E-Notes

Taiwan under President Ma Ying-jeou

by Jacques deLisle

June 2008

Jacques deLisle is the Stephen A. Cozen Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania and director of FPRI’s Asia Program. An abridged version of this article is also available.

Part 1: A Horse of a Different Color? Democracy and Distrust in Taiwan

Following a seventeen-point victory in Taiwan’s presidential election on March 22, 2008, Ma Ying-jeou took office on May 20 with an inaugural address that reiterated his priorities: reconciliation in Taiwan’s politics, repairing ties with Washington, and improving cross-Strait relations. Achieving these goals requires overcoming the distrust that has come to pervade Taiwan’s internal politics, as well as its external relations, especially during the second term of Ma’s predecessor, Chen Shui-bian. With most of the relevant actors seemingly recognizing how costly mutual mistrust had become to the pursuit of their diverse interests, the new president has striking opportunities, but also daunting challenges, on these fronts.

Singing the Blues

In an inaugural address that he said was not intended to “celebrate the victory of a particular party,” Ma pledged a political environment that is “rational and pluralistic” and “fosters political reconciliation and coexistence.” He promised to rebuild political trust, seek cooperation among all political parties, and operate “a government that will be for all the people.” This echoed Ma’s election-night victory speech and subsequent statements in which he stressed bridging Taiwan’s sometimes bitter political divides and spoke of the need to “respect the minority.” Those around Ma’s campaign had taken pride in what they saw as the Kuomintang’s not going negative and exposing “dirt” about Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Frank Hsieh, even as their candidate endured DPP charges of disloyalty to Taiwan and prosecution on corruption charges that were not fully resolved in Ma’s favor until a Supreme Court decision shortly before his inauguration.

Ma’s electoral mandate and standing within the KMT as the man who led his party back to power gave him political resources to pursue his commitment to rebuild trust. Still, bringing his party and its supporters in line behind his agenda of reconciliation will not be easy. During Ma’s preelection tenure as KMT chairman, some sympathetic observers fretted that he did not exercise a firmer hand over the notoriously fractious party. During its early months in office, before Ma’s election and inauguration, the KMT’s nearly-three-fourths majority in the legislature showed signs of not being compliant with the leader’s wishes.

The presidential campaign revealed, and worsened, KMT or “Blue” distrust of the “Green” DPP. Many in Ma’s KMT approached the 2008 election with much anxiety about what their opponents would do to maintain their hold on the presidency. Despite encouraging private polls, senior members of the KMT fretted that Ma’s double-digit lead might be shrinking during the final ten days before the election, when new public opinion surveys could not be released. Some argued that Ma needed to be ahead by at least six or seven points lest the race be close enough that the DPP could steal the election with “dirty tricks” (aobo). “Resist aobo” was a key refrain at KMT rallies, one that sometimes drew especially enthusiastic responses from crowds.

The feared DPP tricks were not tampering with voting or counting. In those respects, Taiwan’s electoral processes are impressively clean. Voters present identity cards to be checked against registration lists at precincts that typically have electorates of fewer than 2000. Secret balloting is respected. (Indeed, the presidential election and the legislative election two months earlier generated controversy because voters’ political preference might be exposed by their having to take, or refuse to take, ballots for one or both of dueling referenda that the rival parties had proposed.) When voting concludes, poll workers open the sealed boxes in the same room where voting occurs and display each paper ballot for inspection by poll workers, political party representatives, interested citizens and foreign observers.

Rather, KMT worriers appeared to have a generalized fear that the DPP would find the means to snatch another win by affecting voters’ preferences or turnout, in defiance of the laws of political gravity as the KMT previously had understood them—and in defiance of the laws of the state as well, according to the harshest KMT critics of the DPP. During the campaign’s closing days, KMT skittishness spiked. Four members of the KMT supermajority elected to the legislature in January undertook an ad hoc investigation of rumors that the DPP campaign was violating campaign laws by using space on which it was not paying proper rent. When their uninvited site visit brought a telegenic confrontation and a political windfall to the Hsieh campaign, some KMT sources suspected a DPP trap.

As many in the KMT saw it, the DPP had won an extremely close mayoral election in Kaohsiung the previous year, thanks to scurrilous rumors of KMT improprieties that DPP sources had circulated to mobilize their base at the eleventh hour, when the KMT had no chance to respond. Darker still was the shadow of the 2004 presidential contest. Chen had eked out a reelection victory after an election-eve shooting of the president and vice president that many in the Blue camp still regard as a staged assassination attempt that produced an illegitimate outcome. Concern about another mid-March surprise prompted top KMT leaders and staff to stay at campaign headquarters late into the night before the 2008 presidential vote, lest the DPP try something after the 10 p.m. deadline for ending campaign activity.

With Ma facing accusations that he held a U.S. green card (a measure, in his critics’ view, of Ma’s incomplete loyalty to Taiwan), KMT distrust toward the DPP extended to the United States’ delicate and complicated role in Taiwan’s politics. President Chen floated, and quickly dropped, the possibility of refusing to hand power to a president-elect who held such an exit option. Especially to KMT ears, that sounded disturbingly reminiscent of Chen’s quickly abandoned, but still unsettling, suggestion that martial law might be necessary if conflict had worsened over the referenda process in January 2008. In the final days of the campaign, rumors churned in KMT circles that Therese Shaheen, the former Washington-based chairwoman of the American Institute in Taiwan (the entity that handles bilateral relations in the absence of formal diplomatic ties) and the woman who had encouraged reckless confidence in early Chen-era Taiwan by describing President Bush as the island republic’s “guardian angel,” would hold a last-minute press conference and purport to confirm that Ma retained a right to U.S. residency. Others in the KMT chafed at the AIT’s failure to state definitively that Ma no longer held that right.

Distrust extended to policy. According to one common KMT charge, Hsieh was a false moderate on cross-Strait issues. Despite running on a platform that pledged improved relations with the PRC, particularly in economic matters, Hsieh was, on this account, little different from Chen. He would continue the incumbent’s agenda—often described as “pro-independence” or “anti-China”—and continue to imperil cross-Strait stability and harm Taiwan’s economy. While challenges to the accuracy and sincerity of an opponent’s campaign promises are the ordinary stuff of politics, the attacks cut deeper in a contest marked by often-stated and sometimes sincere beliefs that the other side’s victory would threaten vital national interests.

Ma’s boldest early gesture to rebuild trust across Taiwan’s partisan divide faced a frosty reception in some KMT quarters. Ma named as head of the Mainland Affairs Council Lai Hsing-yuan, a former legislator from the Taiwan Solidarity Union (a party founded by former President Lee Teng-hui, allied with the DPP and associated with strongly pro-independence positions). Notwithstanding public assurances from Lai that she agreed with Ma’s principles on relations with China and would implement Ma’s policies, prominent legislators and lesser voices in the KMT denounced the appointment. They called on Ma to withdraw Lai’s name and labeled the choice “poor judgment,” “idiotic” and a “potential disaster” for improving cross-Strait ties (even though Beijing’s public response was a measured, if terse, “no comment”).

Ma rebuffed calls to drop Lai and insisted on the appointment’s importance to rebuilding trust across Taiwan’s party lines. Still, the Lai incident does suggest the likely high cost, and limited allure, for the new president of potentially the most powerful step toward reconciliation: pardoning former President Chen, who faces prosecution on corruption charges. Many in the KMT still regard Chen as an illegitimately elected president and are outraged at corruption they see reaching the president and close aides and relatives. In some of those circles, Ma is distrusted because he did not join in publicly rejecting Chen’s 2004 reelection. Ma’s options likely are further limited by his emphasis on “clean politics” and restoring people’s faith in government. The appeal of pardoning Chen is likely further dampened by Ma’s having had to fight corruption charges brought against him during Chen’s presidency. Moreover, there may not be much support from the DPP. Many are seeking to distance themselves from the scandals that tainted the later years of the Chen administration—including the post-election revelation of two shadowy intermediaries’ embezzlement of nearly $30 million earmarked to induce Papua New Guinea to opt for diplomatic relations with the ROC.

As this suggests, domestic political reconciliation faces formidable challenges of overcoming distrust from those on the Green side of the Blue/Green divide that has defined Taiwan’s politics in recent years. The schism here has become wide and deep. Despite its inclusive elements, Ma’s inaugural address contained much that could seem to confirm Green fears, in its pledges to build on post-election momentum to move quickly on cross-Strait engagement and in indicating agreement with much of what PRC president and CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao has said recently on cross-Strait issues. The conflict goes beyond policy. As one KMT moderate in a responsible government post put it, often the two sides do not seem to see the same facts.

It’s Not Easy Being Green

The DPP’s sweeping defeats in recent elections—county magistrates, Taipei mayoralty, the legislature and the presidency—have triggered a common response among the near-powerless: a deepening of distrust toward the party in power. Ma’s rhetoric of reconciliation reflects his recognition of the problem he faces with many of the 40 percent of Taiwanese voters who generally vote Green, and his apparent determination to address it.

Post-election developments within the DPP have been modestly encouraging. Hsieh, vice presidential candidate Su Tseng-chang and other prominent DPP leaders accepted defeat gracefully and acknowledged the legitimacy of their opponents’ victory—something the defeated parties had not done when Chen won with a minority of the vote over two candidates from a divided Blue camp in 2000 and with a bare and disputed majority in 2004. Dire predictions by some DPP moderates have not come to pass. “Deep Green” or “hardline” elements within the DPP did not take control of the party apparatus and purge moderates, whose relatively centrist approach had lost at the ballot box. Instead, the “silver lining” or “shock therapy” hope suggested by a senior DPP moderate showed signs of coming true: a big loss in the election could force the party to recognize the imperative to put its own house in order and to move toward the political middle.

In the election for party chairman, held on the eve of Ma’s inauguration, former deputy premier and MAC chief Tsai Ing-wen, a moderate in substance and style, easily won over elderly pro-independence stalwart and former presidential advisor Koo Kuan-ming. Hsieh’s valedictory and Tsai’s intra-party campaign both stressed the need for the DPP to look inward to understand its defeat and to become again a party that can win national elections. Hsieh criticized the party for losing touch with the community and sacrificing values of progress and democracy to keep political power. He called for party unity and a fresh start, and Tsai called for a “tolerant and diversified party.” Tsai’s prescriptions included much that resonated with the notion of a loyal opposition (or, in Hsieh’s terms, a “shadow government”), pledging that the DPP would become “an opposition party with governing experience,” face its mistakes, revive its focus on civic reform, and become better prepared to implement its concepts when it returned to power.

Such victories for moderation, however, come against a backdrop of distrust and resentment and thus rest on uncertain foundations. For the DPP as for the KMT, the 2008 election brought forth familiar fear and anger about procedural improprieties or unfair advantages benefiting the other party. Complaints focused on the KMT’s perceived advantage in financial resources, available for everything from vote-buying to voter-mobilization to advertisement-purchasing. With a three-year run of victories having given the KMT the lion’s share of county magistracies and seats in the legislature and the mayoralty of Taiwan’s largest city, DPP distrust also focused anew on an old concern: the organizational resources that came with control of key government institutions. One KMT advertisement late in the presidential campaign underscored the point, spotlighting a parade of KMT officeholders proclaiming the party’s ability and preparation to lead Taiwan.

On a common DPP view of KMT legislators’ uninvited “investigation” visit to Hsieh’s campaign headquarters, the incident reflected the dangerous consequences of the KMT’s tightening hold on the machinery of government and the arrogance of power that it would bring. In the aftermath of the KMT’s overwhelming win in January’s legislative elections, the Hsieh campaign argued forcefully that voting DPP in the presidential election was vital to prevent Taiwan’s slide into a one-party-dominant (yidang duda) system. On this view, a Ma victory meant concentration of power that would be bad for Taiwan—a danger so great that voters should support a DPP candidate whom they might otherwise find less appealing than Ma or whom they might wish to punish for the sins of the DPP incumbent. The specifics of the DPP’s dystopia of KMT dominance were complex: Taiwan might backslide from its still-new vibrant democracy toward a system resembling Japan under LDP hegemony or Mexico under the PRI’s dominance; or the KMT might revert to some of its old habits of authoritarian rule; or it would converge somewhat toward the regime across the Strait, opening the door to a closer cross-Strait political accommodation than most Taiwanese wanted.

As some of these visions of bleak political futures suggest, much suspicion and alarm on the DPP side focused on policies that a Ma administration would pursue. On a common DPP account, Ma’s promises that he would protect Taiwan’s interests and not move too far or too fast toward unification with the mainland were electoral posturing, masking an excessively accommodationist intent. From highly placed members of the DPP’s moderate wing came worries that Ma, even if fully sincere, simply did not grasp how perilous dealing with China was and that he would inadvertently give away too much and compromise Taiwan’s de facto independence, with potentially serious consequences for the people of Taiwan and their hard-won democracy. There was little to assuage such fears in the prominent roles that Ma allowed older and old-line KMT leaders Lien Chan and James Soong on election night, and that Ma gave to Lien in holding a pre-inauguration meeting with Hu.

The sharpest Green attacks extended the Chen-era tactics of playing identity politics and questioning the commitment to Taiwan of the Chinese Nationalist Party (the KMT’s full, formal name). To the same end, they also played up Ma’s having held—and possibly still having a right to—a green card. DPP critiques denounced the cross-Strait common market, proposed by Ma’s running mate Vincent Siew, as a “one-China market” (yizhong shichang) that would bring Taiwan a flood of mainland workers, falling wages, lost jobs, deteriorating public services, and increased vulnerability to Beijing’s political use of economic leverage. In the run-up to the election, unrest in Tibet and Beijing’s repressive response provided vivid, if contestable, analogies for what lay ahead if Taiwan drew too close to China.

More broadly, and continuing well after the election, Green sources—including Lee and Chen—attacked Ma’s support of the “1992 Consensus,” a term crafted in the late 1990s by Ma’s National Security Council chief Su Chi, under which Taipei and Beijing agreed that there was “one China” but each held to its own interpretation. They denied that it ever existed or denounced it as a version of the unacceptable “one China” principle that Beijing demanded and that endangered Taiwan’s sovereignty and autonomy. The DPP’s legislative whip dismissed Ma’s acceptance of the Consensus as the first step down a road to ruining Taiwan’s democracy. Chen opined that Ma’s shelving of the discussion of sovereignty was “a de facto shelving of sovereignty itself.” Chen’s premier, the foreign ministry, and a pro-DPP think tank variously criticized then-vice president-elect Vincent Siew’s cordial meeting with Hu as harming Taiwan’s diplomatic strategy, falling into China’s trap, and a “total failure.”

Significant contingents within the DPP and among the Greens more broadly have taken dim views of post-election efforts to close Taiwan’s partisan gap and reduce color-coded political distrust. Coinciding with the new president’s inauguration, opposition groups held a small anti-Ma demonstration in Taipei and a “stamp Ma” rally in Kaohsiung. Although planned before Ma took office, such efforts were energized by passages in Ma’s inaugural address that reached out to Beijing. DPP legislators, fellow TSU members and others denounced Lai as a “traitor” and a “turncoat” for agreeing to serve as Ma’s MAC chair. Departing Vice President Annette Lu sniffed that Tsai’s selection as DPP chair was tainted by many “ghost votes” (cast by passive members who were in the party only because faction leaders paid their dues and steered their votes).

Seeing Red and Turning Teal

Ma’s challenges as a candidate and as president have extended beyond issues with relatively ardent members of the Green or Blue camps. They include securing the support and trust of median, moderate voters and those who have shallowly held opinions. Many of these citizens had grown alienated from Taiwan’s politics and are thought to account for Taiwan’s slipping voter turnout rates.

Although many factors account for the KMT’s electoral successes, a significant component appears to have been popular sentiment that was more against Chen, the DPP, and recent “politics as usual” than it was pro-KMT. Like voters in many other democracies, Taiwanese blamed the party holding the presidency for an economy that was struggling (in comparison to Taiwan’s high baselines). With a key to economic recovery widely seen to be greater economic integration with the mainland, the incumbent DPP administration faced still greater blame because of the stalemated cross-Strait relations that marked Chen’s years in office.

Corruption appears to have been another major element in voter sentiment that weighed most heavily against the party in power. As some DPP leaders saw it, their party faced harsher public judgment for its lapses than did its rivals because the DPP had risen as a party of reform, drawing contrasts between itself and a then-ruling KMT that citizens expected to be corrupt. Possible double standards aside, the scandals concerning government funds and financial improprieties that swirled around Chen, his aides and relatives during the 2008 campaign and beyond meant that the most politically salient corruption stories were DPP problems. The highest-profile corruption case targeting the KMT, the failed prosecution of Ma, paled in comparison, and in some quarters deepened anti-DPP suspicions that the administration was using the criminal justice system to advance partisan ends.

The “red-shirt army,” which added the last major color to Taiwan’s political rainbow, was clearly anti-Chen but hardly pro-KMT. The thousands who joined rallies calling for Chen’s ouster over corruption issues were led by former DPP chairman and democratization hero Shih Ming-teh, who had served decades as a political prisoner under KMT rule. Even among KMT backers, corruption could be more an anti-DPP than a pro-KMT issue. An elderly KMT party member, festooned with partisan paraphernalia at a presidential election-eve rally, condemned the DPP as a “dirty party” (zang dang). When asked about his own party’s corruption, his response was less than a ringing endorsement: “comparatively, a bit better” (bijiao hao yidian).

Public weariness and resentment of divisive politics seem to have been another primarily anti-DPP phenomenon. Even long-time DPP supporters and party insiders described Chen’s political style and tactics in terms that resonated with U.S. criticisms of Bush and Karl Rove, and with similar concern about the potentially devastating effects for their party’s electoral prospects. Voters from the broad middle of the political spectrum, and especially younger people, commonly expressed resentment and fatigue about the tone and content of DPP campaign politics under Chen. They chafed at hectoring claims that, if they did not support Chen and the DPP, they did not truly “love Taiwan” or were not genuinely Taiwanese. Many ordinary voters had grown cynical about the Chen era’s purportedly principled agendas. From this perspective, constitutional replacement or revision and referenda on national security, cross-Strait relations, UN membership and political party corruption seemed to have shrunk from grand undertakings to hollow political tactics, deployed to energize the base, and lightly discarded when they failed to confer political advantage.

To be sure, Hsieh and Su sought to distance themselves from many of these associations, especially by promising a better economy through improved cross-Strait ties. But the Ma-Siew campaign was in a much better position to address the causes of voter disaffection, and did so. Righting the economy through better ties to Beijing was a centerpiece of the campaign and included specific proposals that a Ma administration would be in a stronger position to secure, including early establishment of cross-Strait weekend charter flights and increases in the number of mainland tourists coming to Taiwan, and longer-term pursuit of an agreement on closer economic cooperation and possibly a common market. Ma gave his campaign’s economic message much credit for his victory. DPP-linked corruption scandals also predictably drew KMT attention during the campaign. The theme of addressing the electorate’s concern on these issues remained prominent in Ma’s first address as president, with economic revitalization being the focus of the first substantive section and restoration and maintenance of clean and accountable government being another principal theme.

Ma engaged the issue of divisive politics, especially identity politics and loyalty-questioning. Throughout the campaign and in his inaugural address, Ma acknowledged the well-known fact that he was born in Hong Kong to a “mainlander” (waishengren) rather than a “Taiwanese” family. Ma then routinely went on to stress his ties to Taiwan, love for Taiwan, determination to protect Taiwan’s interests and, most vitally, quest for “ethnic harmony” and embrace of a Taiwanese identity that was not narrowly ethnically based or defined in opposition to a Chinese identity. His stance had much in common with Lee’s concept of a “New Taiwanese” that transcended ethnicity. As Ma put it in his inaugural address, Taiwan is “where I was raised and the resting place of my family” and a place that “I will protect with all my heart.”

Ma, the Harvard-trained lawyer and former justice minister, also spoke of the constitution in ways that departed markedly from Chen’s controversial approach. Chen had sought a new constitution and constitutional amendments that sought to make the document more purely Taiwanese, that implied an assertive position on Taiwan’s state-like international status and that might someday include a change in the national name from Republic of China to Taiwan. In contrast, Ma stressed the constitutional process for a smooth transfer of power after a democratic election, in rejoinder to Chen’s quickly dropped suggestion that he might not cede power to a successor who held a U.S green card. In his inaugural, Ma declared that “respecting the constitution is more important than amending it,” called for relying on the constitution to protect rights, maintain order, achieve impartial justice, secure government under law and invigorate civil society, and characterized the constitution as providing a “framework” for maintaining the cross-Strait status quo.

These positions, the electoral victories they helped to secure, and the domestic political implications of Ma’s agenda reflect more than a strategy of holding the base and reaching out to voters alienated by politics as recently practiced. On substantive policy, they moved toward the middle of Taiwan’s Blue-to-Green political spectrum. This could both appeal to the median voter and assuage the fears of “light Green” constituents.

The changed rules for selecting most of the legislators in the January 2008 elections—replacing multimember districts with ones in which a single seat went to the candidate who won the most votes—generated widely perceived incentives to compete for the moderate voter. On most assessments, the KMT did this far better than the DPP, turning a 60:40 advantage in votes into a near-three-fourths share of seats.

In seeking and securing the presidency, Ma’s stated positions on key policy issues are strikingly different from, and generally much less “Blue,” than those recently put forward by the KMT, including by failed presidential candidates in 2000 and 2004. Aside from the extraordinary case of Lee (who after leaving office left the KMT to found the TSU, which began as a “deeper Green” alternative to the DPP), presidents and aspiring presidents from the KMT had not offered such strong statements of identification with Taiwan, rather than the ROC. On cross-Strait issues, they had not explicitly pushed the possibility of unification with the mainland so far off into the indefinite future—a future that is non-negotiably beyond Ma’s first and probably second terms, that probably will not occur in his lifetime, and that includes both a democratic PRC and democratic approval from the people of Taiwan. They had not made safeguarding the island’s separate “sovereignty” so core a principle of foreign policy.

Other positions in the Ma repertoire fit more easily with the recent KMT playbook: moving quickly to advance cross-Strait economic relations in order to help the domestic economy, resuming cross-Strait negotiations under the framework of the 1992 Consensus, eschewing movements toward formal independence, seeking expanded international space and participation but being willing to do so under names other than Taiwan, and repairing frayed ties with Washington.

Many of these stances appealed to what many opinion polls and much research suggest are the preferences of the substantial middle of the Taiwanese electorate. Ma likely was helped in staking his claim to that ground by the Chen-led DPP having ceded that territory, and by Ma and those around him appearing to have safer hands than their opponents or the incumbent administration, which faced much criticism for recklessness and inexperience-driven fecklessness in government.

Assets in Trust

More than one might expect for a president who won in a landslide and whose party holds a supermajority in the legislature and local governments, Ma and his administration have reason to focus on securing support and trust within the KMT, across Taiwan’s partisan political divide and among dedicated, disaffected and ambivalent constituencies.

At home, legacies of elite polarization, intra-camp fragmentation and popular disaffection are problems for Taiwan’s political development and for anyone who wishes to lead the country. Looking ahead, Ma and the KMT also face a DPP that might head down either of two paths. It might wither into a permanent minority party, with its steady 40 percent (or less) vote share unable to produce victories under changed legislative electoral rules and absent the unusual presidential election circumstances of 2000 and 2004. Its remaining supporters, skewed toward the most strongly ethno-nationalist Taiwanese, and likely toward those with lower economic status, would become a relatively permanently disenfranchised minority. Such political conditions tend to foster resentment and distrust that are not healthy for a constitutional democracy. Managing that problem would be a major challenge for the majority party and national leaders, requiring more than Ma’s current reconciliation agenda.

Alternatively, the DPP may succeed in following the course sketched by Tsai and party moderates. It could move toward the middle, compete effectively for the many voters with malleable loyalties or doubts about KMT cross-Strait or economic policies, pounce on KMT errors and vices, and appeal to voters’ unease with single-party rule. Because of Taiwan’s KMT-dominated authoritarian past, that concern has continuing resonance, as Ma recognized when he noted in his inaugural that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Such fears could again surpass voters’ frustration with the gridlock produced by divided government during the Chen years. If such a DPP recovery occurs, the KMT will need to compete for voters’ support and trust in a manner familiar from many competitive two-party democracies and Taiwan’s recent past.

Abroad, Ma has aims for which support and trust at home will be vital assets. Compared to the Chen era, Ma’s agenda—and Beijing’s initial response—point to a more fluid and evolving relationship and many proposals, negotiations, and potential agreements. Given the fraught history of cross-Strait relations, the central and polarizing role they have played in Taiwan’s politics, and the deadly serious stakes for Taiwan, it will be important for Ma and his negotiators to engage their tough and sometimes difficult interlocutors across the Strait, first, from a position of strength rooted in stable domestic political support, second, with political room at home to maneuver and innovate abroad, and, third, with the ability to invoke credibly a Taiwanese consensus for Taiwan’s autonomous status—and the cross-Strait status quo—as something that binds and empowers them in dealing with Beijing.

Part 2: Changing Horses in the Middle of the Strait?

Taiwan’s External Relations

In his victorious campaign and upon taking office on May 20, 2008, Taiwan’s president Ma Ying-jeou set forth an ambitious program for progress in Taiwan’s external relations. Overcoming legacies of mistrust and misperception and avoiding new sources of these are crucial to achieving Ma’s articulated aims of improving cross-Strait relations, repairing ties to Washington, and preserving or enhancing Taiwan’s prosperity, security and dignity in the world. Success in navigating the limits that Taiwan’s democratic politics impose is no less necessary. Ma’s ascension to the ROC presidency and initial responses in Washington and Beijing have brought new opportunities that are favorable for Ma’s agenda. But they also have raised expectations on all sides, possibly to unrealistic levels.

Washington: Sighs of Relief… and Signs of Complacency

In the U.S., Ma’s election mostly brought sighs of relief that the unnerving gambits and rocky exchanges that characterized relations between Taipei and Washington in recent years would cease. Even a partial inventory of points of friction and sources of alarm over Taiwan’s international status and cross-Strait relations reveals a long period of chronic stress in Taiwan’s relations with its indispensable supporter: President Lee Teng-hui’s 1999 characterization of ROC-PRC relations as “state to state”; President Chen Shui-bian’s 2002 assertion that there was “one country on each side of the Strait”; Chen’s subsequent moves that appeared to try to “change the status quo” (as President Bush characterized them when rebuking Chen in a meeting with PRC Premier Wen Jiabao in 2003); Chen’s 2003-04 pursuit of a new, more distinctively Taiwanese constitution; his 2006 evisceration of Lee’s Guidelines for National Unification and National Unification Council, which officially had kept open the possibility of reunification with the mainland and which Chen had promised to preserve in his inaugural address’s “Four Noes and One Not” pledge to eschew key steps toward formal independence; and his decision to hold referenda on cross-Strait relations and national defense issues in 2004 and, most controversially, UN membership under the name Taiwan in 2008.

Coming in the wake of President Lee’s “state-to-state” remark and Beijing’s suspension of cross-Strait dialogue, and bringing to power for the first time a candidate from the “pro-independence” DPP, the prospect of a Chen presidency had raised significant concerns in the U.S.—ones serious enough that Chen’s 2000 inaugural speech was vetted in Washington and the Four Noes and One Not, according to many accounts, were added partly to ease American apprehensions. At the end of Chen’s second term, distrust and suspicion in the U.S. were extraordinarily high. Makers and watchers of the United States’ Taiwan policy worried openly about whether there would be any more destabilizing moves from Chen. Senior State Department officials issued several sharp condemnations of Chen’s UN membership referendum—moves that some in Taiwan construed as attempts to influence voters (or, more pointedly, to interfere in Taiwan’s democracy) in ways that would harm the DPP’s chances and help Ma and the KMT in the 2008 elections. In the wake of Chen’s short-lived suggestion that he might not hand over power to Ma because he allegedly held a U.S. green card, the Director of the American Institute in Taiwan (the U.S. embassy equivalent in Taipei) was moved to reaffirm publicly his confidence that there would be a peaceful, constitutional transition of power to the next democratically elected president. Although any prospect of a transition crisis soon faded, a few Taiwan-watchers in the U.S. (and in Taiwan) fretted that a lame-duck Chen might pull a “May surprise,” taking one last stab, possibly radical and potentially destabilizing, at asserting more formal state-like status for Taiwan.

Washington expected nothing of the kind from Ma, given his positions on cross-Strait and status issues (which included his own “Three Noes”—no independence, no unification and no use of force), his goals of renewed dialogue and rapid progress on concrete economic issues with the mainland, his familiarity to many in the U.S.’s Taiwan policy community, his moderate manner, smooth style, fluent English, and his avowed goal to “rebuild mutual confidence with the United States” and repair the damage caused by Chen’s “diplomatic adventurism.” With a statement from President Bush, the U.S. offered warm and high-level congratulations to Ma on his election, praising Taiwan as “a beacon of democracy” and welcoming the “fresh opportunity” Ma’s victory offered in cross-Strait relations. (Comments from the three principal U.S. presidential candidates were similarly positive.) Reports indicated that Washington had not sought to vet Ma’s inaugural address.

U.S. expectations of moving beyond the Chen era and the stresses it had created in U.S.-PRC (as well as U.S.-ROC) relations were strengthened by several post-election steps toward reviving discussions and improving ties between Beijing and Taipei. These included: mutual affirmation of the “1992 Consensus” of “one China, but with each side holding its own interpretation” as a foundational principle for talks; a brief informal conversation between then-vice president-elect Vincent Siew and PRC President and CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao at China’s Baoao Forum on economic development; a meeting between Hu and former KMT leader Lien Chan that reprised their breakthrough 2005 meeting and joint statement of principles on cross-Strait relations that Ma has largely endorsed; and a post-inaugural visit to the PRC by current KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung. Such developments were further welcomed in the U.S. because they also portended cross-Strait relations being conducted in a more bilateral fashion, allowing Washington to reduce its difficult and costly role of identifying and trying to rein in whichever side was at fault in chronic cross-Strait crises.

Although this is mostly good news for Washington, the silver cloud could have a dark lining. The principal dangers stem from complacency, albeit of several different types. For those in U.S. policy circles who are most suspicious of China’s rise and agenda and their implications for U.S. interests, any welcoming of the cross-Strait rapprochement expected under Ma reflects a dangerously sanguine view of dealing with Beijing. From this perspective (shared by Ma’s tougher critics in Taiwan), Ma may wittingly sell Taiwan out or inadvertently give away too much, with results that will be harmful to the U.S. and potentially ruinous for Taiwan.

Among the wider swath in U.S. policy circles that believes that more cooperative cross-Strait relations and more extensive engagement between Taiwan and the mainland are likely to be in the U.S.’s interest, the risks stem from excessive demonization of Chen. In this part of the Washington mind, the problems in Taiwan-U.S. relations may have become too firmly associated with Chen. As a result, there may be unduly high expectations about how smoothly cross-Strait relations will go under Ma.

This type of complacency, plus the U.S.’s presidential election season and the Bush administration’s lame-duck phase, make it more likely that the U.S. will not take steps that may be in its own interest to shore up Ma and Taiwan as they enter an uncharted phase in relations with Beijing. Some early signs here are worrisome. Wary of China’s possible reaction, Washington rebuffed Ma’s expressed interest in a pre-inauguration visit, even though his status as mere president-elect would not have had the Beijing-provoking effect that the long-off-the-table visit by an ROC president would have had. The long-pending sales of F-16s to Taiwan are all but certain not to be consummated on Bush’s watch, again partly out of reluctance to anger Beijing during the administration’s dying days. This will leave the issue for the next administration, which will not want to take the plane sales up as an early matter of business because Beijing’s predictably negative reaction will be stronger when the new U.S. president will not yet have demonstrated the bona fides of his commitment to good U.S.-China relations and when China might have higher hopes of extracting a compensating concession.

Especially at a time of leadership transition and with other impetuses to complacency at work, Washington also may fail to appreciate fully several factors that impose significant limits on what Hu’s regime and Ma’s can or will do to make progress in cross-Strait relations in the near term.

Beijing: Getting What You Wish For… and Needing to Follow Through

For Beijing, Ma’s election looks like a gratifying confirmation of China’s evolving strategy toward Taiwan and its progress along a learning curve of how to deal with Taiwan’s elections. Angered by President Lee’s Cornell University reunion speech asserting Taiwan’s international status (and by the U.S.’s having given him the opportunity), the PRC addressed Taiwan’s first fully democratic presidential election in 1996 with missile tests in the Strait. The attempt at intimidation failed. The U.S. sent a naval force to the region, and Taiwanese voters handed Lee a sweeping victory. In 2000, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji cautioned ROC voters not to support Chen and Beijing issued its second “White Paper” on the Taiwan question, warning that China could use force if Taiwan were to become (formally) separate from China, were occupied by a foreign power, or delayed “indefinitely” in engaging in reunification negotiations. Chen won with a minority of the votes in a three-way race. In 2004, Beijing moderated its tactics further, largely sitting on the sidelines but making clear its preference for the KMT’s Lien Chan and its continuing unwillingness to deal with Chen. Chen eked out a narrow and disputed victory.

By the time of the 2008 campaign, China had consolidated a revised approach to Taiwan, one associated with Hu’s leadership, and arguably reflecting the partial success of Chen’s strategy of assertiveness on Taiwan status issues. This approach is often characterized as one of preventing independence (or secession), rather than seeking to advance unification (or reunification). Although the PRC’s Anti-Secession Law in 2005 again threatened the use of force under already-familiar conditions and predictably roiled cross-Strait and U.S.-China relations and angered Taiwanese citizens, it also embodied Beijing’s revised Taiwan strategy. While taking a tough, even bellicose, line on the principle of sovereignty over Taiwan and doing so through a singularly formal means, the Anti-Secession law also reflected Beijing’s long-term acquiescence in a status quo of Taiwan’s de facto independence. Beijing was asserting that if Taipei did not formally “secede” (claiming de jure independence), Beijing would live with long-term non-unification.

In this context, Beijing approached the 2008 elections with its most engaging tactics yet. By offering to export pandas and import oranges, welcoming Lien Chan and his 2004 running-mate James Soong on mainland visits that, in Lien’s case, produced a landmark joint statement on cross-Strait relations, and signaling repeatedly that the 1992 Consensus would be an acceptable basis for resuming the negotiations that had been suspended nearly a decade earlier, PRC authorities sought to make clear that voting KMT would open up possibilities for progress in cross-Strait relations—and concrete issues of transportation, trade and investment ties—that many Taiwanese wanted. Although Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao wrong-footed it on the eve of the election by saying that “all the Chinese people” (including “Taiwan compatriots”) would decide all matters of sovereignty over Chinese territory (including Taiwan and Tibet), Beijing generally executed its more accommodating approach well. For the first time (albeit for reasons that went far beyond Beijing’s improved tactics), the PRC’s preferred candidate won Taiwan’s presidential election.

Beijing now faces the challenges of having gotten what it wanted. China must achieve significant, prompt progress in cross-Strait relations. If it does not, Hu’s anti-secession / not-pro-unification strategy will be vulnerable. Taiwanese voters may judge Ma’s strategy to be inept or, worse, a selling out of Taiwan’s interests to a malevolent China, and desert Ma and the KMT in favor of what Beijing sees as less palatable DPP alternatives. The PRC’s significant strategic interests in improved cross-Strait economic and political ties will suffer.

On this front, the initial signs from Beijing have been promising. An April 2008 meeting between the CCP’s Hu and the KMT’s honorary chairman Lien symbolically and explicitly reaffirmed their April 2005 joint statement. It confirmed the potentially central place in official cross-Strait policy under Ma of such principles as: resuming negotiations on the basis of the 1992 consensus, pursuing a peace accord, promoting economic exchanges and the “three links” (direct trade, mail, and transportation), promoting consultation concerning Taiwan’s participation in international activities (including the WHO) and holding party-to-party talks. Current KMT Chairman Wu’s late May meeting with Hu (in his capacity as CCP chief) raised party-to-party links a notch, to the highest formal level of the PRC era and prompted another affirmation from Hu of the 2005 Hu-Lien joint statement, the 1992 Consensus and Beijing’s willingness to discuss Taiwan’s participation in international activities. There has been significant movement toward reviving dialogue between Taiwan’s quasi-official Straits Exchange Foundation and its PRC counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, which had been suspended after Lee’s 1999 “state to state” remarks. Notably, Beijing named as ARATS chairman Jia Qinglin, a Politburo Standing Committee member and head of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the government’s main “united front” body.

The meeting between Hu and Siew at Baoao raised the level of cross-Strait governmental contacts, despite the diplomatic fig leaf that Siew participated as chairman of the Cross-Strait Common Market Foundation. Hu was moderately forthcoming, saying that the meeting “inspired us to think deeply about cross-Strait economic exchanges and cooperation under new circumstances,” and welcoming the opportunity to get beyond the “twists and turns” of the Chen years. He also pledged to “upgrade” economic and trade exchanges and promote the “three links.” Both sides defused a potential mini-crisis when the incoming leaders in Taiwan played down the significance of a Chinese press release that described the leaders’ Baoao chat as affirming the “one China principle” and when Chinese authorities promptly withdrew the offending press release and reaffirmed their acceptance of the 1992 Consensus.

Hu further committed China to this line when he endorsed “restor[ing]” cross-Strait “consultation and talks on the basis of the 1992 Consensus” in a post-election telephone conversation with Bush. In a much-repeated formulation that resonated with Siew’s Baoao proposal (itself later repeated in Ma’s inaugural) to “face reality, set sights on the future, shelve disputes and pursue a win-win scenario,” Hu told visiting KMT elder Lien that the two sides should “build mutual trust, lay aside disputes, seek consensus and shelve differences, and create a ‘win-win’ situation.” When Ma appointed a member of the Taiwan Solidarity Union—a party founded by former President Lee as an alternative to the DPP at the relatively pro-independence end of Taiwan’s political spectrum—to head his government’s Mainland Affairs Council, official Chinese spokesmen limited themselves to “no comment” (unlike several senior members of Ma’s own party, who excoriated their leader).

Beijing appeared poised to make early progress on relatively uncontroversial, primarily economic, issues, beginning with weekend cross-Strait charter flights and increased tourism from the mainland. Ma wrote a July 4 start date for these developments into his inaugural address. Although that likely reflected solid expectations on both sides that the deadline would be met, it set a potentially problematic precedent should the next round of accords prove harder to achieve. More broadly, the apparent strategy of harvesting the low-hanging fruit first makes a good deal of sense, especially in light of the need to build mutual confidence and momentum after many years of tense relations and suspended talks. Still, openness to—and achievement of—quick advances on easy issues may create or exacerbate overly optimistic expectations and, in turn, risk disappointment, frustration and renewed tensions.

If Beijing’s Taiwan agenda runs into difficulties, it may also have to adjust to different responses from Washington than it came to expect during the Chen years. Under the probable conditions that Ma hews to the approach laid out in his campaign and inaugural address, and a new U.S. president does not radically alter American policy, the sources of cross-Strait friction in the post-Chen era are less likely to appear to U.S. policymakers as the ROC’s doing. Conflicts are thus less likely to have Washington coming to Beijing’s assistance in checking a Taiwan leader’s initiatives. While the PRC surely and rightly will welcome the end of Chen’s “surprises” and what it saw as his reckless provocations, the more mixed responses that will probably come from Washington—more often critical of Beijing, often less chastising of Taipei, and probably more often trying to keep the U.S. on the sidelines—will complicate China’s relations with the U.S. and across the Strait. Early signs of this possible pattern came in the run-up to Ma’s inauguration. The U.S. Deputy Secretary of State pointedly criticized China’s missile build-up, reaffirmed the U.S.’s commitment to offer Taiwan means for protecting itself, and stressed that the U.S. supports Taiwan’s “meaningful” participation in the international community. The Washington-based Chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan commented that “success” in improving cross-Strait relations “will depend on China’s decision to take a more flexible and imaginative approach.”

A greater risk of excessively high expectations stems from Taipei, not Washington. Although Beijing has become much more sophisticated in its understanding of Taiwan’s politics, China may not be prepared to deliver enough to Taiwan, or fully appreciate the limits to what the Ma administration will or can deliver. It remains unclear to observers—and perhaps uncertain to participants—how much the PRC’s Taiwan policymakers still expect economic integration to lead, relatively linearly, to political accommodation, and how prepared they are for the severity of the difficulties that may vex negotiations over government-to-government interactions, security issues, the “peace accord” that leaders on both sides have favored in principle, and any discussions that implicate the ultimate, volatile question of sovereignty—as so many issues, sometimes unpredictably, do.

Although China’s cross-Strait strategy is decided at the highest levels and the contemporary approach is widely seen as bearing Hu’s personal imprint, China’s Taiwan policymaking process is not monolithic. While the evidence is inescapably fragmentary, there are signs that proponents of relatively anti-accommodationist views (typically associated with the Foreign Ministry or the PLA) remain reluctant to give Taiwan very much, even though it might be the case that nothing less will suffice to sustain progress in cross-Strait relations. Ma’s sometimes sharp criticism of China’s government and senior Chinese officials during his presidential campaign likely provided fodder for those in Beijing urging a relatively tough line on Taiwan (even as others surely discounted them as campaign politics).

If more moderate, Taiwan-accommodating elements can minimize the impact of such views, they still face the problem that China’s cross-Strait policymaking is ponderous and inertial. Because even top leaders must grapple with disparate views and multiple institutions, build elite consensus, and avoid risking the politically fatal outcome of “losing Taiwan” (or even committing a grave error in Taiwan policy), Beijing’s cross-Strait policy does not reorient quickly or adapt nimbly. Evanescent opportunities can be missed and necessary steps not taken. On this front, the World Health Assembly meeting in May was a disconcerting sign. Facing unreformed opposition from Beijing, Taiwan was again denied the opportunity to participate in the World Health Organization, even though it sought only observer status and even though the PRC’s bungled handling of the 2003 SARS crisis had created serious public health risks in Taiwan and enduring international sympathy for the ROC’s appeal for fuller WHO access.

There also is considerable risk that China’s Taiwan policymakers do not fully comprehend how much Ma and his KMT differ in outlook and agenda from their predecessors or how different a domestic political landscape they face.

Taiwan: A Different KMT… and Democratic Accountability

In ways that matter for cross-Strait relations, Ma is not Lien Chan, the senior KMT leader and two-time KMT presidential nominee with whom Hu and others have had the most extensive dealings in recent years. The constraints imposed on Ma—or any ROC president—by citizen preferences in Taiwan’s democratic polity today are different from those of a decade or more ago, when Beijing last seriously engaged in cross-Strait negotiations.

To be sure, Ma has made strong, credible commitments to deeper engagement with the PRC and warmer cross-Strait relations. Even though many inside the campaign appeared genuinely to believe that the outcome was in doubt, Ma took positions on China policy that might cost him votes. He backed Siew’s cross-Strait common market and the 1992 Consensus, both derided by the DPP for being too close to Beijing’s “one China” principle. Ma made his “Three Noes”—including the “no independence” pledge—such a centerpiece of mainland policy in his campaign and inaugural address that he likely has less room to discard them than Chen had to abandon his “Four Noes and One Not.” (Unlike Ma’s Three Noes, Chen’s commitments always had an air of reluctance, yet he never squarely rejected them and began seriously to erode them only late in his second term.) Despite his vulnerability on the issue in Taiwan’s ethnically fraught politics, Ma also endorsed, much more than his predecessor, the “Chineseness” of Taiwan. For example, he referred in his inaugural address to Taiwan’s and the mainland’s “common Chinese heritage,” the continuing relevance of Sun Yat-sen’s thought to Taiwan, and Taiwan’s accomplishments as the first successful democracy in the Chinese world.

Ma also closely linked his promise to reenergize Taiwan’s economy—a key concern for voters in 2008—to improved cross-Strait ties and the trade and investment opportunities they would bring. Ma called for a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement with China (CECA), as well as an eventual cross-Strait common market, despite opposition charges that a CECA would reduce Taiwan’s status to something akin to that of Hong Kong (the PRC’s partner in a Closer Economic Partnership Agreement, or CEPA), and that the common market would undermine Taiwan’s autonomy (as well lower living standards for many Taiwanese).

Ma and other KMT leaders took additional steps that raised expectations for cross-Strait progress which they could ill-afford to disappoint: Ma’s prediction of regular weekend cross-Strait charter flights (the first step toward normalized transportation links) and increased tourist flows from the mainland by July 4; the several high-level post-election visits to the mainland; the striking statement in Ma’s inaugural that Hu’s comments to Bush, Lien and Siew on cross-Strait relations were “very much in line” with his own thinking; and Ma’s naming as SEF head—and, therefore, lead cross-Strait negotiator—Chiang Pin-kung, a senior KMT figure, former leader in the legislature and veteran of cross-Strait trade and investment negotiations, who promptly committed to building “mutual trust” and normalizing cross-Strait economic and trade ties.

At the same time, Ma has bound himself no less firmly to positions that limit how far Taiwan will go in pursuing closer ties with Beijing. Even though it might harm hopes for quick post-election progress, candidate Ma had some harsh words for the PRC. Tellingly, his sharpest and most significant rebukes involved issues with implications for Taiwan’s international status. He condemned the PRC’s response to unrest in Tibet, even raising the possibility of an Olympic boycott. Ma’s point, as he explained it, was that—Beijing’s similar assertions of sovereignty notwithstanding—Taiwan was not like Tibet and therefore could not become similarly subject to the Chinese state’s repressive measures. Ma sharply denounced as “arrogant” and “stupid” PRC Premier Wen’s assertion that matters affecting Taiwan’s future were for China to decide. To the contrary, Ma insisted, any change in the status quo required the democratic support of the people of Taiwan. For Ma, Taiwan’s successful democracy figures prominently in a vision that limits possible terms of cross-Strait accommodation: democracy defines Taiwan, distinguishes it from the PRC, enhances its international stature (as a “beacon of democracy”), and can influence political change on the mainland.

Many Ma statements strongly assert, or pledge to protect, Taiwan’s de facto independence. The promise not to discuss unification is a central element of Ma’s Three Noes. Initially covering his first term, subsequent glosses on this commitment pushed the prospect of unification to a point probably beyond Ma’s lifetime. Ma has said that the cross-Strait peace accord floated in the Hu-Lien joint statement would require Beijing’s withdrawal of missiles that threaten Taiwan. Ma’s inaugural address comment that he sees eye to eye with Hu on cross-Strait issues surely does not extend to the Hu-era Anti-Secession Law, which Ma criticized in much stronger terms than did most KMT leaders. Ma pointedly rejects Beijing’s “one-China principle.” His embrace of the 1992 Consensus is limited, too. He characterizes it as a policy of “mutual non-denial” that lies somewhere between each side’s formally recognizing the other and characterizing the other as a part of its territory.

Unlike the KMT’s 2000 and 2004 presidential candidate Lien Chan, Ma routinely refers to “Taiwan” as well as the “ROC” as relevant entities. In his inaugural speech, Ma characterized the ROC constitution as a framework for maintaining the cross-Strait status quo. In language somewhat reminiscent of Chen, Ma regularly speaks of safeguarding his nation’s sovereignty and seeking international dignity, as well as the other two of his “three yeses” (prosperity and security). This quest for “dignity” includes attempts to maintain or expand Taiwan’s international “space,” partly through participation in international institutions and other international regimes. In his inaugural, Ma affirmed the three yeses, proposed mutual “respect” between the PRC and ROC in international organizations and activities, and declared that an end to Taiwan’s international isolation was a condition for cross-Strait relations to “move forward with confidence.”

Other statements and actions are consistent with this agenda. Negotiating with Beijing to address the question of Taiwan’s international space is one of the items on the Hu-Lien 2005 joint statement that seems to have most salience for the Ma administration. Ma’s call in his inaugural address for a “diplomatic truce” to end the financially costly and recently scandal-producing competition with Beijing for the dwindling handful of small-state governments that do or might extend diplomatic recognition to Taipei is more a pragmatic reassessment than a change of preferences. Ma cast the shift as part of his broader agenda of using “flexible methods” to secure and expand Taiwan’s place in the international community. It is the latest chapter in an ongoing story that includes Lee’s replacement of the ROC’s former insistence that other states “choose sides” with an unsuccessful pursuit of dual recognition of both the ROC and the PRC. Although adopted as an electoral tactic to counter the DPP’s similarly tactical referendum on UN membership under the name “Taiwan,” the KMT never formally abandoned its March 2008 referendum calling for UN representation of Taiwan under more “flexible” nomenclature. Although the party and its leader clearly had no love for the referendum, UN representation for Taiwan is an enduring goal, the formal pursuit of which began under the prior KMT administration.

Faced with the difficulty of running as a candidate from a “mainlander” family and born outside of Taiwan (in Hong Kong), Ma trumpeted his love for and loyalty to Taiwan and embraced a Taiwanese identity throughout his campaign for the nation’s highest office and in his inaugural address. In Taiwanese politics, such statements resonate strongly with commitments at least to maintain the status quo of Taiwan’s de facto independence. They also inescapably evoke the “New Taiwanese” idea, which transcends ethnicity, is based in a political community, and was crafted by Lee, a hero of pro-independence Taiwanese and in whose administration Ma held senior posts, including vice chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council. Ma’s statements also stood in marked contrast to the primarily “ROC” and more heavily “Chinese” notions of identity associated with Lien and an older generation of KMT leaders.

Some of these positions might be discounted as election-year politicking. That conclusion is too flip, however. Some of the statements were politically costly or at least politically risky, at home or across the Strait. Accounts from close observers of Ma describe a man who developed stronger feelings for and connections with the Taiwanese people, and a deeper personal identification with Taiwan, over the course of a long, island-wide campaign. Moreover, while campaign commitments may be fleeting, democratic political constraints are not. Whatever Ma personally may think or feel, he was elected by, and is accountable to, a Taiwanese electorate that wants to preserve the cross-Strait status quo, that strongly, if complexly, identifies itself as Taiwanese, and that favors robust international status for Taiwan (whether as a matter of pride and dignity or as a means of preserving vital interests). Ma and the KMT won the 2008 presidential and legislative elections by appealing to median Taiwanese voters who hold such views. Those views partly reflect changes that took root during the last decade, some of them due to Chen’s efforts to move Taiwanese voters toward (and sometimes beyond) such positions.

In dealing with Beijing and pursuing cross-Strait ties, Ma and his administration will remain constrained by their accountability to Taiwan’s electorate and its preferences. The much-battered DPP, even under relatively moderate new leader Tsai Ing-wen, is poised to exploit its perceived advantages and credibility on Taiwan sovereignty issues if Ma’s strategy seems to get too little or give away too much. As Ma tellingly put it on the eve of his inauguration, although he came to office with great optimism about prospects for engaging the PRC, he still felt as if he were “treading on thin ice and standing upon the edge of an abyss.”

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