What Lien Chan Did for Taipei Bid for WHA Participation

What Lien Chan Did for Taipei Bid for WHA Participation

Joe Hung

May 4, 2009

Tsai Ing-wen was a pretty good chairwoman of the Mainland Affairs Council while President Chen Shui-bian served his first term.

She was later made a legislator at-large and then appointed vice premier. But something seems to have gone wrong with her after she was elected chairwoman of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) last year.

The opposition party she now leads condemns whatever President Ma Ying-jeou does as an attempt to sell out Taiwan. She condemned the three agreements signed in Nanjing not long ago to improve relations between Taiwan and China as a sellout.

She repeated the mantra when Minister of Health Yeh Chin-chuan was invited to attend the World Health Assembly meeting in Geneva from May 18 to 27 as an observer. She is determined to get tens of thousands of supporters to take to the streets on May 17 to protest Ma's sellout of Taiwan, even though swine flu, now renamed new influenza, may hit Taiwan.

In particular, Tsai characterized the WHA invitation as one that won't be repeated next year, because apparently it was extended to Taipei with Beijing's previous agreement. So she has reasoned Taiwan is no sovereign state, and is being twisted by Beijing's little finger. The Associated Press quoted President Ma as saying Beijing approved the invitation to Taipei, and his spokesman Tony Wang had to call a hasty press conference to point out Ma was misquoted.

Not exactly.

Without Beijing's previous agreement or approval, the WHA couldn't and wouldn't invite Chinese Taipei to attend the Geneva meeting. There wasn't even a one-in-a-million chance for Taiwan to participate in the meeting without the nod from the People's Republic of China.

Taiwan was ousted from the United Nations in 1971. Subsequently, it was deprived of membership in all U.N. organizations, including the World Health Organization, of which the WHA is the decision-making body. President Lee Teng-hui had Taipei start knocking at the WHA door in 1996 and Chen Shui-bian, who succeeded him, continued the attempt every year for eight years without success. The reason? The PRC, which claims Taiwan is one of its provinces, opposed any form of representation Taipei might have in either the WHO or the WHA.

Why, then, should Beijing agree or approve of the participation of Chinese Taipei this year?

President Ma described this "breakthrough" as a momentous result of the diplomatic truce he has set in place, and thanked Beijing for its "goodwill" extended to Taipei. He certainly couldn't afford to characterize it as Beijing's agreement or approval as Tsai and the American news service did.

But the fact remains that China's President Hu Jintao gave the green light to fulfill the promise he made in the spring of 2005 while he met Lien Chan, the then chairman of the Kuomintang (KMT), in Beijing to end the long feud Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong started in 1935, which escalated to a civil war the Chinese Communists handily won.

Hu pledged to help Taiwan breathe a little more easily in the international community. Chinese Taipei was then looking forward to Beijing dropping opposition to its joining the WHA as an observer. It was disappointed.Hu didn't keep the promise, because the time wasn't ripe: Taiwan was under the rule of President Chen Shui-bian, who did what he could to provoke the PRC into threatening to invade the island in order just to win elections for his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

When they met again in Beijing in August 2008, Hu reiterated his promise to Lien, who was assured of the support of the PRC for Chinese Taipei's participation in this year's WHA meeting. The time was right. Ma Ying-jeou succeeded Chen Shui-bian as president on May 20 last year. Hu and Lien had still another meeting on the side of the informal Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November. Lien was reassured of a place in the WHA meeting for Chinese Taipei.

Lien was able to develop a close rapport with Hu during his journey of peace to China four years ago. The trip, made right after the PRC had adopted an anti-secession law to justify its conquest of Taiwan by force, eased the mounting tensions between Taipei and Beijing. At their meeting in Beijing, Hu and Lien pledged to work closely together to bring a lasting peace across the Taiwan Strait, China's support for Taipei's WHA bid being an addendum to their master plan of cooperation.

They are men of their word. On return from China, Lien launched a cross-strait forum between his KMT and Hu's Chinese Communist Party. Many agreements were reached and signed in four subsequent working-level meetings to improve relations between Taiwan and China. Lien himself often took part in those conferences. Though many of the agreements were vetoed by President Chen's administration, the then opposition KMT strengthened mutual trust with China's ruling Communist Party.

The mutual trust paved the way for a rapid rapprochement between Taiwan and China after last year's change of government in Taipei. Direct maritime shipping began across the strait. Chinese tourists started visiting Taiwan in droves. An agreement was inked to inaugurate regular cross-straight flights in the summer. China is starting direct foreign investment in Taiwan. Joint efforts are being made to fight cross-border crime. Taipei and Beijing are working together to weather the worldwide financial crisis. Taiwan's anemic IT industry was given a shot in the arm by Beijing's order to stimulate purchase of electric and electronic appliances in China's vast rural hinterland.

Lien is the prime mover not only behind Taipei's successful participation in the WHA meeting later this month, but behind a budding entente between Taiwan and China. That probably has prompted China Review news commentators in Beijing to rate him as "a pioneer for cross-strait relations in the new age, who will go down in history as a great leader."

(Courtesy of The China Post)

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