Who Won the “Ma-Tsai” Debate? The People Yearn to Be the True Winners

A Commentary

Who Won the “Ma-Tsai” Debate? The People Yearn to Be the True Winners

Professor Chao Chun-shan

Graduate Institute of China Studies

Tamkang University

Source: United Daily News

April 27, 2010

The ECFA debate between President Ma Ying-jeou and DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen ended without fanfare.  There is a Chinese saying that might be paraphrased as “a wise man sees the forest while most see only the trees.”  While the public is busy commenting on who they think won the debate and grading the performances of President Ma and Chairperson Tsai, we can not ignore the important fact that the topic of the debate was of the utmost importance to the nation’s future.  What direction should Taiwan’s future development take and what role should cross-Strait relations play?

It seems like President Ma is in a rush to sign a cross-Strait ECFA.  As the President has said, we have to make up for the eight years lost under the DPP administration.  In President Ma’s view, the DPP’s closed-door policy during its eight-year administration caused Taiwan to be marginalized.  According to President Ma, concluding a cross-Strait ECFA is merely a part of the government’s overall openness towards the international community, and the goal is to participate in regional economic integration and cooperate with the Mainland to deal with the impact resulting from globalization through the normalization of cross-Strait economic relations.

DPP Chairperson Tsai worries that concluding a cross-Strait ECFA will adversely impact Taiwan’s vulnerable industries, and in particular aggravate the unemployment problem among Taiwan’s laborers.  In their debate of their visions of Taiwan’s future, President Ma demonstrated his sense of responsibility as the nation’s leader and his confidence in himself and the people of Taiwan.  However, President Ma also said that he did not think that Taiwan could afford another eight years of backpedaling.

The Ma administration’s predicament could be compared to the situation that Deng Xiaoping faced when he tried to implement policies of reform and opening-up.  The conservatives who opposed Deng’s policies threatened that if Mainland China opened up to the world, it would be “polluted by the free thinking of the capitalist class” and China would fall victim to the West’s “peaceful transformation.”  In the end, Deng finally realized that “if you open the windows, mosquitoes may fly in,” but you cannot allow such concerns to arrest the nation’s development.  Many Mainland scholars, having studied the historical development of many countries, concluded that “a country flourishes when it’s open, and declines if it chooses isolation.”  Thanks to Deng’s insistence that China open its door, after thirty years of opening-up and reforms, Mainland China has established a brand new image on today’s international stage.

Another focus of the debate between President Ma and Chairperson Tsai was the Ma administration’s Mainland policy and how to deal with cross-Strait relations.  In short, the focus was on how to judge the “peaceful rise” of Mainland China.  Chairperson Tsai called a cross-Strait ECFA “sugar-coated poison” and contended that if Taiwan signed an ECFA, it would become “a dependency of the Mainland.”  The pan-Green camp’s remarks often sound like conspiracy theories.  They say that signing a cross-Strait ECFA is “pro-China and selling out Taiwan.”  Such criticism is a result of their fear and hatred of the Mainland, which they choose to ignore and avoid.

In fact, all major countries, including Taiwan, must face the Mainland’s “peaceful rise.”  Some countries are accused of being pro-China because their desire to market products on the Mainland has affected their Mainland China policy.  But that does not mean that these countries have given the Mainland China “carte blanche.”  Besides economic and business relations, there are special relations based on blood and culture.  Taiwan has even more reasons to reach out to the Mainland and avoid confrontation.  We expect that both sides across the Taiwan Strait build a solid foundation of mutual trust by jointly creating a win-win situation on the economic front. 

As far as the current political atmosphere in Taiwan is concerned, neither the ruling nor the opposition party will concede defeat in the debate.  However, winning or losing in the debate does not really matter because the ECFA is a highly strategic issue.  The most important thing for the people in Taiwan is to ensure that they are the winners in the end.  The people in Taiwan must make the most rational choice on which direction the nation’s development should take.  Closed-door or open-door?  Retreat backward or march forward?  The people in Taiwan cannot risk making another bad decision after eight years of backpedaling.

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