Avoiding Catastrophic Ware with China: Keep One's Distance by Actually Getting Closer

BY TOM PLATE

Los Angeles --- Genuine leadership is always eye-catching, and sometimes history-making. This otherwise commonplace observation is especially true when it comes to the matter of war between China and Taiwan. This unthinkable explosion would, if it did happen, jar otherwise prosperous East Asia back into a stone age – and bring America to the brink of war with China.


Wise leaders prudently push forward despite all sorts of easy reasons to stay put -- or bury one’s head in the sand. Great leaders are anything but a dime a dozen, of course. But Asia, surging economically even as the U.S sags and Europe sputters, can make the claim that it has put forward at least a few. The latest to emerge from that increasingly dynamic region is President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan.

His most recent claim to fame rests with the recent free-trade pact his government signed with that goliath on the other side of the straits: the People’s Republic of China. Called ECFA (don’t ask why, not worth it), the deal provides for a lowering of official barriers and ancient obstacles across the strait and reduces so much red tape as to make one wonder why ECFA took so long to happen. The answer to that while China is united in the desire to have Taiwan reunified with the mainland, by contrast Taiwan itself is virtually a house divided. No one wants war with Beijing, of course, but many on that offshore island fear that closer economic relations will eat away at Taiwan’s stand-alone qualities.

Such fears are so intense on the little island of 23 million inhabitants that President Ma had to push hard for the agreement against what in effect was a 50-mile-an-hour political wind. But this rising Asian leader – whose background includes law degrees from both New York University and Harvard --- was right to have made the good fight. So many countries in Asia have already signed pro-trade agreements with China that Taipei, but 90 miles offshore, was becoming practically the only Asian capital not to have done so. If no agreement had been hammered out, Taiwan, as close as it was to the mainland, would have been left out.

Even so, many on the island fear that the pact will lead to absorption by the mainland. I asked President Ma whether his policy of economic engagement wasn’t terribly risky. His answer was forthright: “Claims that it will cause Taiwan to be absorbed into a ‘one China market’ are unfounded,” Ma, via fax, wrote me from his office in Taipei. “In particular, the text of the agreement contains no politically compromising content.”

Fair enough – but Ma and his people live under the cloud of a China armed to the teeth with missiles capable of inundating Taiwan. Were China to invade, as it threatens to should Taiwan move further away from the mainland’s magnetic pull, only intervention by the U.S. could conceivably save the island. Would the American people --- fed up with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – willingly battle China?

Admits Ma: “The scale of mainland China’s military power far exceeds ours, and we don’t have the ability to engage in an arms race. The arms we buy are purely defensive, so no matter what, we will continue to maintain the self-defense capability necessary to ensure our national security.” Fine – but let’s try to be a bit realistic: How long would Taiwan, by itself, be able to hold out if China attacked? The generous answer would be: at best a matter of but a few months. Washington watches over the China-Taiwan relationship with great interest, of course. An outbreak of conflict would force it to confront two unacceptable options: go to war with China, or let China devour Taiwan in front of the world’s watching eyes. Notes Ma, quite reasonably: “In view of the impossibility of resolving the cross straight sovereignty dispute in the near future, my administration’s pragmatic approach is to maintain the status quo of no unification, no independence and no use of force ….”

Those calm diplomatic words (Ma’s ‘Three No’s”) are actually music to Washington’s ears. From the U.S. perspective, Ma is a huge improvement over his predecessor, the incessantly annoying (and arguably corrupt) former leader of the pro-independence opposition party, who took evident pleasure in provoking Beijing at almost every opportunity. By contrast, Ma’s style is to emphasize negotiation over confrontation – and stay focused on real rather than rhetorical issues. As he puts it, “...There appears to be no way of resolving the matter that both sides can accept. Nor has our society reached a consensus about this. Regardless of how things develop, however, Taiwan’s future will not be determined by any particular party, but collectively, by the 23 million people of Taiwan. This constitutes the strongest consensus now uniting our ruling and opposition parties.”

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Ma could have chosen to lie low and not stirred up the political hornets’ nest of a trade agreement with China that opponents on the island inevitably depict as covert capitulation. But by not taking the easy road, Taiwan’s President not only calms Beijing’s nerves but quietly buys his island people more time and breathing room.

To be sure, time is not on Taiwan’s side if it does nothing or simply spits in Beijing’s eye. But by engaging Beijing, Taipei reassures the mainland’s politicians and people that it wishes to proceed apace with the best of intentions. In effect Taiwan has chosen to keep its distance from the mainland by getting closer. It’s a paradox, no doubt. But there would appear to be is no other diplomatic formula that can work.

Prof. Tom Plate, Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Affairs at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, is a syndicated columnist and author of the best-selling “Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew,” recently published by Marshall Cavendish. For the full unedited text of the interview with Taiwan’s President Ma, go to http://uschina.org or http:// www.pacificcouncil.org