Today, China and Taiwan signed agreements to establish regular flights and to bolster tourism. This follows yesterday’s deal to open permanent representative offices in each other’s territory. After eight years of tense relations between Beijing and Taipei, the two sides are moving at lightning speed to strengthen ties after the inauguration of Ma Ying-jeou as the island’s president last month.
And what would be wrong with the easing of tensions across the Taiwan Strait? Hardline elements in Ma’s Kuomintang, which now controls both the executive and legislative branches of government, want to surrender Taiwan’s sovereignty and become just another subdivision of the People’s Republic of China. Not everyone in the ruling party wants to do that, of course, but rapid economic integration poses a threat to the separate existence of the democracy of 23 million people.
Some in the United States would be happy if Beijing absorbs the Republic of China, as the island is formally known, because it is an obstacle to the formation of a condominium between Washington and Beijing. President Bush does not share this cynical goal, but he has nonetheless done more than anyone else to translate it into reality. The leader who once said he would do whatever it took to support Taiwan has done just about everything he could to help China. He sat in the Oval Office with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and castigated Taiwan, he further isolated the island in international circles as a favor to the Chinese, and now he is blocking arms sales to the Taiwanese.
President Ma may or may not want to submit to China, but we can say that the United States is leaving him little choice but to seek accommodation with the autocrats in Beijing.