Hands across the water

EVER since he was elected president in 2008, Ma Ying-jeou has sought to improve Taiwan’s rocky relations with China. On November 7th in Singapore the world will see the culmination of these efforts, when the Taiwanese leader meets his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. The news is a surprise. It will be the first meeting between the two countries’ leaders since the Communists’ victory in the civil war in 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek’s defeated Kuomintang (KMT) forces fled to the island fortress across the Taiwan Strait.

No agreements will be signed in Singapore, nor any joint statement issued. The two sides will be careful how they refer to each other, Mr Xi especially not wanting to confer too much legitimacy on the leader of an island which the mainland claims as its own. Mr Ma’s office says that the meeting will “consolidate cross-strait peace and maintain the status quo”. That reassurance is necessary. Especially during Mr Ma’s second term as president, many Taiwanese have grown increasingly unhappy over a flurry of agreements with China, 23 in all, promoting greater economic integration across the strait. Last year hundreds of thousands took to the streets of the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, in anti-trade protests led by students who also occupied the legislature. Their concerns were not only about jobs, but also about the political leverage that greater integration, negotiated largely in secret, might give the mainland.

Mr Ma has never been wholly trusted to stand up for the de facto independence that most Taiwanese treasure in the face of China’s insistence on unification. He himself was born in Hong Kong soon after his family fled the mainland, and he was raised in a household committed to the unification cause.

He has long argued that politicians must follow voters’ lead on the issue. And he, along with most Taiwanese politicians, also emphasises that China must democratise first. However, his apparent caution does not matter to many Taiwanese, especially of the younger generation. While he will present the summit with Mr Xi as proof that he has enabled stable relations with China, many Taiwanese believe the KMT to be too pro-China and are prepared to believe that their president will sell them down the river.

For that reason, it is not clear how much of a coup the summit will be back home for Mr Ma or for the KMT. His popularity, after all, is plumbing the depths, and his eight years in office will come to an end next year, after a presidential election on January 16th, when parliamentary elections will also be held. His party is in turmoil over the prospect of losing. It has recently dumped its unpopular and staunchly pro-China presidential candidate, Hung Hsiu-chu, in favour of Eric Chu, a pragmatist who made his name as mayor of New Taipei City, the exurbs surrounding the capital. Though charismatic, in opinion polls he lags far behind Tsai Ing-wen of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which leans more towards independence. An even-tempered lawyer who studied in America and Britain, she looks a shoo-in as the next president.

Ms Tsai has sent reassuring signals, not least to Taiwan’s American protectors, that she is not going to rock the boat (she says she respects Taiwan’s constitution, and by implication will not challenge its one-China ethos). Still, many of the DPP’s members despise the notion that both Chinese and Taiwanese governments uphold, namely that there is but “one China”, with each side agreeing to disagree over that phrase’s exact definition. The Singapore summit is a sign of just how concerned Mr Xi is that improved ties during Mr Ma’s term in office could be harmed if the DPP returns to power. Cross-strait relations sank to a low point in 2000-08, the last time the island was led by a DPP president, Chen Shui-bian.

The Chinese government is concerned that Taiwan may yet move towards officially declaring independence and has solemnly warned it would meet any such pronouncement with force. In a veiled threat to Ms Tsai, Mr Xi himself has urged “high vigilance” against what he called Taiwanese “splittists”. A sweeping national security law passed in July included the responsibility of “fellow citizens in Taiwan” to protect China’s sovereignty and support the cause of unification.

Given an almost certainly cooler relationship following Taiwanese elections next year, Mr Xi may try banking what gains he can in Singapore. Mr Ma, hoping to create some legacy of cross-strait co-operation after a chequered time in office, is presumably not foolish enough to think that the kudos from the summit gives the KMT better odds of keeping the presidency. The meeting is a gamble for him, with the Taiwanese electorate disgruntled about a sluggish economy and keen to assert the island’s identity distinct from mainland China.

Two years ago Mr Xi said that cross-strait differences should no longer be handed down from generation to generation. He may be keen to appear as a peacemaker at a time when China’s aggressive island-building in disputed waters in the South China Sea is creating friction in the region and with America (see article). Still, it remains difficult even for as confident a Chinese leader as Mr Xi to seek any change in the relationship with Taiwan when Taiwanese themselves do not want it. And, whatever happens in Singapore, in the January elections they are likely to make that abundantly clear.