China has declared it wants to gift two Pandas to the people of Taiwan — but wants the Taipei government to grin and bear it on tough conditions for resuming regular contacts.
Is there a warming of long-frigid relations between these two rivals? On one hand, China has dangled giving or lending Pandas to Taiwan for some 20 years. And the Financial Times reports that one Chinese bigwig called on opposition party members in Taiwan to make sure that the gift is accepted:””Taiwanese compatriots want to see pandas with their own eyes,” he said.
In Taiwan, the paper reports, response to that was frigid:
You Ying-lung, deputy chairman of Taipei’s Mainland Affairs Council, said Taiwan would consider accepting the pandas only if Beijing refrained from using them to push its claim to sovereignty over the island.
“The pandas must not be a political present,” Mr You said.
On the other hand, the Voice of America notes that Taiwan has extended its own olive branch, although not in the form of Panda bears:
The president of Taiwan has invited China’s leaders to visit the island, as Beijing offered economic concessions and a pair of giant pandas as goodwill gestures to its rival. Beijing responded coolly to the offer of direct talks with Taiwan’s government.
Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian says a visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao would help clear up misunderstandings between the two rivals. Mr. Chen says he hopes President Hu will come to see for himself and gauge the sentiment of the Taiwan people.
However, China was cool to the idea. Wang Zaixi is the vice chairman of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office. Mr. Wang says China can not hold talks with Mr. Chen unless his party drops its pro-independence stance. China considers Taiwan part of its territory.
Mr. Chen’s conciliatory moves toward China came as Beijing said it would allow Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan and increase fruit imports from the island.
So fruit, Panda and invitations don’t seem enough to nudge relations between the two countries. But, then, the history between them is riddled with conflict and bitterness.
In 1950, after a two-decades long civil war, Mao Tse Tung’s Chinese Communists took over mainland China, driving General Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist forces onto Taiwan. And Mao vowed that the two would unify one day: his way. Four years later, amid some attacks by China to “liberate” some islands held by the government in Taiwan, General Dwight Eisenhower signed a mutual defense pact with Taiwan, promising it U.S. protection.
The Chinese government was irked in 2001 when President George Bush approved the larges sales of arms to Taiwan in nearly a decade.
Last week Taiwan opposition party politician Lien Chan of the Chinese National Party went to China and shook hands with Chinese President Hu Jintao, raising eyebrows in China — and some howls of protest:”Lien’s trip has succeeded in cementing a place, however small, in China’s history,” the Taipei Times wrote in a sting editorial. “It has also generated reasonable suspicion that he is preparing to act treacherously against Taiwan.”
But Chan stressed a long term strategy behind his visit, in an interview to the Washington Post:
Lien Chan, head of the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, which ruled China until it fled to Taiwan in 1949 to escape victorious Communist forces, said Tuesday in an interview with The Washington Post that the channel he opened puts pressure on Taiwan’s pro-independence president to seek a compromise with China. Lien, 68, also said his eight-day visit had unleashed a process of engagement that holds out the promise of peace, stability and increased trade.
It has presented to our people a viable alternative, a viable choice in our relations with mainland China,” Lien said. “Isn’t this the time for dialogue? Isn’t this the general wishes of the people around the world?”
Lien’s tour, which ended after a visit to this city, marked the first time that a Nationalist leader had stepped on mainland Chinese soil since the defeat of the Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek at the hands of the Communists, who have governed since….
Lien’s visit was read widely as an attempt to capitalize on growing impatience among Taiwan’s citizens with the government’s stance toward China. Even before Tuesday’s flurry of overtures, the visit forced Chen to alter his approach: On Sunday, after the communique was issued, Chen told reporters that he was willing to hold official talks with China aimed at formal reconciliation.
How likely is that? While anything can happen in diplomacy — look at Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 trip to China, engineered by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger — there is a lot of bad blood between these two countries. But offering some Pandas sounds like a good start.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.