Published: May 13, 2008
This analysis may not be correct, however.
In fact, Ma is not a groom in wedding attire. He is more of a doctor in a white coat. He is holding not a ring for a bride, but a stethoscope for a patient. What he wants is not a honeymoon but a period of convalescence from wounds caused by the struggles within the island, between the blue and green camps, and across the Taiwan Strait, between Taiwan and mainland China.
During the eight-year rule under the Democratic Progressive Party of the green camp, the manmade conflict between ethnic groups -- islanders versus mainlanders -- has been strengthened both on the island and across the strait. The Chinese people on both sides were badly hurt in this conflict.
Therefore, it is expected that the bluer Ma’s new Cabinet members are, the better the prospects for cross-strait relations. On the other hand, the more than 5 million voters in Taiwan who didn’t go for Ma do not need salt in their wounds, but a needle to sew them up. After a careful search in his doctor’s bag, Ma came up with the right needle -- Lai Shin-yuan, who is still seen as a pan-green supporter despite agreeing to support Ma’s policy on the 1992 Consensus -- an agreement signed that year by representatives from the mainland and Taiwan in which they agreed that there is only one China, with two interpretations of what “one China” means.
Lai originally emerged from the blue Kuomintang camp and served as a member of the International Affairs Committee of the Taipei city government from 1999-2000, when Ma was the city’s mayor. Before that she obtained her doctorate in Britain, worked as a journalist from 1978-1980 at the China Times under the Kuomintang’s control, and was employed by several international institutions, where she cultivated her knowledge of international affairs.
At that time it wasn’t Ma Ying-Jeou but Lee Teng-Hui who was the strongest magnet for the Kuomintang.
Lee wasn’t satisfied with acting as a step-son to former President Chiang Ching-kuo. He wanted to become the spiritual leader, or godfather, of Taiwan’s independence and democracy. Thus he started to turn politically green, split the Kuomintang from inside, and eventually supported the DPP of the green camp to take political power in 2000.
Lai was pulled by his magnetic attraction into the government under the DPP’s leadership since 2000, and took up a post as senior advisor to the “National Security Council,” mainly dealing with economic affairs. Later she left the Kuomintang, joined Lee’s new party and won a legislative seat in 2004.
But Lee turned out to be more of a pendulum than a magnet, vacillating back and forth, in terms of his political position. Lee was pro-blue, shifted to pro-green in 1999 and later turned blue again. In 1999 Lee became the godfather of Taiwan independence; in early 2007 he stated that he was never in favor of Taiwan independence, and that he was even thinking of visiting the mainland.
When the magnet moved back to the Kuomintang, the needles it had attracted also made the move. Dr. Ma is talking this needle that Lee passed on and turned it blue.
The first thing Ma must do with this needle is to sew up the relations within the Kuomintang that Lee split; that will show Ma’s big heart in embracing previous enemies. Secondly, Ma wants to be able to embrace the officials and civil servants of the previous government so that the hearts of the green camp can be pacified to some extent, but without getting on China’s nerves. After all, Lee clearly separated himself from the Taiwan independence forces; will Lai not do the same thing?
It looks like Ma will be busy with this healing work in the coming years -- dealing with the wounds between ethnic groups and across the strait and saving Taiwan’s falling economy. Luckily, the cure for all these ills does exist, and has been approved by the mainland. Ma’s No. 2 man, Vincent Siew, agreed with President Hu Jintao in mid-April to face reality, create the future, put arguments aside and look for win-win positions, while Hu agreed with senior Kuomintang member Lien Chan in late April to build mutual trust, put arguments aside, seek common ground while reserving differences and jointly create a win-win situation.
This is the politics of healing. If cross-strait relations can recover from their wounds, those within the island will be healed easily.
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(Wu Jiaxiang is a senior researcher at the China Research Center for Public Policy of the China Society of Economic Reform. He is a renowned economic and political scholar and a former visiting scholar at Harvard University's Fairbanks Center for East Asian Research. His research areas include economics, domestic and international politics, business strategy, and Chinese traditional strategy and thought. This article is translated and edited from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online; the original can be found at http://blog.sina.com.cn/wujiaxiang and www.ncn.org . ©Copyright Wu Jiaxiang.)
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