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China Needs to Learn to Deal With the Taiwan Reality


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2020 Jan 11, 8:50am   281 views  3 comments

by Al_Sharpton_for_President   ➕follow (5)   💰tip   ignore  

The election confirms that Xi Jinping should try a softer and more pragmatic approach.

Taiwan’s voters chose Tsai Ing-wen as their president for the next four years. Now, China needs to learn to live with it. Beijing can double down on hostility, or try some pragmatic steps that set up the long-term prospect of living together amicably, rather than pushing formulas for unification that Taiwanese won’t accept.

Tsai’s victory was the fourth out of Taiwan’s seven presidential elections won by her Democratic Progressive Party, and reflects a trend of falling support for the Kuomintang or Chinese Nationalist Party, the KMT, which still harbors dreams of returning to the China it fled in 1949. Her record vote tally, smashing the KMT’s from 2008, is a clear message to Beijing that support for Tsai and her policies is no fluke.

That wasn’t the result that Beijing wanted, because it knows that the KMT is the only party it can rely on to inch Taiwan toward integration with the mainland, a desire not shared by the broader Taiwanese population. For years, the Chinese Communist Party has used mostly sticks and a few carrots to try influence Taipei. But that’s the thing about Taiwan’s rowdy democracy: It’s not China’s choice.

This all leaves Chinese President Xi Jinping — who has harshened rhetoric on Taiwan since coming to power in 2013 — and Tsai with a chance for a new beginning. Realpolitik demands discomfort on both sides.

Beijing needs to relearn that you catch more flies with honey. Following the election of the Nationalist Ma Ying-jeou in 2008, China opened up trade, transport and investment links in a move that boosted Taiwan’s economy,helping it recover from the global financial crisis and warming local sentiment toward the mainland. For a brief period, many in Taiwan started thinking that maybe China wasn’t the big bad wolf after all.

That approach marked a reversal of previous tactics, such as China lobbing missiles off the coast 25 years ago to scare voters ahead of Taiwan’s first democratic presidential election. But Xi reverted to hardball after Tsai came to power, cutting trade and tourism. The economy didn’t suffer as intended, though, and Tsai’s new mandate reflects the failure of intimidation.

If Xi really wants to gain ground in Taiwan, especially after the debacle of the Hong Kong protests, then he ought to soften up and offer a few sweeteners of his own. Reopening the flow of tourists is the obvious and easiest first step, and can be done without ceding ground on sovereignty. If he wants to be particularly generous, allowing Taiwan to join the World Health Organization’s decision-making body as an observer could be done while maintaining the stance that there is only one China.

With her new mandate, Tsai also shares responsibility for trying to improve relations. Unlike the previous president from the DPP, Chen Shui-bian, Tsai didn’t do anything during her first term to rattle the tiger’s cage, though she also refused to be bullied. In many ways, she simply ignored China and focused on building relationships further afield, famously having a call with Donald Trump shortly after his election.

But she can’t keep pulling that trick. While Xi has been and could remain intractable, Tsai can use that to her advantage by offering a few apolitical olive branches of her own.

Taiwan, for example, has a lot to bring in the area of health care. She could offer to set up a cross-strait platform to share information that may aid China’s battle against swine flu and pneumonia. Her pet policy of renewable energy is the kind of common ground where Beijing should be willing to cooperate, given its own growing hunger for electricity.

There’s every chance that any offers she extend will be rebuffed. That’s OK. By continually taking the moral high ground, she’ll be showing the world who is willing to play nicely and who is the playground bully.

Such an approach ought to ease concerns in the U.S., too. Washington felt Chen could drag the U.S. into a war by goading Beijing on hot-button issues like sovereignty. U.S. law requires providing for Taiwan’s defense, ranging from arms sales to possibly interceding in a military conflict. Ma, on the other hand, drew Taiwan more closely to China than Washington was comfortable with and showed reticence to continue purchasing American weaponry.

I’ve often stated that Taiwan won’t be the cause of any U.S.-China war but an excuse for one. With Trump inflaming tensions, and Xi pushing China’s global expansion, Tsai’s softer moral high ground approach and a willingness to keep buying weapons makes her a leader that the White House and Pentagon can trust. Her measured tone also goes over well with other Asian leaders.

If Hong Kong’s protests have taught Xi Jinping anything, it should be that rigidity doesn’t get results when people expect to be heard. This election just showed that the voice of Taiwan’s 24 million people is loud.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-11/china-should-try-pragmatism-after-taiwan-election-returns-tsai

Comments 1 - 3 of 3        Search these comments

1   Ceffer   2020 Jan 11, 11:13am  

Taiwan is a bunch of entitled Mandarin snobs. It's like wanting your spoiled narcissistic relative back in the house.
2   NuttBoxer   2020 Jan 13, 8:45am  

willywonka says
If Hong Kong’s protests have taught Xi Jinping anything, it should be that rigidity doesn’t get results when people expect to be heard.


Seriously? The only thing Xi Jinping needs to know happened in 2009.
3   Dholliday126   2020 Jan 13, 8:51am  

I, like most Americans, am not sending my son to fight for some gooks half a world away, and Xi knows it.

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