China Tries to Co-op Taiwan with economic incentives.<\/p>\n
Austin Ramzy writes: \u00a0For the past eight years, the Chinese government has showered its former enemies in\u00a0Taiwan\u00a0with economic gifts: direct flights, commercial deals, even an undersea water pipeline. Trade is up more than 50 percent, and mainland tourists, once barred from traveling to the island, now arrive in droves, nearly four million last year alone.<\/p>\n
In\u00a0Taiwan\u00a0last year, large protests broke out against\u00a0an agreement\u00a0to expand trade with the mainland, and the governing Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, which favors closer ties with\u00a0China, has plummeted in popularity and is\u00a0widely expected\u00a0to lose the presidency and possibly the legislature\u00a0in January elections.<\/p>\n
Now, the Chinese president,\u00a0Xi Jinping,\u00a0has agreed to meet\u00a0the president of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou \u2014 the first meeting between the leader of the Republic of China, the government that fled to Taiwan after losing a civil war in 1949, and the leader of the People\u2019s Republic of China, established on the mainland by Mao\u2019s victorious Communists.<\/p>\n
The encounter, scheduled to take place on neutral ground in Singapore on Saturday, will be trumpeted by both sides as a milestone in cross-strait relations. But it also seems to be an implicit acknowledgment by Mr. Xi that the Chinese effort to woo Taiwan with economic benefits alone has been unsuccessful \u2014 and that Beijing\u2019s dream of unification with the island is as distant as ever, despite a long courtship.<\/p>\n
\u201cXi Jinping\u00a0is at a loss,\u201d said Parris Chang, president of the Taiwan Institute for Political, Economic and Strategic Studies, a think tank in Taipei. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t know what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jonathan Sullivan, an associate professor at the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham, described the decision to meet Mr. Ma as \u201ca Hail Mary pass with time expiring.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBeijing has finally realized that the partner it has been working with on Taiwan, the K.M.T., is heading for disaster,\u201d Professor Sullivan said, referring to the Kuomintang by its initials.<\/p>\n
Mr. Xi is breaking with long-established policy by agreeing to meet Mr. Ma. But it is unclear how much further the Communist leadership is able or willing to go to win over the 23 million people of Taiwan, who polls show are uninterested in unification and increasingly anxious about the self-governing island\u2019s dependence on the much larger Chinese economy.<\/p>\n
Tsai Ing-wen, the leader of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, is widely favored to become Taiwan\u2019s new president. So far, she has not been subjected to the sort of vitriol that the Communist Party has heaped on some of the D.P.P.\u2019s past candidates, an indication that Beijing may be receptive to working with her. \u00a0Can China Buy a Relationship with Taiwan<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" China Tries to Co-op Taiwan with economic incentives. Austin Ramzy writes: \u00a0For the past eight years, the Chinese government has showered its former enemies in\u00a0Taiwan\u00a0with economic gifts: direct flights, commercial deals, even an undersea water pipeline. Trade is up more … Continue reading ![\"China](\"http:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/China-and-Taiwan1.jpg\")
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