Chinese overtures to ‘rebel’ Taiwan

Press, 15 July 1980, Page 16

Chinese overtures to ‘rebel’ Taiwan

From the "Economist,” London

A scholar in Taipei startled his colleagues recently by seconding an American’s proposal to invite China’s Chairman Hua Guofeng to visit the ''model province” and see its progress for himself. He is one of a younger group of liberals in Taiwan that is actively pressing the old guard of the ruling Kuomintang to be more flexible. The proposal came during a debate on China-Taiwan relations at which visiting American scholars urged their hosts in Taiwan to be more self-confident and less reactive in dealing with Peking. Since the People s Republic intensified its wooing of the “rebel” Republic of China last year, Taiwan has stubbornly rejected one honeyed offer after another. In January, 1979, Mr Deng Xiaoping. China’s de facto boss and vice-premier, told American senators that Taiwan could have an autonomous status similar to that of Hong Kong, preserving its own socio-econ-omic system and living standards, and even its armed forces. Taiwan denounced this as a trick and reaffirmed its goal of restoring non-communist rule to the Chinese mainland. That February, Peking opened its telephone lines to Taiwan as part of an offer to restore postal and telecommunication links. Taiwan did nothing. Two months later China invited Taiwan to the Canton trade fair. Taiwan refused. Since then China has offered to accommodate a separate Taiwan team in the Olympic Games

under an ali-Chinese flag (before China joined the boycott), promised that foreign investment in Taiwan would remain safe and put out a standing offer to resume air and sea trade links. Taiwan turned its back. Taiwan allows no official contacts with China. But a series of unofficial encounters point- to a jnodest loo-sening-up. A well-connected film star was allowed to go to her father’s funeral on the mainland; a handful of Chinese passengers who found themselves unexpectedly transiting Taipei airport, and some stranded Chinese fishermen, have been royally entertained. Since the first historic encounter between scientists from Taiwan and the mainland at a Tokyo conference two years ago, contacts in third countries have become commonplace. In Costa Rica recently the two sets of Chinese scientific delegates went on a 10-hour picnic together for “heart-to-heart” talks.

The 14,000 students from Taiwan in the United States have been told to, go out and court their 2000 mainland counterparts, half of whom are “private” students paid for by relatives outside China.

Many of them, reportedly including Deng Xiaoping’s son who is studying in Rochester, New York, have been invited to see Taiwan on their way home. Some Taiwanese who hold American citizenship are now virtually commuting between Taiwan and the People’s Republic; the Taiwan Government cannot stop them. Such discrimination against holders of Republic of China

passports rankles among Taiwan’s intellectuals. Direct trade between the two Chinas is forbidden, but indirect trade via Hong Kong is growing rapidly: _it reached about SSOM in 1979 and is increasing again this year. Taiwan imports medicines and gourmet food» stuffs; China buys Taiwanmade machinery and consumer goods. Taiwan’s products come duty-free into China, sometimes bearing Made in Republic of China labels, because they are classified as domestic manufactures. Mr Deng said in January that he wanted Taiwan reunited with China by the end of this decade. He told three Japanese in May that he wanted to be known in Chinese history as the man who achieved reunification.

“To give up the Republic of China title,” he said to a Japanese publisher last October, “is the only thing we ask Taiwan to do.” But he admitted to a party meeting in March that Taiwan’s 17M people were “likely to resist reincorporation into the mainland until communism offered a more attractive way of life.” Reunification, he said, would not succeed without economic superiority over Taiwan. It will take China decades, perhaps a century, to rival Taiwan’s living standards. The island’s G.N.P. per head is currently about seven times that on the mainland, calorie intake is about 50 per cent higher and the average living space five times as big. No wonder there have been big-charac-ter posters in China to “learn from Taiwan in economy.”