KMT Policy: It’s the Ma Years All Over Again
A pro-China administration would be bad news for the US and its regional allies
Taiwan’s 2020 Presidential election is going to be a brawl, at least within the pro-China Kuomintang (KMT). Billionaire businessman Terry Gou of Foxconn (Hon Hai) announced his candidacy this month, sending the media into a frenzy. Meanwhile, the meteoric rise of the current KMT mayor of Kaohsiung, Han Kuo-yu, has made him a favorite. In light of his newfound status, he has visited both China and the US and sketched the outline of a foreign policy for his likely presidential run in 2020. Other KMT hopefuls have chimed in with their suggestions for a KMT foreign policy as well.
What does this foreign policy look like? In attitude and policy, it is a sterile reprise of the foreign policy of the Ma Administration, with the addition of a few ideas long-rejected by the Taiwan public. It may get the KMT elected. It will not, however, be good for the US and its relationship with Taiwan.
Consider, for example, the “Free Economic Zones” pushed by Eric Chu, the 2016 KMT candidate, now hoping for another shot in 2020:
Former New Taipei City mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) on Monday reiterated his determination to push for the establishment of free economic zones (FEZs), saying that there is no so-called “red supply chain.”
Chu, who has announced that he would seek the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) nomination for next year’s presidential election, said in a Facebook live stream that the KMT’s 15 local government heads have signed a petition asking the government to set up FEZs.
He said that in 2013, when he was mayor, he proposed to the Executive Yuan taking advantage of the Port of Taipei’s location and setting up a FEZ there.
Similarly, Han Kuo-yu said in March that he wanted to set up a pilot FEZ in Kaohsiung. They have been a KMT yearning for nearly a decade.
Such zones echo the old industrial park concept of the 1960s and 1970s that helped Taiwan develop. Their time however, has long since passed.
More than just an obsolete domestic economic proposal that will only encourage the “growth” of dirty, heavily subsidized businesses from by-gone days, the FEZs are actually part of a KMT-CCP United Front program, which is why they are not supported by any major figure on the pro-Taiwan side. As originally proposed by the Ma Administration in his first term, the FEZ’s were intended as miniature banana republics which would be free of most regulation, particularly labor regulation:
Judging from the draft act, the administrative authority of a free economic pilot zone would be granted more power than the Executive Yuan, because the authority would be able to govern a wide range of areas — environmental protection, labor affairs, construction, commercial registration, licensing, taxation and personnel, among others, DPP lawmaker Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) said.
Moreover, as individuals and companies in the free economic pilot zones would be exempt from legislation such as the Regional Plan Act (區域計畫法), the Urban Plan Act (都市計畫法), the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境影響評估法) and the Government Procurement Act (政府採購法), the mechanism could jeopardize the legal system, Tsai said.
This regulatory freedom was intended to further the Chinese conquest of Taiwan. First, free of labor law restrictions, Chinese labor would be flooded into the zones where it would leak into Taiwan proper. This has long been a goal of KMT administrations — it was also suggested in the original proposals for the Taoyuan Aerotropolis zone. Such “ethnic flooding” is a basic strategy of Chinese conquest of occupied territories. In Taiwan the germ of this strategy has already blossomed, with the tens of thousands of wives imported from China having already formed a pro-China political party.
A second goal was the use of the zones as entrepots for the smuggling of Chinese goods into Taiwan. Reduction of Taiwan’s trade surplus with China has long been a goal of the CCP.
Finally, as critics pointed out when Ma proposed them, Chinese agricultural goods are restricted from entering Taiwan. But using these zones, Chinese agricultural materials with their inferior manufacturing standards and outright fakery could be easily brought in, to be incorporated into food products that are “Made in Taiwan”. This adulteration of the Made in Taiwan quality label is also a key goal of Chinese economic subversion of Taiwan.
Both Han and Gou have raised the idea of “peace” with China. In February KMT Chairman Wu Den-yi, himself known to harbor Presidential dreams, floated the idea that if the KMT won in 2020 the Party would propose a peace treaty with China. This concept of the (30-year/50-year) Peace Treaty between the KMT and the CPP is old, first publicly proposed by former KMT heavyweight James Soong in the 2000 election and subsequently echoed by pro-China types. In the 2016 election, abortive KMT candidate Hung Hsiu-chu made it part of her platform.
The Peace agreement is pure United Front: to strike such a pact, the KMT would have to firmly make Taiwan part of China, and not some vague KMT fantasy of “two interpretations” China, but a part of Communist China.
All the KMT candidates support the fictional “1992 Consensus”, under which Taiwan is acknowledged to be part of China. The KMT claims that the 1992 Consensus embraces “two interpretations” of what “China” is, but Beijing has never accepted that codicil.
Note that these policies all involve trading off some or all of Taiwan’s sovereignty in exchange for some ephemeral, unenforceable gain from Beijing.
The pro-China positions of the pro-China party candidates are inherently anti-US. For example, not only has Gou advocated “peace” but he has also stated Taiwan should not buy weapons from the US. Han similarly has put forward rhetoric that equalizes the US, China, and Japan, with Taiwan caught in the middle, rather than firmly recognizing the US role as Taiwan’s protector and supporter against an aggressive and expansionist China.
None of the KMT candidates, Gou, Han, Chu, Wang Jin-pyng, and local politician Cho Hsi-wei has any foreign policy experience. Their foreign policy is likely to resemble Ma’s: not merely being pro-China, but to the extent possible, anti-US, anti-Japan, and cold to Taiwan’s increasing involvement with nations to the south and east.
Recall that that Ma Administration, unable to decisively damage relations with Japan, a nation popular in Taiwan, opted instead to constantly irritate Japan whenever possible, usually over the Senkakus. The Ma Administration seldom lost the opportunity to rub in the ROC claim to the islands, as with the incidents in 2012. The Comfort Women issue was also exploited in this manner. Similarly, it used its South China Sea claims to stir the pot with nations around the South China Sea, whose support Taiwan needs against Chinese expansion (2015, for example). The Ma Administration also used them to antagonize the US as well. With the US, though, it was ractopomine in US meat exports that proved most useful.
In sum, should any of the inexperienced KMT candidates win, they will likely replicate the Ma Administration’s attempt to cultivate the US while simultaneously operating an anti-US foreign policy in concert with the Communist Party of China, to help China annex Taiwan. This will be a grave blow to US ability to support its allies Japan and Philippines — with whom it has formal treaties — in the coming conflicts with China.
US planners thus need to ask themselves: with war looming in East Asia, does the US really want a pro-China regime in Taipei?
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