Taiwan is accustomed to straddling fault lines between great powers, and it’s aiming to become a more productive mediator as Asian territorial disputes heat up, inflaming security tensions between the U.S. and mainland China.
As China reclaims land and builds military structures on rocky outcroppings it claims in the South China Sea, Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou has proposed a plan for defusing the situation that echoes his call for ameliorating disputes over the Diaoyu (or Senkaku) Islands with Japan in the East China Sea two years ago.
The South China Sea Peace Initiative calls for the same kind of balancing act Mr. Ma says has worked in his island’s long-running spat with China — shelving sovereignty discussions and focusing on common goals. Some might call it agreeing to disagree.
In this case — where claimants include China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan — Mr. Ma means setting up structures to develop the region’s resources jointly while maintaining freedom of navigation.
Mr. Ma outlined the plan in a videoconference with Stanford University that was telecast to Taiwan’s diplomatic outposts throughout the world, including the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Atlanta. A panel of scholars commented on the wide-ranging speech and addressed and comments by the assembled audience. Visible on the video feed was Anna Kao, former director general of the Taipei office here, who left in 2013 to become spokeswoman for Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Mr. Ma’s plan is admirable but could be seen as idealistic in a region where overlapping claims butt up against World War II-era security alliances and current jitters over China’s rise, experts said.
“It makes perfect sense if both sides can (put aside sovereignty), but the one assumption is that both sides have sufficient trust,” said said Chien-pin Li, an international affairs professor at Kennesaw State University.
Mr. Ma points to successes of this approach in reducing tensions with the mainland since he took office in 2008. Twenty-one agreements have opened up trade and tourism, with some 14 million mainlanders having visited Taiwan on more than 200 direct flights connecting the two sides every week. Mr. Ma said linked progress to strict adherence to the “status quo” in the relationship, the idea that there is one China with each side keeping its own interpretation of what that means.
This “fragile consensus” could be fraying as Beijing grows more assertive, and either way, this is a flashpoint with far-reaching implications for commerce, said Lucien Ellington, director of the Asia program at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga.
“I don’t think most Americans realize how important not only the East China Sea but the South China Sea problem is too, for not only geopolitics but to the world economy,” Dr. Ellington said at the TECO event.
The dispute also comes at a testy time for U.S.-China relations. Some say China is challenging the U.S.-led world order with the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which the U.S. declined to join. Meanwhile, U.S. leaders have framed negotiations around the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal as a way to keep China from setting the global trade agenda for the 21st century.
As nearly always, Taiwan is caught in the middle. Intertwined economically with China, it also seeks to join the next round of TPP talks should the deal come to fruition.
Presidential elections in Taiwan next January will hinge on what to do about China. Last year, protesters occupied Taiwan’s legislature over a trade agreement that would have integrated their economies further. After 20 rounds of public consultation, President Ma said it still hasn’t been brought to a final vote.
Dr. Li doesn’t expect movement on that agreement this year given the political environment.
“Both parties are jockeying for their position, so this has the potential of splitting votes in ways that may not be in the best interest of whoever the nominees are,” Dr. Li said.
The Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, on June 14 named its preferred candidate for the 2016 elections, Hung Hsiu-chu. If confirmed, she would be pitted against female opposition leader Tsai Ying-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party, ensuring Taiwan would be poised to elect its first female president next year.
Read more from Global Atlanta: China Is Both the Cause and Solution to Taiwan’s Trade Trap
Read Director General Huei-yuan Steven Tai‘s Global Atlanta commentary on the peace plans: Taiwan Offers Initiatives for Peace in the East and South China Seas
Read Mr. Ma’s commentary piece in the Wall Street Journal: A Plan for Peace in the South China Sea
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