A non-aggression pact is an international treaty between two or more states agreeing to avoid war or armed conflict between them and resolve their disputes through peaceful negotiations. It was a popular form of international agreement in the 1920s and 1930s, but has largely fallen out of use after the Second World War. Some of them are effective. The most famous is the British-Thai Non-Aggression Pact, signed on June 12, 1940.
A similar arrangement, concluded between Taipei and Beijing, may work for the good of all concerned, now that the latter has made it clear all missiles targeting Taiwan can be removed and both sides can negotiate a military mutual confidence-building mechanism to prevent hostilities across the Taiwan Strait. But there is one rather ambiguous sine qua non: Beijing will get negotiations started only after Taiwan accepts a “one China” principle. Of course, Taiwan accepts the one China principle, which former President Chen Shui-bian rejected as the prerequisite to resume dialogue between Taipei and Beijing cut off in 1999. It is the one-China principle with a different interpretation, a tacit agreement known as the consensus of 1992. Under that unsigned agreement, Taipei and Beijing are agreed that there is but one China, whose connotation can be individually and orally expressed. China's President Hu Jintao also made mention of it in a conversation with President George W. Bush, Jr. right after President Ma Ying-jeou was elected in March 2008. Hu's remarks were reported in English but they were deleted from the Chinese version China's official Xinhua news agency released. As there has been no further elaboration by Beijing, a safe guess is that its one China is the People's Republic and Taiwan is a part or a province of that one China. Beijing has forced the United Nations to accept Taiwan as a province of the People's Republic of China. Taipei cannot accept it.
That is the only reason why neither peace accord nor non-aggression pact can be signed between Taiwan and China, for according to international law, any such pact has to be concluded between independent, sovereign states. Taiwan has no objection to the People's Republic being a sovereign, independent state. President Lee Teng-hui ended Taiwan's state of emergency by abolishing the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of Communist Rebellion in 1991 to recognize, though not officially, the People's Republic as a country, not a part of the Republic of China that President Chiang Kai-shek vowed to attack and recover. But Beijing does not accept the Republic of China on Taiwan as a party to such a state-to-state negotiation
Something can be done to get out of this dilemma, however. Why not sign a neutrality pact to renounce war between the two sides of the strait? The people on both sides of the strait are Chinese, and the Chinese do not fight the Chinese. Or at least all Chinese leaders from President Hu on down have gone on the record to renounce a new internecine war. Nobody in Taiwan wants it, either. All that is needed, therefore, is to codify their desire to avoid any armed conflict not between two states but between the people on Taiwan and the people on the mainland of China. For China, the Chinese Communist Party can and should represent the people. The Kuomintang, which is the ruling party, can negotiate the neutrality accord for Taiwan. As a matter of fact, Lien Chan concluded a similar accord with Hu for the two parties at war, while he was on a journey of peace to China in his capacity as chairman of the Kuomintang in 2005. The Hu-Lien truce accord effectively eased the mounting tensions across the strait resulting from Beijing's legislation of an anti-secession law that codifies an automatic invasion of Taiwan, if independence were declared in Taipei or there were a movement toward de jure independence. In fact, the Chinese civil war, which Mao Zedong won at the end of 1949, started in 1927 as a war between the two parties at the end of their brief cooperation guided by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, father of the Chinese republic.
Timing is right for signing the accord. Japan will be hosting an informal APEC summit meeting in Tokyo in November, and Lien is likely to attend it on behalf of President Ma Ying-jeou again. He went to Peru to take part in the previous APEC summit. The Tokyo summit will make it possible for Lien, honorary chairman of the Kuomintang, to meet and sign the neutrality pact with Chinese President Hu, who doubles as general-secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. The accord thus signed can be made a law of the land in Taiwan by putting it to a referendum. It will be passed overwhelmingly, because few people on Taiwan will oppose it. They know it alone can provide the best assurance of no war across the strait. The Taiwan Strait will be removed as a dangerous flashpoint of the world once and for all.
The neutrality accord is not a peace treaty. Nor is it a non-aggression pact. But once approved by the referendum, it guarantees a lasting peace between Taiwan and China for the benefit of the Chinese nation. The neutrality across the strait will also maximize the beneficial effect of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement which was signed between Taiwan and China last month. Moreover, it is in the best interest of the entire world that needs a peacefully rising China to contribute to its common prosperity.
〈本文僅供參考，不代表本會立場〉
（本文刊載於99.08.07，The China Post 4版）
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