Symposium On National Security: Why The Sense Of Impending Doom?
Ma Ying-jeou, S.J.D.
Former President of the Republic of China (2008-2016)
Back in 2016, before Tsai Ing-wen took office as President, she posted on Facebook the following: “If the administration does not make people feel secure, and must resort to playing the fear and confrontation cards to stir up instability across society and earn the votes of blood, tears, and hatred, then, just like adulterated food, this unscrupulous government must be taken off the shelf!” Isn’t it ironic how much of a picture this paints of the Tsai administration over the past three years?
Shortly before I stepped down three years ago, I met President-elect Tsai and reminded her that if cross-strait relations continued to deteriorate, Taiwan’s diplomatic allies would begin falling away, and the nation’s international space would shrink. Regrettably, the fears I voiced have indeed come to pass.
Today, the rallying cry “Oppose China!” is a fig leaf to cover ineptitude. It has also been wielded as a weapon against political enemies. Thanks to fearmongering by the Tsai administration, the term “dried mangoes,” which in Chinese is a homophone for “a sense of impending national doom,” has become an Internet watchword. This itself has increased social instability.
The root cause of the deterioration of cross-strait relations is President Tsai’s failure to accept the “1992 Consensus.” And yet, things were not always this way. Back in 2000, Tsai Ing-wen was Chairwoman of the Mainland Affairs Council. During interpellation before the Legislature, she said, “‘One China, respective interpretations’ was what was discussed in 1992. And our position is that this means ‘each side has its interpretation of one China.’” So while a cabinet minister, Tsai Ing-wen held to “each side has an interpretation of one China,” and did not deny the 1992 Consensus of one China, respective interpretations. But now, campaigning for office, President Tsai has gone back on her own words, and has deliberately twisted the 1992 Consensus as being synonymous with “one country, two systems,” which is opposed by the Taiwanese people. This has been done to inflame anti-China sentiment and create an image of herself as a firebrand, to earn more votes. In so doing, she is putting personal interest above national security.
What does failure to accept the 1992 Consensus mean? It means the unilateral abrogation of political mutual trust built up across the Taiwan Strait over 27 years. Today, the two sides are slogging toward a standoff. Mainland China has cut off negotiations with Taiwan. It has unilaterally established the M503 south-north bound flight route and three extension routes that run very close to the median line of the Taiwan Strait. It has dispatched military aircraft to circle Taiwan and cross the median line. Our citizens arrested abroad on suspicion of scam have been deported or extradited to mainland China, without consultations being held with Taiwan. Over the last three years, the Cross-strait Agreement on Joint Fight against Crime and Mutual Legal Assistance we signed in 2009 has become moribund.
Deteriorating cross-strait relations have also hurt our people in their pocketbooks. The number of mainland tourists has plummeted. In August, mainland China suspended the visit by individual travelers to Taiwan, which caused a 30 percent plunge in the number of mainland tourists compared with July. And starting in September, the quotas for mainland tour groups were reduced dramatically. Our tourism industry estimates that the total number of mainland tourists to Taiwan will fall by 700,000, and expected losses in the tourism sector will reach NT$150 billion. Tourism operators have condemned the DPP government for sacrificing the livelihoods of two million people in the industry on the altar of wrongheaded policy. To make up for the drop-off in mainland tourists, the government has provided visa waivers and subsidies to tourists from Southeast Asia, but the effect of this on tourism cannot match the loss of mainland tourists. More, this policy has led to the problem of Southeast Asians posing as tourists, but really coming to Taiwan to work.
The New Southbound Policy bandied about by the administration has not had substantive results as concerns tourism or anything else, really. Bureau of Foreign Trade statistics show that Taiwan’s exports to ASEAN countries accounted for 17.3 percent of all exports in 2018. This is 1.3 percentage points lower than the 18.6 percent average we saw during my second term of office. And it is very difficult for Taiwan to compete with mainland China, Japan, and Korea in Southeast Asia because we do not enjoy the protection of bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) or access to regional integration efforts such as the CPTPP and RCEP.
Soon after amending the National Security Act, the Tsai administration pushed for further amendments that would ban agents of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), using national security as a cover. Should the amendment be adopted, anyone engaged in cross-strait exchanges or who has contacts with mainland officials would likely be branded a CCP agent. This would be through guilt by association, and based on national security or political propaganda grounds. This would deprive people of their Constitutional rights and freedoms, and has terrified millions of Taiwanese businesspeople in mainland China. The Association of Taiwan Investment Enterprise on the Mainland issued a strongly worded statement condemning the DPP government for fomenting what it called “green terror.”
Looking farther afield, the diplomatic truce that was a result of warming cross-strait relations has been irrevocably broken. Since President Tsai took office, Taiwan has not been invited to attend the World Health Assembly for three years. When I was in office, we sent a ministerial delegation to that meeting every single year. More, the Assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) did not invite Taiwan to attend this year’s meeting. Although the Tsai administration continues to state that the US, Japan, and the European Union support Taiwan’s participation in international organizations, the naked truth is that they are simply unable to help us.
Over the past three years, we have lost seven diplomatic allies. We are now recognized by just 15 countries, the lowest number ever since the Republic of China (ROC)’s founding in 1912. President Tsai has blamed this loss on the machinations of the Chinese Communist Party. When I was in office, ties were broken by only one of our diplomatic allies, i.e., the Gambia, and the PRC stated clearly that it had not sought to steal this ally away from us. They did not establish diplomatic relations until two years and four months later. And why was this? Simply because we had a tacit consensus of “diplomatic truce” that we would not poach each other’s diplomatic allies.
What’s more, we have been told to change the name of seven of our foreign missions in non-ally countries. One of our offices was even forced out of a capital city. Our country’s name has been downgraded on the websites of 44 foreign airlines. Our international space, it is clear, is diminishing. And the real reason Taiwan continues to face setbacks in the international community is this DPP administration’s failure to turn cross-strait relations around and rebuild mutual trust.
President Tsai has stated,
ad nauseum, that “defending the sovereignty of the Republic of China (Taiwan) is presently the top priority of the Tsai Ing-wen administration.” And the reality? She has undermined sovereignty and eroded the nation’s international space. Among the 15 remaining diplomatic allies, some are also interested in having diplomatic relations with mainland China. If President Tsai continues to deny reality, history will remember her as the “broken-ties president”, and for having humiliated the nation by ceding sovereignty.
When I was in power, we conducted diplomacy in line with the grand strategy of making peace with mainland China, befriending Japan, and staying close to the US. This allowed us to maximize opportunities and minimize threats as concerns cross-strait relations. Since President Tsai took office, her administration has tilted solely toward the US, such that teaming up with the US to counter China has become the nation’s only option. But with this, have substantive relations between the US and Taiwan improved? Has Taiwan encountered fewer challenges in the international arena?
A long-time barometer of how relations with the US stand is how presidential transits are conducted. During President Tsai’s state visit to allies in the Caribbean earlier this year, she transited New York City for two days, and spoke at Columbia University. The administration claimed that this was a major diplomatic breakthrough. Even a routine meeting with the AIT Chairman on board the plane after landing was played up as a highlight. Noting all this, former President Chen Shui-bian said that back in 2003, he also transited New York, staying for two nights and attending public events. And, he continued, although the Taiwan Travel Act has been passed, President Tsai still cannot visit Washington, D.C. Making a transit through New York is no breakthrough; Taiwan remains a pawn in the US-China trade war. When I made a stopover in New York in 2013, I also stayed for two days. I met with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and members of Congress, visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum, and spoke at my
alma mater, New York University Law School. In 2015 I also made a transit through Boston, meeting U.S Congressmen in the airport and at breakfast, spoke at my
alma mater, Harvard Law School, and was greeted by two thousand people during my visit to Boston Chinatown.
And so it is clear that though the US has enacted the Taiwan Travel Act, the level at which US-Taiwan exchanges are held has not been elevated. There have been no visits by anyone at the level of minister or above. The National Defense Authorization Act, the Taiwan Travel Act, the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act, the Taiwan Assurance Act passed by the House, and the Taipei Act, which cleared the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on September 25, are all pro-Taiwan. But we have seen nothing substantive. After Panama, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador broke ties with the ROC, the US called back its ambassadors to these countries for home consultations. When Solomon Islands decided to switch recognition, the US expressed concern, but again, to no avail. And even looking to the area of Taiwan-US trade, negotiations under the 1994 Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) have been stalled for two years.
Although the administration continues to use eye-catching methods to prettify its diplomatic achievements, the truth can be summed up with the acronym FBI: friendly but inconsequential. All talk, no action. By betting the house on the US, the administration has suffered diplomatic setbacks, and the people have suffered. We hope that “FBI” can be transformed into FAO,” or “friendly and operative.” To this end, it is vital that cross-strait relations be improved and mutual trust reestablished. It is hard to be optimistic about the results that must follow if such a prescription is ignored.
If we look at defense, the Trump administration has approved the sale of two arms packages to Taiwan. These include Abrams tanks and missiles valued at US$2.2 billion, and 66 F-16Vs valued at US$8 billion. It is true that for our nation’s defense, we must purchase arms from the US; when I was President, the US sold us over US$20 billion worth. However, during my administration, we took a very different strategic line on defense as compared to the incumbent.
When I was President, we held that the highest form of generalship is frustrating the enemy’s plans. So we utilized peaceful, lucrative cross-strait relations as our first line of defense. Rooted in this, expanding Taiwan’s international space through viable diplomacy was our second line of defense. Coming in third was strengthening our national defense capabilities through effective deterrence. Arms purchases from the US at this time were not aimed at heightening cross-strait confrontation, but rather at giving the nation appropriate defensive capabilities that we might have the confidence to steadily develop cross-strait ties. Conversely, the Tsai administration first provoked mainland China with its rejection of the 1992 Concensus and anti-China attitude, and then went on a spending spree to obtain arms from the US. This has not been conducive to cross-strait peace; it has escalated the risk of crisis. So it is no wonder people have wondered aloud if the administration is simply paying protection fees to the US.
The US recently published the Indo-Pacific Strategy Report. In this report, Taiwan was included in a league to contain mainland China. The Tsai administration immediately signaled its support of this. Here, I have to remind President Tsai that while security and economic prosperity in the Asia-Pacific is indeed maintained by the US, mainland China’s rise to the world’s second-largest economy has led many countries in the region to move closer to it. For example, many participate in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). No longer do Japan, India, and ASEAN do whatever the US suggests. The administration’s policy of uniting with the US to combat China means that we have bet everything on the US. Taiwan is hemorrhaging away our geographic advantage, and has become a mere pawn in a game of great powers.
The present administration’s cross-strait, foreign, and defense policies are leading Taiwan down a road to perdition. Consider if you will: Has Taiwan become safer under President Tsai? Can Taiwan maintain its diplomatic ties? Has Taiwan expanded its international space? The answer must be a resounding NO.
To address the present crisis, the solution is to restore cross-strait relations to the 1992 Consensus of “one China, respective interpretations.” This is in line with the ROC Constitution. It is not just a cross-strait consensus, it is also a political foundation for both sides of the Taiwan Strait. For the mainland, this policy is like Merlin’s magic wand, and for Taiwan, it is best possible solution. Taking a long-term perspective on cross-strait relations, we must return to the Constitution. We do not support Taiwan independence, but we do object to the use of force or the threat to use force . As to cross-strait reunification, it is an option under the Constitution, but there is no time table for its completion. Peaceful means and a democratic process must be used, and the people of Taiwan must decide.
Back in the 1990s, Winston Lord, then Assistant Secretary of State for East
Asian and Pacific Affairs, said, “Americans aren't smart enough to
mediate between Chinese.” Steven Goldstein, Director of the Taiwan
Studies Workshop at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard
University, recently stated that Taiwan would not derive any benefit from
conflict between the US and China, and that it should stay as far away as
possible from the maelstrom of US-China disputes.
We are not a pawn; we are not anyone’s lackey. As concerns the struggle between the US and mainland China, we should strike a balance between cross-strait relations and international relations. This will allow us to pursue prosperity and avoid conflict. Taiwan must restore cross-strait mutual trust, and return to a balanced strategy of making peace with mainland China, befriending Japan, and staying close to the US. Only such a balanced path can benefit Taiwan; only such a path can lead Taiwan forward into a better tomorrow.
