Mainland China throws its weight around
February 27, 2000 Taipei Times
It's official, mainland China is trying to influence Taiwan's presidential election. Confirmation of this came from the director of mainland China 's Taiwan Affairs Office, Zhang Mingqing, in an interview with Japan's NHK radio. Zhang's message was simple: Elect the DPP's Chen Shui-bian and cross-strait relations won't improve. On the heels of Monday's white paper, in which mainland China threatened the use of force against Taiwan if it delayed too long on reunification negotiations, the message is crystal clear: Choose Chen and you choose trouble.
Before readers dismiss this with a shrug, thinking that both mainland China 's preference and behavior is typical, remember that the more open mainland China is about its interference the worse a name it creates for itself -- especially when the US Congress' vote on permanent Normal Trade Relations looms. Few, we hope, will be influenced by US President Bill Clinton's remarks Friday in which he seemed to suggest that Beijing's bad behavior was Taiwan's fault for holding elections in the first place.
So there is something surprising about mainland China 's recent extremism after all. Why would that be? We can only assume that mainland China is close to panic over the latest in-house polls conducted by the political parties in which, we understand, show that Lien Chan has fallen back to third place a good five points or so behind Chen Shui-bian and James Soong. Since DPP voters are traditionally more guarded in expressing their preference, it could be that Chen's chances of victory are better than almost anybody thought. No wonder mainland China is close to hysteria.
That mainland China should behave contemptibly will come as no surprise to anyone. What is particularly despicable in the current situation is the KMT's complicity in mainland China 's antics, rather than decrying them in the interests of the rights of Taiwan voters to make their choice free from intimidation. Twenty years ago the party had a well known slogan: "If the KMT steps down, the communists will come". Now the KMT is trying to popularize a revised version: "If Chen shui-bian steps up, mainland China will attack". The KMT's problem is of course that Beijing has shown Lien Chan's own China policy -- supposed to be a trump card -- to be totally vacuous. After all, Lien's much-trumpeted 10-point wish list of various ways the two sides could get cozy after his election was based on the condition that Jiang Zemin take "concrete actions demonstrating a sincere desire for peace." The Beijing government's rejoinder, four days later, was the white paper, in which, far from demonstrating peaceful intentions, Taiwan was told to start talking on Beijing's terms soon or start filling sandbags. It is even possible that mainland China realized the harm that its bellicosity had done to Lien's campaign and its attack on Chen is an attempt to reverse the damage.
Mainland China 's dislike of Chen is, or course, only a pale imitation of its detestation of President Lee Teng-hui, as the white paper took the trouble to remind us. We cannot help notice that in attacking Chen, Beijing is of the opinion that the DPP presidential candidate is Lee's real spiritual heir -- as Chen himself once said, he is playing Joshua to Lee's Moses. As the KMT's campaign lies in tatters and the party attempts to win the election not on policy but on scandal-mongering, we can only hope that mainland China 's attempt to derail Taiwan's democracy will backfire as much this time as it did in 1996. At that time, Mainland China 's loathing of Lee gained him a landslide victory with 52 percent of the vote. A message, then to those Lee voters -- and if you don't take our word for it, you can take mainland China 's instead -- if you loved Lee in 1996, you should like Chen in 2000.
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