Taiwanese electioneering: Political and economic agendas in Conflict

Here in Hong Kong, every news organization covers the dialogue on closer ties with the mainland between the Taiwanese presidential candidates. Despite both Ma Ying-jeou and Frank Hsieh advocate closer ties with Beijing, their strategic objectives are fundamentally flawed. The Democratic Progressive Party favours Taiwanese independence. While the Nationalists or Kuomintang supports the One China policy, it maintains that the government of the Republic of China is the sole legitimate Chinese government and not the Communist Party in Beijing. Either way, it is problematic for both parties to promote their political agenda while selling a completely different economic agenda.

Their economic agenda centers on the cross-Straits common market. Increasing commercial and economic ties with Beijing makes good business sense. After all, mainland workers are cheaper than Taiwanese workers. At the same time, mainland China is the world's largest unsaturated consumer economy; perfect for Taiwanese consumer electronic industry. Secondly, the Taiwanese economy over the years has become more of a service and research and development economy compared to China's manufacturing economy. Taiwan is home to several major semiconductor and tech companies like Taiwan Semiconductor, Acer and D-Link. Furthermore, unlike mainland China, land in Taiwan is a scarce commodity. Given Taiwan's proximity to China, it makes good economic and business sense to improve commercial and economics ties.

Sadly, what the Taiwanese politicians may not realize are economic needs has a funny way in affecting political agendas. In the 1950s, the French, Germans and a few other countries got together to develop the European Coal and Steel Community. This gave raise to European Economic Community, which was formalized in the Treaty of Rome of 1957 and the forerunner of the European Community. It created a common market across Western Europe, which was formalized in the Single European Act of 1986. Before the Single European Act, the various European governments made many amendments to the Treaty of Rome to liberalize trade between the member countries. These were all pure economic agendas designed to improve trade and commerce, but it has now become something of a supranational entity.

France, Italy, Germany and a few others have since given up their economic sovereignty by creating the Euro. The beauty of a common currency is that businesses do not need to worry about exchange rates in the Eurozone any more. The bad news is that national governments have lost an important symbol of national identity by adopting the Euro. Worse, national central banks, like the Bank of France, no longer control interest rates, despite being the government's banker and the local lender of last resort.

I do not think either Taiwanese presidential candidate has political unification in their minds when pursuing their economic and political agendas. Neither party want a military invasion of Taiwan by Beijing, but Democratic Progressive Party would accept the notion of turning Taiwan into a self-governing region of the People's Republic of China while the Kuomintang wants to re-establish the Republic of China in Beijing. This economic agenda of theirs seems to spell eventual political victory for Beijing, regardless of the pace either candidate wishes to proceed with unification talks because the middle road would never happen. Beijing would never agree to a free trade agreement, like the North American Free Trade Agreement, as it would in effect acknowledge Taiwan as a separate political entity.

Former Republican presidential candidate and Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee would argue Taiwan should declare independence given it is already running its own show, regardless of how small that show may be. The president of Taiwan is running its own de facto country, which begs one to ask why demote oneself to a mere provincial governor regardless of the autonomy given when one should aspire to legally become a sovereign country. Furthermore, both Ma and Hsieh should keep in mind that as late as last year, there is movement within the US Congress to strengthen US-Taiwanese ties and what is happening in Kosovo before executing their election pledge of closer ties with Beijing.