The Role of the KMT in the Ma Ying-Jeou Administration's Mainland Policy Making: A Case Study of the KMT-CPC Platform

Abstract

This paper seeks to analyze the role of the Ruling Kuomintang in the Decision- Making Process with regard to the Mainland Policy under the Ma Ying-Jeou administration, using as an example the mechanism for engagement and dialogue between the KMT and the Communist Party of China (CPC) known as the KMT-CPC Platform. The opposition says that it represents “the party leading the government,” or the “selling-out of Taiwan”. But through the case studies, we can find that the KMT-CPC Platform is a channel via which the Ma administration has interacted with the CPC in order to glean information on the inner workings of the mainland and the intentions of the CPC Central Committee, which was then used to guide policymaking. Moreover, the KMT has not been the central player in policy decisions and the KMT leadership, which was has no mandate to negotiate with the mainland, has served rather to enforce some of the mainland policies created by the Ma administration and to serve as a messenger of Ma Ying-Jeou. And all the criticisms about the KMT-CPC Platform was not the KMT-CPC Platform but the lack of foresight and sufficient responses by those at the center of Ma administration. In engaging with the CPC via the KMT-CPC Platform, whose size and function have no comparable equivalent in any of the world's other political parties, Ma revealed deficiencies in his leadership.

Keywords:

• The Cross-Strait relation
• Mainland Policy Decision-Making Process in Taiwan
• Kuomintang
• the Communist Party of China
• the KMT-CPC Platform
• Ma Ying-Jeou administration

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wei-Hsiu Huang

Wei-Hsiu HUANG is the Guest Junior Researcher at Waseda Taiwan Research Institute. He received his Ph.D. from Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies at Waseda University in Tokyo. He spent several years as Visiting Fellow at Institute of Oriental Culture of the University of Tokyo (2010), and Adjunct Researcher at Waseda Taiwan Research Institute (2010∼2014). He is specializing in Mainland Policy Decision-Making Process in Taiwan, Taiwan Policy Decision- Making Process in China, politics and foreign relations in the PRC and Taiwan, the Cross-Strait Relations, political and diplomatic history of Asia, politics and foreign relations in the PRC and Taiwan, the Cross-Strait Relations, political and diplomatic history of Asia, and Japan's foreign and security policies about Taiwan's security. He is also the winner of the Sixth Japan Association for Taiwan Studies Award of political and economic field in 2011. He is the author of Li-Touki Seiken no Tairikuseisaku Ketteikatei (1996∼2000): Soshikitekikettei to Dokudan no Soukoku [The Decision-Making Process under Lee Teng-hui's Administration toward Mainland China, 1996–2000: Contradiction between Collectivism and Dogmatism] (Okayama: UNIVERSITY EDUCATION PRESS Co., Ltd., 2012) in Japanese.