Election Showdown Raises Tensions

When lawmakers from 49 countries gathered in Taipei in January for the first annual conference of the International Parliamentary Forum on Asia-Pacific Security, they were supposed to discuss things such as the North Korean nuclear crisis and U.S.-Japan military cooperation. For the Taiwanese organizers, however, there was only one topic on the agenda: A referendum President Chen Shui-bian wants to hold on the same day as the presidential election.

The lawmakers, whose trips had been paid for by the Taiwanese government, were happy to oblige. "You have every right to conduct that," Fiji Parliament Speaker Jonetani Kaukimoce said in his opening remarks to the conference, referring to the referendum.

This most recent attempt to internationalize the standoff across the Taiwan Strait comes at a critical time for Chen, who is seeking to win a second term in the March 20 election. He is facing Lien Chan, chairman of the Kuomintang, still the richest party in the world, and vice presidential candidate James Soong, who now leads a splinter party from the KMT, the People First Party.

In the last election in 2000, Soong ran an independent campaign that split the KMT's vote with Lien, meaning Chen could win with just 39 percent of the vote. Now that Lien and Soong have teamed up in a "pan-blue alliance," Chen has been forced to divert attention from his domestic policy flip-flops and focus on building a sense of national identity in the face of international indifference.

China bitterly opposes Taiwan holding any sort of referendum, as it fears such a vote could undermine its assertion that the pro-independence government doesn't reflect the views of the "Taiwanese compatriots." It has already said a referendum on independence, or even unification, would mean war. Beijing has also managed to get Washington on side. During a trip by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to the U.S., President George W. Bush in December chided Chen for taking actions that indicated he might want to change the status quo.

Taiwan President Chen-Shui-bian campaigning in referendum. Photo: AP Wide World Photos

To placate Washington, Chen appears to have given up his original idea of asking the public what they think about the 500 short-range missiles China has targeting Taiwan. The referendum will now ask whether Taiwan should boost its anti-missile capabilities if China refuses to remove the missiles. He has also added a second question on whether the government should negotiate with China on establishing a "peace and stability" framework.

Increased tensions between China and Taiwan at election time are nothing new. In 1996, when Taiwan held its first presidential election, Beijing responded by conducting missile tests in the sea near Taiwan. Days before the election in 2000, then Chinese premier Zhu Rongji warned Taiwanese voters that electing a pro-independence candidate could result in war. In both cases the threats backfired and increased resentment toward China.

Despite China's animosity toward him in the run-up to the last election, Chen initially tried to appeal to Beijing with his "five nos" inaugural speech, during which he promised not to seek independence or change the nation's name. That all changed in 2002 when Chen took over the chairmanship of his Democratic Progressive Party. On that day, Nauru-one of fewer than 30 countries that recognize the Republic of China, as Taiwan is officially known-announced that it was switching recognition to China. Chen's tone toward China changed significantly after the snub, and he began referring to China and Taiwan as "one country on each side" of the Taiwan Strait and threatening to take Taiwan "on its own path."

While the trend over the past 30 years has been for Taiwan to lose diplomatic allies, it occasionally woos new friends with aid and technical assistance. In November last year, Kiribati announced that it was recognizing Taiwan. The Kiribati development engendered more than the usual anger from China because it maintained an important satellite tracking station in that equatorial island nation. But after efforts to get Kiribati to reject relations with Taiwan failed, China dismantled the tracking station and left.

This setback for China will probably make it more aggressive toward Taiwan in the run-up to the election, and Philip Yang, a political science professor at National Taiwan University, believes that shifts in policy by both Chen and the pan-blue camp mean ties are unlikely to improve no matter who wins.

"In early January Chen was talking about 'ideological jihad', and now he is talking about cross-strait stability," Yang says. "And the opposition changed its position on the referendum law and Taiwan independence."

Yang says that while a victory for Lien might spur negotiations on establishing direct transport links between the two sides, "political negotiations will probably face a lot of obstacles, a lot of mistrust, whoever wins the election."