Beijing to Taipei, via Singapore

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The announcement of the summit held between the Chinese and Taiwanese Presidents on 7 November 2015 in Singapore had the effect of a thunderclap in Taipei, such was the surprise at the lack of prior information provided by the authorities on both shores. (1) Various causes have been advanced for the holding of the summit, an idea that has been discussed for 20 years, but which had never taken place due to the many obstacles to its organisation on both sides.Several explanations have been put forward in the public debate in Taiwan: the desire of Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan's outgoing president, to carve out for himself a place in history; the two presidents' objective of restricting the future policy of the favourite in the polls, the president of the main opposition party, Tsai Ing-wen; the determination of the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, to make progress on the Taiwan issue; or the development of a common All-China front against Washington on the issue of the South China Sea.In this article, we focus on yet another cause that has been put forward, which doesn't exclude the others. It is China's desire to intervene indirectly in Taiwan's then on-going campaign for the presidential and legislative elections of 16 January 2016, the outcome of which, a double defeat of the Kuomintang (KMT), was by then no longer in doubt. This explanation does not conflict with the tendency to see the two parties, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the KMT, as determined to take a step forward before the return of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to power. We examine here the hypothesis, advanced by many, that the Beijing authorities may have eventually agreed to the organisation of the summit in order to bolster Xi Jinping's image in China on the Taiwan issue and try to influence a critical situation for China in the Strait (the prospect of a historic defeat of the KMT, a circumstantial ally of the CCP and a unifying party, which during the eight-year presidency of Ma Ying-jeou had conducted a conciliatory policy towards China). (2)In the absence of testimony from those directly involved in the negotiation regarding the motives of the two presidents, we simply suggest here that it was China's concerns about the predicted return of the Democratic Progressive Party to the presidency of the Republic and its probable victory in the legislature, and the context of an irrepressible strengthening of the island identity in attitudes in Taiwan, that led China to overcome its reluctance to organise a summit that presented uncertain benefits and definite disadvantages.However, we focus less on the hypothesis of a cost-benefit analysis that may have pushed Beijing to overlook the costs in order to obtain the benefits, than more specifically on the use of an emergency wild card. According to this interpretation, Beijing may have made a kind of hail Mary pass, hoping that this indirect intervention would positively influence the KMT's campaign without the inevitably negative impacts for China of such a summit proving disastrous for its Taiwan policy in the world, without, however, being too confident of its chance of success. It appears that not only did the intervention not benefit the KMT electorally, but also that the international benefits derived by Taiwan from such a summit proved to be real, demonstrating that China cannot control the Taiwanese game: neither the carrot nor the stick seem to have any effect in the face of the affirmation of a Taiwanese nation. China knew it for sure, but could Beijing afford to stand still?After first recalling the origin of the idea of a summit between the two presidents and the failure of governments on both shores to organise it previously, we briefly examine a few causes that have been put forward to explain its suddenly being held, prior to finding that only a critical situation could have led Beijing to give the summit a try when it presented so many disadvantages for China. …