Changing Taiwan-PRC Relations under Ma Ying-jeou And Its Implications for Korea

Abstract

The victory of the Kuomintang (KMT) on the Taiwan’ presidential election on March 22nd of 2008 and subsequent inauguration of Ma Ying-jeou as the president of Taiwan on May 20th could mark a new watersheds in Taiwan’s overall diplomacy. Ma and his KMT recently started to promote its damaged diplomatic relationship with China; to improve its economic performance by opening to China; and to manage annoyances in Taiwan-U.S. relations by supporting the regional status quo and strategic ambiguity. Recognizing the convicted changes of Ma’s diplomatic and economic overture, Korea welcomes the fresh diplomatic détentes between Taiwan and China. One of positive repercussions of Ma’s engagement policy toward China is that it helps promoting civilian rapprochement between Korea and Taiwan. Since 1992, when Korea had established diplomatic relations with China, Korea and Taiwan had severed long and traditional bilateral ties. Despite, the bilateral interactions between Korea and Taiwan has consistently been increased not only in terms of trade, but also in terms of tourism. But uncomfortable relationship between Taiwan and China for previous years has kept Korea from freely approaching to Taiwan. Due to the heavy dependence on China in particular in economy and diplomacy, Korea could not but being prone to China’s diplomatic pressure not to be close to Taiwan. For Korea, it was almost impossible to expand its official relationship with Taiwan and was even cautious to keep civilian interactions between Taiwan and Korea. However, the inauguration of Ma Ying-jeou and his subsequent détente with China saves diplomatic room for Korea’s civilians to squeeze in. Expecting that friendly relations between Taiwan and China would make China less enthusiastic to implement diplomatic pressure for isolating Taiwan, Korea feels much relieved to expand the cooperation with Taiwan. Given growing number of tourists and direct flights, and increasing volume of mutual economic exchanges, Taiwan and Korea have already paved the grounds for expanding mutual relationship. Since Ma’s détente with China is not oriented to a structural change, however, Korea’s cooperation with Taiwan should be limited within the fields of economy and culture, far from touching upon the issue of political status of Taiwan. Given the advantage of hedging, Korea should manage the relationships both with China and Taiwan, leaving military, security, and diplomatic contacts to be minimized.