The deadlock between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan could be broken if the two sides both took a step back, with the island promising to never claim independence and the Chinese mainland giving up the plan of achieving unification by force, said Qi Dongtao, professor of the Institute of Public Policy at South China University of Technology, writing for the institute's opinion site,
IPP Review.
Qi said opposition has been escalating across the Taiwan Straits in the past year. It has become clear to the Chinese mainland that Tsai Ing-wen, the island’s current leader, will continue to pave the way for her future election and so-called Taiwanese independence through a soft attempt to cut off the island’s ideological and cultural connections to the Chinese mainland, according to the scholar.
Tsai’s actions are expected to lead the Chinese mainland to exert greater political and economic pressures, Qi said. But the Tsai government has realized that instead of causing any actual damage, pressures from the mainland would only cause stronger resentment in Taiwanese society, which would apparently benefit Tsai’s current governance and future election chances, according to the scholar.
Therefore, Tsai is not likely to make any compromise to the Chinese mainland, and so the opposition will continue to escalate, Qi said.
A new common ground available for the two sides is for Taiwan to promise not to claim independence and the Chinese mainland to promise to give up its threat of using military means for unification. In fact, the mainland has always sought to achieve unification through a peaceful way. In other words, Qi said, the Chinese mainland won't even have to resort to military means if the island gave up seeking independence.
But the two sides are not expected to reach that kind of agreement in the short term, Qi said. As the Chinese mainland grows ever stronger politically and economically and becomes more attractive to the island, he said, it’ll be possible for unification to be achieved naturally. Compromise seems unnecessary for the Chinese mainland at the moment as long as it has enough patience, he said.
For Tsai and her party, according to Qi, it seems too early to give up the stance of independence because it favors Tsai’s re-election. But it may also help Tsai to achieve a reappointment and go down favorably in history, the scholar said, if she were able to win the Chinese mainland’s promise to give up the option of unification by force and give the cross-Straits relation a favorable status.
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