Taiwan China Reunification Watch

MAKING ROOM FOR TAIWAN

U.S. imperialists invaded China's territory of Taiwan and has occupied it for the past nine years. A

Xi & Honorary Chairman of the KMT Party Wu Poh-Hsiung

short while ago it sent its armed forces to invade and occupy Lebanon. The United States has set up hundreds of military bases in many countries all over the world. China's territory of Taiwan, Lebanon and all military bases of the United States on foreign soil are so many nooses round the neck of U.S. imperialism. The nooses have been fashioned by the Americans themselves and by nobody else, and it is they themselves who have put these nooses round their own necks, handing the ends of the ropes to the Chinese people, the peoples of the Arab countries and all the peoples of the world who love peace and oppose aggression. The longer the U.S. aggressors remain in those places, the tighter the nooses round their necks will become. 
– Mao Tse Tung, September 8, 1958, at the Supreme State Conference.


Reunification with Taiwan has been China's core strategic goal for 60 years. Now the vagrant province is on the glide-path to reunification during President Xi's tenure. Happily, China has been reabsorbing wayward provinces since Jesus walked the earth and it's a familiar ritual whose celebrants know their roles.

For all but the terminally deluded like Taiwan's ex-President Chen Shui-ban (currently languishing in jail for his naivety) reunification was always a foregone conclusion. The Jovian pull of China's gravitational field is irresistible. It's so strong that, during my annual visits to Australia the country's leading businesspeople – on the front pages of the national press and on their mainstream TV – loudly advocate replacing Australia's US alliance with a Chinese one. Australia's continued alliance with the US is a 'hindrance' they say, and a 'danger'.


The same tractor-beam that attracts big, distant Australia draws tiny, close Taiwan closer each day. Heads of both of Taiwan's major political parties – urged on by their leading industrialists – have already pilgrimaged to The Forbidden City and pledged allegiance to the Emperor. Like repentant schismatics over the centuries they were sent back to their island-province laden with gold, fine silks, and even finer promises. Promises to upgrade the wealth and status of the Taiwanese elite, to grant privileged access for every Taiwanese industry, and promises to continuing to stream millions of wealthy mainland tourists to keep the island's hotels and stores filled to capacity. More than 3 million of them will arrive this year, and the program is just getting started.

Taiwan's banks and insurance companies, savvier marketers than their mainland rivals, get access to China's conservative, under-insured, increasingly wealthy consumers. Doors closed to foreigners will be opened for Taiwan.

New legislation already promise such obscure benefits as access to China's inland waterways, the cheapest freight access to the heartland. Soon Taiwanese vessels will sail thousands of kilometres up the Yangtze and the Yalu to deliver Taiwanese cargoes. No outside country – Japan or South Korea – can dream of such access. There's an exhaustive list of concessions and every item on it has an assigned 'minder', a mainland bureaucrat responsible for ensuring that good things happen for Taiwan.

In addition to the gravitational pull two recent developments have accelerated the convergence.

President-elect Xi's campaign to clean up mainland corruption (currently no worse than Taiwan's, according to Taiwanese investors) adds significantly to the attraction of reunification. Xi is an uncommonly moral man ("a Chinese Mandela" according to Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew). If he can do for China what he did for Shanghai – which has been exemplary in its honesty and efficiency since Xi's cleanup – it will be a powerful attractant to island Chinese who share mainlanders' longing for moral leadership.

Japan has hastened reunification by playing its familiar role as aggressor. On a clear day Taiwanese can see the Diaoyu Islands. Taiwanese regard them as 'theirs' just as passionately as mainlanders do. They know that only China can enforce their sovereignty in the face of Japan's grab. The threat to the Diaoyus has done more to weaken the Taiwan independence movement than any event since 1947.

It also helps that Xi has family in Taiwan. Given his genial image a 'family' visit to Taiwan is easy to imagine around, say 2020.

Reunification is all over bar the shouting.

The already muted shouting will be reduced to grumbling until Taiwanese public sentiment catches up. Then it's a matter of implementing the already-agreed negotiation terms. Taiwan is getting a deal so good – Keep your own system while we make you richer – that nearby Okinawans will eye it enviously (see this, for example: http://stratrisks.com/geostrat/10609).

In addition to privileged access to continental China, Taiwan will enjoy a 'peace dividend'. Most of the island's $20 billion annual defence budget will be plowed back into shiny new infrastructure. Taiwanese pilots will get new Chinese fighters, their generals promotions and decorations. That's why Taiwan isn't pushing for F-16s any more.

The Taiwan schism is the last wound still suppurating after our attacks on China began 200 years ago. Its healing will allow China to accelerate its social reform program and greatly relax its posture in the region and in the world. The celebration will make the Beijing Olympics look like a sideshow.

Signs include:

• Submarine fiber-optic cable links Taiwan, China.
• Taiwan to Let Banks do Yuan Trade.
• Taiwanese permitted to invest in Chinese public companies – a privilege heretofore given to mainland Chinese citizens. 
• Beijing and Taipei plan exchange of government officials: Representative offices on both sides of strait will house government officials, who may be granted privileges enjoyed by foreign diplomats
• Senior U.S. senator faults Taiwan over arms "complacency"When it comes to Taiwan's military capabilities, there seems to be a puzzling sense of complacency in Taipei, said Senator John Cornyn. Gosh, I wonder why?

Talk of the Day -- Next stage in Taiwan-China relations 2013/02/21 22:13:31

The two sides of the Taiwan Strait will soon begin a new stage of interaction in the wake of power transition in the Communist Party of China (CPC), according to local media reports. Taiwan's ruling Kuomintang has confirmed that its honorary chairman, Lien Chan, will depart for Beijing Feb. 24 for a four-day visit at the head of a delegation of KMT officials and business executives. Media reports said Lien, a former vice president of the Rwan), is visiting Beijing at the invitation of the CPC's upper echelons and that he wil

And This:

Taiwanese media? More like TSAIwanese media

Taiwan's answer to monolithic media dictator Rupert Murdoch, Tsai Eng-Meng has set his sights on procuring a 32 percent majority share in his biggest rival company, Next Media Group, which will make him helmsman of just under half of Taiwan's newspapers.

Critics argue that Tsai's distinctly pro-PRC position threatens the independence of Taiwanese media and is at odds with Taiwan's efforts to distance their own political interests from those of Beijing.

In an interview with Washington Post in January 2012, Tsai expressed his belief that Taiwan's merger with China "is going to happen sooner or later." Though doubtless he is pushing for the former.

An internal company newsletter in 2008 quoted Tsai proclaiming that the very reason he acquired the China Times Group was to "use the power of the press to advance relations between China and Taiwan". 

And this:

Taiwan slipping off US agenda: panel - Taipei Times 
Defense policy adviser Eric Sayers, a member of Virginia Republican Representative Randy Forbes’ staff, said that Taiwan was not mentioned often on Capitol Hill because Taipei had established such a close relationship with Beijing. “That is not necessarily a good thing because there are some shortfalls going on in terms of arms sales,” he said. Addressing a Heritage Foundation symposium on the view of Asia this year from Washington, Sayers said that arms sales to Taiwan were winning less attention than in the past

And this:

Ma less trustworthy than Xi Jinping: poll

By Chen Hui-ping and Stacy Hsu  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer/ Taipei Times

SHAKY SUPPORT:More than half of the respondents said they do not trust President Ma, compared with 34.4 percent who said they are skeptical of the new Chinese leader

And this:

Taiwan allows Chinese banks to buy bigger stakes in local lenders | TODAYonline- 
Taiwan will ease rules to allow Chinese banks to buy bigger stakes in local banks and permit more Chinese firms to invest in its financial industry, the island’s financial regulator said on Monday, marking a major advance in cross-strait ties.

And this:

Xi Jinping to meet KMT honorary chairman

BEIJING, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, will meet with Wu Po-hsiung, honorary chairman of the Kuomintang (KMT) later this month, a mainland spokeswoman announced on Sunday.
Wu will lead a KMT delegation from Taiwan on a visit to the mainland from June 12 to 14, according to Fan Liqing, of the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office.
Xi will exchange views with him on issues such as relations between the CPC and KMT as well as mainland-Taiwan ties, Fan said.
The spokeswoman said the meeting will be "an important activity" in the high-level exchanges between the two parties under new circumstances.
A press release posted on the KMT official website on Sunday also praised the upcoming meeting as a "new beginning" and said both sides are attaching great importance to it.
KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou will meet with some of the delegation members before they leave for the mainland, the release said.
It described the meeting as a "constructive dialogue" that indicates the two parties' emphasis on the KMT-CPC platform and their commitment to maintaining and advancing the peaceful development of cross-Strait ties.

And this:

Beijing's 31 ways to win over Taiwan hearts and minds

Director of cross-strait offices uses high-level forum to unveil initiatives to deepen economic, cultural and social exchanges. Beijing has unveiled a basket of initiatives to deepen economic, cultural and social exchanges across the Taiwan Strait, following a high-profile meeting last week between President Xi Jinping and Wu Poh-hsiung, the honorary chairman of Taiwan's ruling Kuomintang.

Wu, who is believed to act as a proxy for Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou, also expressed Taiwan's desire to join Asia's Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and to participate in other global activities.

The director of the mainland's Taiwan Affairs Office, Zhang Zhijun, said yesterday at the opening of a week-long high-level forum on cross-strait exchanges in Xiamen, Fujian province that the mainland would announce 31 measures this week to cultivate cross-strait interactions.

Among the six measures that he disclosed was the access that Taiwanese would be given to 10 categories of accreditation tests on the mainland, as well as the establishment of 10 cross-strait cultural exchange centres on the mainland.

Further, the mainland's Supreme People's Court will grant legal status to civil arbitration agreements formulated by arbitration committees in Taiwan.

And this:

Ma says meeting with Xi Jinping rests on popular approval

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- President Ma Ying jeou said yesterday that a meeting with Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping (習近平) depends on the approval and support of the Taiwanese people. The president made the above comment during an interview with Bloomberg News.

Ma said that if he were to meet Xi, he would meet him as president of the Republic of China, and that even though he hasn't excluded the possibility of meeting Xi before stepping down in 2016, the conditions for such an event are still not in place.