Dialogue has resumed between Taiwan and China since Ma Ying-jeou was elected president on March 22.Lien Chan, honorary chairman of the Kuomintang, went to Beijing to see Chinese President Hu Jintao in early April.Kuomintang chairman Wu Poh-hsiung followed in Lien’s footsteps.Wu came back from a tour of China on Saturday after meeting Hu to pave the way for the first meeting in 10 years between the Straits Exchange Foundation and its Chinese counterpart Association for Relation across the Taiwan Strait.The SEF-ARATS meeting is expected to take place between June 11 and 14.
All this has raised the question of how many channels of dialogue Taiwan has with the People’s Republic of China.There is the Mainland Affairs Council, a Cabinet agency which is considered a decision-making body, albeit the decision is actually taken by the president with the help of his National Security Council.The SEF is a government-funded organization commissioned by the MAC to go to the negotiating table with the ARATS.The two organizations form the first channel of communication between the two sides of the strait.
Lien Chan opened the second, and more intimate, channel of dialogue with his journey of peace to China in 2005 right after Beijing had adopted an anti-secession law, which codifies an invasion of Taiwan, if any move toward apparent de jure independence were found.He has cultivated friendship with President Hu.After their meeting, the Kuomintang established an economic forum with the Chinese Communist Party.So far the forum has met four times to strengthen economic cooperation across the strait.
Wu’s must be a third channel, unless he fails to take over the one between Lien and Hu.The odds are that Wu may replace Lien in dialogue between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party, of which President Hu is the general-secretary.Then there will be two channels of dialogue, one semi-governmental and the other intra-party.And two is better than one, for the time being.
The reason is simple.Beijing wants two channels rather than one.China is a country where its ruling party – like in all Communist countries or Nazi Germany as well as Fascist Italy – leads the government.In fact, the government in Beijing is subsumed in the Chinese Communist Party.Hu is the party’s general-secretary first and the president of the republic second.Things are not quite the same in Taiwan now.President Ma isn’t chairman of the ruling Kuomintang and he doesn’t want the party to lead the administration he has installed.But there is no government-to-government relationship between Taiwan and China; and that is the reason why the MAC, which cannot contact the Taiwan Office of the State Council in Beijing, has to have the SEF as its negotiating arm in the first channel of dialogue.On the other hand, the SEF has cut off the umbilical tie with the Kuomintang, which the Chinese Communist Party prefers to have as a partner in real dialogue.
The problem arising from the two-channel dialogue now in place is that whatever agreement reached in talks by way of the second channel has to be finalized, at least formally, by the SEF – and through it by the government.It’s a kind of exercise in redundancy. For instance, the four-day meeting scheduled to start in Beijing on June 11 would be totally unnecessary if Hu were fully authorized by the government.The SEF, in addition, is required to adhere to a ritual of lower-level talks, an initialing by middle-level representatives and the signing of an agreement by its chairman on the arrangements to begin direct charter flights across the strait at weekends on July 4 or to let Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan either at the same time or shortly thereafter.The agreement then has to be submitted to the MAC for approval to go into force rather than to the Legislative Yuan for ratification.This long official red tape would have made it impossible to get things started according to President Ma’s schedule, if the head of the Chinese Communist Party had refused to let himself be persuaded by his Kuomintang opposite number to go along at once.
The two-channel negotiation worked perfectly this time.That does not necessarily mean it will work just as well the next time.As a matter of fact, Hu gave the green light to the resumption of SEF-ARATS dialogue to congratulate Taiwan’s new leadership for ousting the “separatist” government of the Democratic Progressive Party.He even extended a new olive branch by offering to consider a way to let Taiwan join the World Health Organization or its decision-making body, the World Health Assembly, in a mutually agreeable capacity.But Hu may harden his stand and insist on his “one China” principle no sooner has he seen cross-strait relations are not developing the way he wants.Remember Hu promised Lien to do so in 2005 but Taiwan has since been barred from that UN-affiliated organization?
Wu is said to have proposed a peace forum between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party to find a new modus vivendi across the strait.How Hu is going to respond is unknown, but one can safely say if Lien Chan were asked to head it, the Chinese Communist leader would agree.Chinese on both sides of the strait are tough negotiators; but they, unlike cool-headed Americans or Britishers or Germans, value and cherish personal relationships – call it friendship or camaraderie, if you will.Chinese would go to great lengths to iron out all differences to bring negotiations to a success, if negotiators have that relationship.Lien and Hu have it.
One best thing Taiwan may do is for Wu to preside over the economic forum and to let Lien take care of the peace forum.Their cross-strait dialogue still remains on the intra-party level, which won’t supersede the first channel of communication between Taiwan and China.Like SEF chairman P. K. Chiang, neither Lien nor Wu will mind working in their respective capacities for President Ma to usher in a win-win future for the Chinese nation.
（本文刊載於97.06.02 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）
