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'One China' vs. 'two states'

March 2, 2000 The China Post

On Tuesday, President Lee Teng-hui publicly denied there was any difference of opinion between himself and the Kuomintang's presidential candidate, Lien Chan, regarding cross strait policy.

President Lee's denial was issued after former independent presidential hopeful Chen Li-an, a former defense minister and Control Yuan president, said Lien would move Taipei away from Lee's controversial positions on cross-strait relations so that negotiations with mainland China could get back on track.

In his remarks, Lee said there was no difference between his current stance on the "one China" issue and the policy followed by the government for many years. Lee was referring to an interview he granted to Germany's Deutsche Welle radio station last year, in which he said cross-strait ties should be thought of as being tantamount to "special state-to-state relations." The remarks, which afterwards were dubbed the "two-states theory" by the local and international press, infuriated Beijing, which accused Lee of abandoning Taipei's longstanding stance that there was only one Chinese state.

After months of angry rhetoric on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, Beijing last week issued an 11,000-character "white paper" on cross-strait relations that, among other things, warned of military action against Taiwan if it delayed reunification negotiations indefinitely. The "white paper," issued by Beijing's State Council, immediately evoked criticism from the international community, although it didn't attract much attention here in Taiwan until after the international media covered it for days.

Now, Lee has said that his remarks on "special state-to-state relations" don't differ from Taipei's traditional stance on cross-strait ties and negotiations with the mainland. As controversial as his remarks often are, in many ways he is right about this.

When Beijing and Taipei first decided to negotiate with each other, informal arrangements were made to put aside controversial issues so that both sides could immediately begin working out practical problems that had arisen since cross-strait contacts began to bloom in the late '80s.

Both governments decided to conveniently avoid the touchy issue of recognizing each other's authority by simply establishing ostensibly private organizations -- Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and the mainland's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) -- which were empowered to conduct negotiations on behalf of their respective governments. Right away, SEF and ARATS orally agreed that both sides would sit down and negotiate under the basic principle of "one China." But they also agreed that each side would be allowed to issue its own definition of what "one China" meant, effectively agreeing to disagree on the subject so that practical talks could proceed. This arrangement worked well until Beijing unilaterally broke off talks in 1995 in protest at President Lee's private visit to the United States.

President Lee's suggestion last year that both sides should regard cross-strait ties as "special state-to state relations" further infuriated the mainland and even evoked some criticism from the international community. But looking at the issue from the perspective of how cross-strait talks have been conducted since the beginning, each side originally agreed to let the other define "one China" as it pleased. Today, both Lee and Lien maintain that their policies are one and the same.

Basically this is true. But it should be noted that all three of the leading presidential contenders basically have a similar policy -- that cross-strait negotiations should be conducted on an equal basis, and not one of a central government dealing with a local authority. Whether it is called "special state-to-state relations," "quasi-international relations" or "negotiations between equal partners," these are all just different names for the same thing.

Instead of arguing with ourselves about what all this means, we would all be better off waiting for Beijing to come to its senses and agree to return to the earlier arrangement. While we shouldn't intentionally provoke the mainland, a move that can only delay the resumption of cross strait negotiations, we shouldn't rush to change our policies in order to conform to Beijing's demands. After all, practically no one in Taiwan wants to reunify with the mainland before major changes take place on the other side of the Taiwan Strait.