle was enunciated in an unsigned agreement of 1992 between the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEC) in Taipei and its Chinese opposite agency, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), under which both sides acknowledge there is but one China, whose connotation can individually and orally expressed.
After Ma's inauguration, however, Beijing stopped making any mention of different interpretations and has insisted on the one China, which it interprets as the People's Republic of China, implying Taiwan is a mere part of it. Taipei, of course, cannot accept Beijing's one-sided interpretation. No dialogue is possible.
On the other hand, Beijing has welcomed with open arms Ma's China-friendly Kuomintang government. Negotiations between the SEF and the ARATS started almost immediately as the new administration had been installed and an agreement was signed for both sides to start direct cross-strait charter flights on July 4 last year.
Regular flights are now ferrying thousands of passengers between Taiwan and China. The other two of the three "direct links," postal service and maritime shipping, have been set in place. Beijing has also allowed Chinese citizens to visit Taiwan, kicking off a long-awaited tourism boom.
In the meantime, Beijing has agreed to a diplomatic truce President Ma unilaterally declared. Ma wants to end the increasingly keen competition between Taipei and Beijing in winning diplomatic allies.
Taiwan keeps diplomatic relations with less than 30 countries of the world, all of them small. Taipei wants Beijing to refrain from wooing any of them by promising more economic or financial assistance. None of Taipei's diplomatic friends has defected.
Beijing also ceased to oppose Taipei's participation in the World Health Assembly in Geneva as an observer this past May.
Taiwan had to withdraw from the World Health Organization after its ouster from the United Nations in 1971.
After more than a dozen vain tries, Chinese Taipei was able to take part in the WHA, the decision-making body of the WHO, thanks to Ma's diplomatic truce.China helped Kaohsiung host the 2009 World Games with success. As the global financial crisis grew, China began extending a helping hand to Taiwan.
Beijing allowed Chinese foreign direct investment in Taiwan. It has started providing loans for Taiwan businesses in China caught in the grips of the concomitant credit crunch and is ready to let Taiwan banks open branches on the Chinese mainland to help them. Taiwan is risking the danger of being marginalized economically as a new free trade zone is emerging in Asia. Commonly referred as the Ten-plus-One, the zone comes into being on January 1 next year.
Taiwan isn't included in the free trade bloc, within which China and all ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will collect no import tax. China plans to help Taiwan by signing an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) by early next year.
Much of what China considers its largess to Taiwan has been given by orders of Hu Jintao, who had to outbalance the objection of hawkish members of his collective leadership team. Leaders of the People's Liberation Army, ever prepared to take over Taiwan by force, oppose policies that may make its potential enemy economically strong.
The hawks insist a confidence building mechanism, at least, be set in place before Beijing should try to conclude the peace treaty Hu wants. There's no indication that Taiwan's military is ready for dialogue to prevent an outbreak of hostilities by accident.
On the other hand, Taipei has made no response to Beijing's peace overture. President Ma avoids touching on eventual unification, which is sanctified in the Guidelines for National Unification and which he proclaimed in the lead-up to the 2008 election is the permanent platform of his Kuomintang. While campaigning, Ma stressed the importance of the peace treaty and expressed desire to sign it with China after his election.
Now he is saying Taipei won't talk on political issues with Beijing during his current term and he may start talking about them if he is re-elected in 2012. By then Hu Jintao has to retire as president as well as general-secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
The easiest way to make sure that Beijing's patience does not snap anytime soon is to reaffirm the ultimate purpose Taiwan wishes to achieve by the implementation of the guidelines, adopted by the National Unification Council President Lee Teng-hui created in 1990.
President Chen Shui-bian made the council "cease to function" and the guidelines "cease to apply" in 2005, heightening tensions across the Strait. Chen claimed victory by "factually terminating the council," despite the strong objection of Uncle Sam who regarded the termination as the reneging of a presidential promise made on his inauguration in 2000 and 2004.
All President Ma has to do is to make the council function and the guidelines apply again. It may meet with opposition of a minority of pro-independence activists in Taiwan whom he doesn't want to antagonize, but will send a message to Beijing his Chinese opposite number direly needs to go ahead with his plan to conclude the treaty that will ensure a lasting peace between the two sides of the Strait.
（本文刊載於98.08.10 China Post 第8版，本文代表作者個人意見）
李正修
(
11月12日 08:19
)
王順民
(
11月22日 15:13
)
劉新圓
(
2007年10月4日 15:04
)
