For the first time in fifty years, Taipei has lifted a ban on direct sea links between two of its offshore island groups and mainland China. Some have heralded it as a major step in cross-strait relations, others have dismissed it as an empty gesture. The truth perhaps lies in between.
The Taiwan Strait, a body of water that measures 220 kilometers at its widest point and 130 kilometers at its narrowest, divides Taiwan from the Chinese mainland. But less than ten kilometers from the mainland's southeast coast lies Taiwan's Matsu Island, and closer still is Kinmen Island, a mere 0.6 kilometers offshore. Despite the geographic and cultural proximity of these two island groups to China's southern province of Fujian, they have been politically united with Taiwan since 1949, when the Kuomintang (KMT) retreated to Taiwan following their battle with the Communists.
For decades, Kinmen and Matsu were the KMT's military springboards from which they planned to retake the mainland. Now the islands are considered springboards for the more practical goal of improving cross-strait relations. Earlier this year on January 2, a group of Sea Goddess worshippers, headed by Matsu Island's magistrate (administration chief), sailed from Matsu to the goddess's birthplace, Meizhou Island in Fujian Province. At roughly the same time, a group of Kinmen residents led by their own magistrate sailed directly to Xiamen in Fujian.
These were the first official direct voyages between the two sides in fifty-two years, and reporters from home and abroad crowded the quays to record this historic event. Another landmark voyage took place on February 6. The first Chinese craft to participate in the minilinks brought seventy-six former residents of Kinmen back to the island. Among those aboard was Li Ming-fu, 80, who left his native Kinmen for Vietnam and later settled in Xiamen before the ban came into effect. Sixty-one years after leaving home, Li had a tearful if somewhat public reunion with his ninety-year-old sister, the last of his nine siblings still alive.
While direct transportation, trade, and postal services between Taiwan proper and the Chinese mainland--called the three major links--are still prohibited, the ROC government approved direct exchanges between its outlying islands and the mainland--popularly known as the three minilinks--at the beginning of this year. Since formal cross-strait talks had been in abeyance for several years, it had to do this unilaterally, without Beijing's approval.
For an initial trial period, Taipei has set limitations on the three minilinks. For example, only people who have resided in Kinmen or Matsu for at least six months can apply to enter the mainland directly. Mainland tourists are required to enter and exit Taiwan's offshore islands in groups of ten to twenty-five. They may stay a maximum of three days, while those from the mainland who travel for commercial or academic reasons, or to visit their families, can stay for up to seven days. In addition, the transshipment of goods between Taiwan proper and the mainland via offshore islands remains prohibited.
As far as cross-strait affairs are concerned, the implementation of the three minilinks has been the most significant move made by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government since winning power in the March 2000 election. "The intention behind the three minilinks is to express our goodwill to Beijing, to build mutual cross-strait trust, and act as a warm-up to the three major links," explains John C.C. Deng, vice chairman of the Cabinet-level Mainland Affairs Council (MAC). "We've taken concrete measures to improve the cross-strait relationship."
Beijing, however, has displayed indifference toward the three minilinks, and a number of problems need to be properly addressed following problems experienced on the January 2 voyage. For example, mainland authorities insisted that ships from Taiwan could not leave port without all the passengers they had brought initially, which ruled out any possibility of a profitable transportation business. But the loosening of mainland restrictions may come in time, and there are already a few hopeful signs. For example, on February 13, fifty-nine Matsu residents were ferried to Mawei in Fujian Province. The ship reached its destination at noon and then returned to Matsu in the late afternoon, scheduled to return for the visitors a week later. Despite its apparent ordinariness, this journey marked a breakthrough in cross-strait contact. "We're in no rush," Deng says. "It's not realistic to expect everything to automatically work smoothly overnight."
Despite the seemingly monumental step of establishing previously forbidden links, critics from across the strait have lambasted Taipei for acting unilaterally, saying the three minilinks give the DPP an excuse to delay the three major links or to declare independence. Because of the DPP's pro-independence stance, the three minilinks have been interpreted as a move to distance the residents of the outlying islands from Taiwan and move them closer to the mainland, making an independent island of Taiwan easier to achieve. "I believe these criticisms are unfounded," says Chang Jung-kung, director-general of the KMT's Department of Mainland Affairs. "But they are clearly indicative of the lack of mutual trust between Taipei and Beijing."
The three minilinks have also come under fire in the domestic political arena, with the lack of prior cross-strait negotiations the main target of criticism. "The DPP government has shown its goodwill to Beijing in a very unskillful way," Chang notes. "Without a cross-strait agreement on these links, Beijing officials don't think we want to forge a better relationship. They think we're using the links to enhance our stature on the international stage." Illicit trade between mainland China and residents of Kinmen and Matsu has been going on for many years. While Beijing has sanctioned such activity, Taipei did not until this year. "We're just allowing what they've already done, but we've created a media event out of it," Chang says. "How can Beijing be happy about that?"
In the broad cross-strait context, many domestic criticisms concerning the three minilinks are directed at the DPP government's mainland policy in general. In 1992, the then KMT administration acknowledged the "one China, different inter pretations" principle in negotiating with Beijing. President Chen Shui-bian, however, has rejected the notion of that principle being a "consensus" and defined it as more of an unspecified "spirit."
"The DPP wants to bypass the 'one China' principle, but it can't," says the KMT's Chang Jung-kung. "Its ideology has stranded it in cross-strait waters." Complaining about an opponent's stubbornness does not help the situation, he points out. Finding out who the opponent is and how best to get along is more useful. "The resumption of cross-strait talks should be the government's top priority," he adds. "Or all mainland-related efforts like the three minilinks will be futile."
Yan Jiann-fa, director of the DPP's Department of Chinese Affairs, adopts a different attitude. He believes the unilateral links and subsequent response can be the starting point for negotiations. "They say that Taiwan can't bear to face the 'one China' principle, but mainland China can't stand to see an independent Taiwan or the popular will of its people, either," he says. "In a stalemate, something has to happen to move things along, otherwise years or even decades can go by before any progress is made." Yan notes that the way people learn to get along is through actual contact. If the results of this contact are mutually beneficial, the relationship will develop naturally; otherwise, even a written agreement cannot improve the situation.
The KMT's Chang Jung-kung reminds the government to be aware of the increasing influence the mainland will exert on Kinmen and Matsu following the establishment of the three minilinks. "The infrastructure and services such as hospitals and schools on these former military bastions are inferior to those in the mainland's southeast coastal areas, not to mention its big cities like Xiamen," Chang notes. "If the government does nothing about the ever closer ties between the mainland and our offshore territories, it will lose Kinmen and Matsu, as their residents' political identification will shift to the mainland sooner or later."
The MAC's Deng, however, is confident that Taiwan's democracy and pluralistic society will keep Kinmen and Matsu residents loyal. "Precisely because they have a closer perspective on the mainland's environment, they'll know its problems better than other Taiwanese," he says. "They'll do business with mainlanders and make money, but they won't necessarily approve of their system." The DPP's Yan Jiann-fa stresses that the government will never alienate itself from the offshore islands, due to a sense of national dignity and the need to preserve security.
Political implications abound, and the three minilinks often look like just another episode in the cross-strait melodrama. According to Yan, however, the implementation of the three minilinks is part of an offshore island development plan that was promulgated in April 2000. "The chief goal is to build an autonomous economy on the offshore islands," he says. "The residents' needs must take precedence over the three minilinks." While the latter can be useful in the establishment of the three major links, he adds, they should not function as merely a bridge to bigger things.
The construction of additional facilities, such as harbors and accommodation for the expected hordes of mainland tourists, is necessary to facilitate the three minilinks, and will have the added benefit of improving the economic situation on Kinmen and Matsu. As military strongholds, the islands' development took a back seat to national defense. Following demilitarization in 1992, residents suffered an economic setback, because so many of their businesses were dependant on transactions with military personnel. And while efforts to promote Kinmen as a domestic tourist destination were initially successful, the novelty has worn off. Today, economic indicators in Kinmen and Matsu continue to lag far behind the rest of Taiwan. "The only way out for the offshore islands is the three minilinks," says Tsao Yuan-chang, a former member of the National Assembly and an early proponent of direct links between the mainland and Taiwan's offshore islands.
Tsao, who was born in Matsu, is eager to see Kinmen and Matsu residents benefit from Fujian's abundant and accessible resources such as water, electricity, and medicine. Other island residents, however, are not as receptive to the idea. Seventy percent of residents of Kinmen and Matsu polled said they disapproved of the three minilinks. Tsao blamed the resistance to security concerns based on memories of being attacked and robbed by mainland pirates. "The government didn't do a good enough job of publicizing its plans," he says. "They should have made better use of private sector resources."
Taiwanese may feel marginalized on the international front, particularly among world players such as the United States and mainland China, but Kinmen and Matsu are even further off the map. "Kinmen's connection with Taiwan is purely artificial," says Tung Chen-liang, a Kinmen film director who has made several documentaries about his birthplace. "People born on Kinmen who wanted to land a job or pursue higher education should have been able to go to Xiamen, instead of Taiwan." In one of his films, a woman from Xiamen who marries a man living in Kinmen arrives at her husband's home after a two-day journey by airplane via Hong Kong and Taipei, only to find that her homeland is visible across the water.
The injustices of families separated by political wrangling may not be on the scale of those in North and South Korea, but the resulting emotions run every bit as high and deep. In this sense, perhaps the most significant result of the launching of the three minilinks was the February 6 return voyage of seventy-six Kinmen natives who found themselves on the mainland when official transportation lines were severed fifty-two years ago. For them, the political maneuvering is of little significance; the act of going home is the reality.