Taiwan Today

The secretary general of the National Security Council traces the pendulum swings in the relationship between and and provides an insider's account of the ruling party's approach to engaging mainland .

Books written by politicians tend to have a certain self-serving quality. They are often written during campaigns to outline policy positions, or written later in life to recast political episodes already closed. It takes an irrepressible personality, however, to write a political book that situates the author in the midst of a controversy over the most contentious issue in a nation's domestic and foreign policy just as the author takes office as a major figure in a new administration.

The personality in question is Su Chi, who has spent his career moving back and forth between academia and politics. From 1999 to 2000 as chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), the agency tasked with formulating new approaches to 's prickly relationship with mainland , Su observed a sea change in attitude under former President Lee Teng-hui that ignited tensions with and bedeviled cross-strait relations until 2008. In 's Relations with Mainland , Su recounts this tale in a volume that is at once a history of post-1949 cross-strait relations, an account of his personal involvement, and a cipher to the ruling party's thinking on mainland policy. He does it, moreover, with erudition, wit and the kind of anecdotal information that can come only from someone in the thick of events.

As head of the MAC during Lee's presidency, Su witnessed a divergence from decades of foreign policy orthodoxy that threatened to inflame relations with the regime in , the chief threat to 's security. The change also upset relations with , which has tied its prestige to 's safety by passing a law, the Taiwan Relations Act, which requires arming for defensive purposes. The new course charted by Lee was later pursued with great vigor and a great deal of imagination by his successor, former President Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), after he took office in 2000.

Chen's election to the presidency after five decades of rule by the Kuomintang (KMT) was a testament to 's successful democratization, but the aspirations of the new president and his party for formal independence and a permanent separation from mainland led into unknown territory. "From a long historical perspective," Su writes, "the entire year following the 20 May inauguration [of Chen Shui-bian] served as both a 'comma' and a 'period' in cross-strait relations. A period, because it marked the end of the thinking and policies of the era of KMT rule; a comma, because it took over and quietly implemented the Two-States Theory launched by Lee in 1999. It also seemed like an intermission during a play--the curtains might be drawn, but there were more acts to come."

A Useful Fiction

Like many theorists of the KMT, Su was blindsided by the sudden change in course in cross-strait relations after years of attempting to find a modus vivendi with . 's Relations with Mainland represents Su's attempt to grapple with the origins of those changes and to map out the divergent positions toward mainland expressed by the two main political factions in . Although Su is scrupulous and academic in his approach, this is nonetheless a political book, outlining what he sees as the pitfalls of the DPP's approach to cross-strait relations and the lucid, productive approach of the KMT, which was ultimately abandoned by Lee.

In Su's account of cross-strait developments, the first stage was purely military. The two sides of the peered across at each other covetously, with each side hoping to capture the other's territory by force. As mainland emerged from the Cultural Revolution and set off on a more conciliatory path internationally, economic exchanges quickly followed. Through secret negotiations, the two former adversaries groped for common ground to ease the political tensions.

In 1991, the Republic of China (ROC) established the MAC, a Cabinet-level office, to formulate policy toward the mainland, and later the same year created the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) to carry out exchanges with government officials from . As Su describes it, the SEF was the white glove, and the MAC the hand that gave it substance. The ROC government now had its official mechanism, the hand within the glove, which would facilitate negotiations under the cover of private-sounding entities.

In 1992, representatives from the SEF met with counterparts from the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), mainland 's own cross-strait agency, in , then neutral territory ruled by the British. The talks resulted in the logic-defying principle of "one-China, respective interpretations," which posited that while both sides agreed there is only one China, the definition of that China would be determined separately by Taipei and Beijing. Naturally, both governments claimed to be the sole representative of Chinese people on both sides of the . Although clearly there were two governments claiming to represent , the ROC in and the People's Republic of (PRC) in , the fiction allowed for negotiations to continue. Employing this illogical and deeply unsatisfying principle, in other words, allowed for wiggle room in a seemingly deadlocked situation.

The one-China principle became the sine qua non of cross-strait negotiations and was later incorporated into policy. Even today, it is the foundation of stability in the , and an essential component for the trilateral Taipei-Washington-Beijing relationship.

Su is perhaps at his best when explaining why 's leaders began to veer away from a policy that, although useful, not only defied reality, but was also anathema to the ideology of 's strengthening opposition forces. He astutely ties the question of 's democratization to the rise of new thinking on cross-strait relations. "One could see that the new cross-strait relations," he writes, "were born of the same embryo of democratization and pragmatic diplomacy, and that the evolution of the three would henceforth be closely intertwined."

Pivotal Figure

The pivotal figure in these trends was Lee Teng-hui, who, after being appointed president in 1988, later became the ROC's first directly elected leader in 1996. As Lee presided over a rapidly democratizing , he grew impatient with the one-China principle and longed to break free of the suffocating framework of cross-strait negotiations. Lee appointed a task force to study new approaches, but officials of the MAC and other government agencies were kept in the dark. In July 1999, Lee dropped his bombshell. In an interview with a German reporter, he stated that "amendments to the Constitution designated cross-strait relations as a special state-to-state relationship. Consequently, there is no need to declare independence." Thus, Lee effectively said goodbye to the one-China principle.

One of the most enjoyable parts of Su's account of these events are the descriptions of his own reaction and the surprise of KMT politicians, like former Vice President Lien Chan, who were still toeing the party line even as Lee veered off course. Su himself, who was then head of the MAC, arrived in on the same day that Lee's interview became public and was set upon by reporters at the airport. "It was only then that I realized that what should not have happened did, in fact, happen," he writes. Over the next few days, Su and other KMT leaders attempted to put out the flames arising domestically and internationally from Lee's apparent abandonment of the cross-strait framework.

Su recounts his own attempts to pull off the difficult feat of turning the "two states" proclamation back into the one-China policy that still represented orthodox KMT thinking. "As a member of the crisis management team and its only contact window to the outside," he writes, "I had to argue in defense of the Two-States Theory so as to maintain the government's dignity. Simultaneously, I strove to gradually transform the Two-States Theory back into the familiar OCRI [One China, Respective Interpretations] so that it would be accepted by both sides. All these efforts were put into action while PRC jet fighters flew frequent daily sorties towards or even beyond the center line of the . It was certainly a daunting task."

A Brave New World

What was at first considered a flash in the pan by Mr. Democracy, as Lee was known, proved to be just the first shots in a campaign to wrest free of the one-China framework. When the independence-leaning DPP captured the presidency in 2000, Chen Shui-bian was under enormous pressure to press forward with the traditional independence aspirations of his party, on the one hand, and to avoid conflict with or alienating by changing the rules of the game, on the other.

Just before leaving his post at the MAC in 2000, Su gave to the new administration a parting gift--the "1992 Consensus." The terminology, coined by Su himself, referred to the talks held in Hong Kong in 1992, during which representatives from and had agreed that there was only one , but that the definition of that entity was left up to the various parties. In Su's words, agreeing to disagree in became the 1992 Consensus. This parting gift turned out to be a Trojan horse, bedeviling the Chen administration, which later said that there was no consensus reached in Hong Kong and that such a consensus would represent the selling out of .

Su explains that he hoped the new term would allow for less emphasis on the one-China principle and more leeway in dealing with . Of course the new phrase was in reality the one-China policy by another name, and the ROC's first ever non-KMT administration had no interest in applying an old rubric to a new age. The election of a DPP leader unleashed long pent-up political longings in a portion of 's population and the desire to see the accomplishments of celebrated independently of those of mainland . If the feud between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party can be seen as a fraternal conflict, the DPP was saying that it wanted out of the family altogether.

In reframing the one-China principle as the 1992 Consensus, Su believed he was providing the new government with more leeway because of the ambiguity of the term. Yet, he also writes that the DPP was going to have to reassess the entire framework on its own terms. "The DPP's victory in 's election offers a golden opportunity for all parties to start a new way of thinking," he writes. "The DPP will have to consider whether independence should be dropped as a campaign strategy of the past or upheld as a national policy for the future."

In deference to national security and the general attitude in the country, Chen offered reassurances to both and upon taking office. But the long-simmering independence aspirations of the DPP and his own political struggle made this a tough path to walk. Clearly, Chen's party wanted real progress on the independence issue and the scrapping of the one-China principle. Su recounts that upon briefing his successor at the MAC, Tsai Ing-wen, now chairwoman of the DPP, she startled him by offhandedly commenting: "Although the Two-States Theory will no longer be mentioned, it will be implemented."

After exercising much restraint, Chen made clear his desire to follow Lee's separate course by declaring in August 2002 that " has always been a sovereign state. In short, and standing on opposite sides of the strait, there is one country on each side." Like Lee's earlier bombshell, this abandonment of the one-China principle infuriated and alarmed .

Chen's grand experiment in ending decades of legal attachment to the Chinese mainland and securing international recognition for the ROC's self-governance, however, ultimately failed. The KMT-controlled legislature, as well as a public unwilling to risk war with mainland , checked the president's desire to leave the framework of cross-strait relations and pursue a new course.

Lesson Learned

At the heart of Su's account of how the ROC's cross-strait policy went wrong is of course the one-China principle, or the 1992 Consensus as he rephrased it. The fiction of one-China, in his view, allowed for cross-strait exchanges to develop, and its abandonment first by Lee and then by Chen threatened war with mainland China, strained relations with the United States and left Taiwan less secure.

Su also draws the lesson that 's domestic politics have a dramatic effect on both and . He describes this as "a tail wagging two dogs," the subtitle of the book. Referring to domestic politics, he writes: "It has shown over and over again that it actually had the ability to impact cross-strait relations as well as the interaction between the US and mainland China, for better and for worse."

There is little doubt that 's democratization and the election of a DPP president to two terms in office transformed the KMT. As Su notes, decisions in can drive events in cross-strait relations. And therein lies the ultimate lesson: If Taiwan can raise tension in the , why can it not move things in the other direction? " is situated at once near the only superpower (the ), the second largest economy () and the largest factory () in the world," Su writes. "If it could only manage its relations with them well, all would benefit, particularly . But if makes an enemy of any one of the three great powers, it will lose. And , being the smallest, will surely suffer the most. The key lies with management, nothing else."

After taking office in May 2008, President Ma Ying-jeou astonished many observers with the speed with which cross-strait negotiations bore fruit. Before losing the presidency in 2000, the KMT was hardly such a nimble, self-confident party. The lessons learned by Su and other KMT thinkers during their years in the wilderness reflect the positive forces of party competition.

Although Su's study lacks the theoretical elegance of some political science monographs on cross-strait relations, it is a much more fascinating enterprise. It is a rigorous study by a perceptive mind analyzing events in which the author played a major part. The book would be useful alone for the wealth of first-hand information, but since Su, as a chief advisor on national security, now has the ear of the president, it is invaluable as a window on the rationale of the ruling party's approach to cross-strait relations. Would that all politicians were willing to write a book like this before assuming office.

Copyright © 2009 by Robert Green