Cross-Strait Relations under the Ma Ying-jeou administration: From Economic to Political Dependence?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to outline the characteristics of Cross-Strait relations under the Ma Ying-jeou administration between 2008 and the middle of 2015. Ma Ying-jeou was first elected as the president of Taiwan in 2008 and was reelected in 2012. During these four years, he eased the tension between Mainland China and Taiwan, which had heightened during the time of the Chen Shuibian administration; restored and institutionalized a semiofficial channel of communications between Mainland China and Taiwan; and brokered various successful agreements focusing on the economy and other practical areas. As conclusion, this paper outlined the structural changes that have occurred in Cross-Strait relations due to the policy shifts by the Ma Ying-jeou administration of Taiwan. First, the Ma Ying-jeou administration's conciliatory policies toward China promoted the stabilization and institutionalization of Cross-Strait relations through the manipulation of the definition of “one China.” Second, despite the peaceful development of Cross-Strait relations that has taken place due to the policy shifts of the Ma Ying-jeou administration and the Hu Jintao administration, China has not compromised its core principles on sovereignty with regard to Taiwan. Third, Taiwanese self-identity has grown due to increased social contact between the peoples of Mainland China. Fourth, Ma Ying-jeou's failure was that, amid Taiwan's growing economic dependence on China, he was too quick to realize political accord with China. Economic changes inevitably cause political changes, and economic dependence can create political dependence. The results of the policy shifts of the Ma Ying-jeou administration had once made a summit between Beijing and Taipei a possibility. But repercussion from Taiwanese society is growing. Regardless of which party takes power in 2016, Cross-Strait relations may set off on a different path.

Keywords:

• Cross-Strait relations
• Taiwan
• China
• Ma Ying-jeou
• interdependence

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Notes on contributors

Yasuhiro Matsuda

Yasuhiro MATSUDA is a professor of international politics at Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo. He received his Ph.D. in law from Graduate School of Law at Keio University in Tokyo. He spent sixteen years in the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), Japan Defense Agency (later, Ministry of Defense), as an assistant and a senior research fellow. He moved to the Institute of Oriental Culture (later, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia) of the University of Tokyo in 2008. He is specializing in political and diplomatic history of Asia, politics and foreign relations in the PRC and Taiwan, the Cross-Strait Relations, and Japan's foreign and security policies. He was a member of the Council on Security and Defense Capability in the New Era, the advisory group of the Prime Minister in 2010. He is the winner of the seventh Yasuhiro Nakasone Award of Excellence in 2011. He has published numerous books and articles in Japanese, English and Chinese. His most recent publications in English are “Engagement and Hedging: Japan's Strategy toward China,” SAIS Review, vol. XXXII, no. 2, Summer-Fall 2012, pp. 109–119 and “How to Understand China's assertiveness since 2009: Hypotheses and Policy Implications,” in Michael J. Green and Zack Cooper eds., Strategic Japan: New Approaches to Foreign Policy and the U.S.-Japan Alliance, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015, pp. 7–33.