Beijing Downplays Impact Of Taiwan Vote

by Antoaneta Bezlova

In its first official reaction since Taiwan's legislative polls on Dec. 1, Beijing said mainstream public opinion on the island was still against Taiwan's independence.

"We want to remind everyone that the majority of people in Taiwan are hoping for peace and stability across the Taiwan straits," Zhang Mingqing, spokesman of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said in a press briefing today.

"No matter what political forces come on stage in Taiwan, they can only exist if they represent the mainstream of the society. We believe the mainstream of Taiwanese society is against independence," he added.

Any trouble that may arise from the victory of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the legislative election is nothing but "a storm in a teacup," Li Jiaquan, a researcher at the Institute of Taiwan Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the China Daily newspaper on Dec. 3.

"The results may temporarily cloud the relations between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland, but no dramatic change in the basic pattern of cross-straits ties is expected," he said.

The election swept away the Kuomintang -- which fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with the communists in China -- from its last bastion of government control on the island. It is left it with 68 seats in the 225-member legislature. In its place, the Democratic Progressive Party of President Chen Shuibian became the legislature's largest party with 87 seats.

Although the DPP's win is not enough to control the legislature, President Chen is likely to emerge with a much stronger hand, boosting the party's chances of winning the next presidential elections in 2004.

The outcome of the elections is unsettling for Beijing. China regards Taiwan as a renegade province and has vowed to achieve reunification with the island. Chinese leadership is deeply suspicious that the ultimate goal of Chen and his party is to declare formal independence for Taiwan.

During Chen's first 18 months in office, Beijing has refused to engage his government in a serious dialogue over cross-straits relations. Instead, Chinese leaders have sought to court members of the Kuomintang, their formal arch-rival that favors reunification with the Chinese mainland.

Faced with Chen Shuibian's refusal to accept the negotiations' framework, Chinese leaders have held out hope that the 2004 presidential elections in Taiwan will result in the emergence of a new leader, more willing to deal with Beijing on its own terms.

Yet with a stronger mandate for DPP and a weaker Kuomintang, Beijing is debating whether Chen would indeed be a transitional figure in Taiwan's political landscape as it was previously thought.

Beijing's restrained reaction after the announcement of electoral results suggest that Chinese leaders are likely to take more a long-term view and wait to see what Chen's administration does next.

Many feel confident that flowering economic integration between the island and the Chinese mainland would force Chen and his party to be more accommodating to Beijing's demands.

Chen is faced with the difficult task of pulling the island out of its worst economic slump in decades. Even as political relations between the two sides remain frozen, many in Taiwan see mainland China, with its strong economic performance, as a beacon of hope.

Some Beijing observers suggest Chinese leaders will leave the question of reunification with Taiwan on the back burner until a major shift of power is completed in the fall of 2002. Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin, Premier Zhu Rongji and other senior party and government officials are expected to step down from their posts in 2002 and 2003.

Li Jiaquan is confident that although the DPP's electoral triumph makes the party more comfortable in the legislature, it still cannot afford to act tough against Beijing by disrupting the status quo.

"One thing is for sure: the DPP, no matter how hard it may try, it will never change the fact that there is only one China in the world," he was quoted as saying.

Echoing his remarks, Zhang Mingqing from the Taiwan Affairs Office stressed today that "no matter what party comes to power in Taiwan, as long as it recognizes the one-China principle, we will talk and develop cross-strait relations."