For Both Taiwan and China, the Courtship Gets Serious

Gracing a gallery in Taipei are paintings of plum blossoms, the national flower of the Republic of China. Nothing novel in the subject, yet the paintings make a unique political statement, for they are the work of Deng Lin, daughter of Communist China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping. Creeping cultural detente between Taiwan and mainland China has begun to accelerate.

Deng Lin’s paintings are but the latest evidence of startling changes now unfolding in that crucial relationship. On both sides of the Taiwan strait, once vibrant with tension, strident animosity is yielding to more patient and open-minded policies.

In conversations with Westerners, Beijing officials flavor their cautionary comments about China’s claim to Taiwan with more than a touch of pride in the achievements of those Chinese who have made the island an economic powerhouse. One detects more irritation with Americans for allegedly interfering in an internal dispute than hostility toward the Nationalist foes who made Taiwan their last stand in the Chinese civil war. Communist China’s leaders are still outraged by the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which undergirds the nonofficial relationship with America’s former allies in Taipei. Recent years, however, have seen Beijing shift to a more respectful tone. China argues that the reversion of Hong Kong to Chinese control will demonstrate that a policy of “one country, two systems” can work in a peaceful reunification with Taiwan as well.

In place of the unrelieved condemnation that long marked propaganda from the mainland, Beijing’s emphasis on pragmatic reforms has been accompanied by greater appreciation of Taiwan’s economic miracle--and of the potential for trade and investment funded by Taiwanese entrepreneurs. Testimony to this altered attitude came in Beijing’s not-so-grudging admiration for President Chiang Ching-kuo, expressed in condolences on his death in Taipei last January.

That admiration was well-earned. Chiang set in motion policy shifts that not only affected the character of government and society on Taiwan; they also enhanced the prospects for gradual amelioration of the chronic friction between the two Chinese regimes.

In his last months Chiang relaxed emergency laws and moved his authoritarian regime toward an invigorating pluralism by allowing an opposition party to challenge the ruling Kuomintang (KMT). In national legislative elections last December, 30% of the popular vote went to opposition candidates. Moreover, leadership in the KMT itself is moving rapidly into the hands of a new generation, and in the very near future a decisive majority of island-born representatives will supplant the holdovers from the pre-1949 government on the mainland.

After Chiang opened the way, trade with the People’s Republic exploded to a level of more than $2 billion a year. Overall, Taiwan ranks sixth on the mainland’s list of trading partners, and the mainland is fifth on Taiwan’s list.

Chiang also eased restrictions on travel to the mainland, lifting the lid on a backlog of demands to return to ancestral villages and to visit relatives not seen in decades. More than 200,000 Taiwan citizens have exercised those new rights in the last year and the tide continues, though it is essentially one-sided. Undertakers in Taipei are doing a boom business in returning ashes to family burial sites. Thus, Chiang set the stage for Lee Teng-hui, the first president born in Taiwan, to pursue a more flexible policy, domestically and internationally.

Lee’s rhetoric toward the mainland is tough, still alluding to a possible return of all China to non-communist control and reflecting profound suspicion of Beijing’s overtures. The government in Taipei is warning businessmen against a hasty embrace of cheaper mainland labor, stressing the dangers of over-dependency on that market. The official posture remains “the three no’s”--no contact, no negotiations, no compromise with the People’s Republic.

Despite this understandably wary stance, even the Kuomintang is churning with pressures to redefine that policy. A “mainland affairs task force” under Vice Premier Shih Chi-yang is planning additional steps. KMT legislators are proposing a $10-billion fund for mainland reconstruction and are pressing for the right of elected officials to discuss such a project with counterparts in the People’s Republic. One over-eager elder of the KMT entered discussions of reunification on his own and was ejected from the party--as he had been from the Communist Party 40 years earlier. “No contact” rule or not, a number of KMT figures mingled with Chinese Communist Party representatives at--of all places--the Democratic convention in Atlanta.

The Grand Alliance for Reunification of China, an organization closely aligned with the government, urges the avoidance of language attacking the Chinese Communist regime. Ever so cautiously, provision is being made for mainland students to visit Taiwan in small groups. Mainlanders will be allowed to visit dying relatives and attend funerals on the island.

Already, a mathematician carrying a People’s Republic passport (but traveling from his post at a university in the United States) has come to teach in Taipei. And 2,000 Taiwan doctors plan to sit for a mainland examination in traditional Chinese medicine, although the exam will have no official status in Taiwan. Students at the National Taiwan University are demanding the right to attend a Hong Kong seminar in early 1989 to explore with students across the strait “Social Development and Prospects in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.” A two-way flow of books and periodicals also is in prospect.

Most visitors to the mainland come back with a vivid appreciation of the gulf between Taiwan’s prosperity ($6,000 per capita income) and the poverty of their countrymen. And even as there is a rise in confidence that dealing with the mainland poses tolerable risks, anxiety persists about Beijing’s refusal to rule out force as a last resort to impose reunification.

More serious as an obstacle to improved relations is Beijing’s continuing campaign to isolate Taiwan internationally. Reduced to diplomatic relations with only 22 governments, Taiwan’s lifeline consists of its far more extensive economic ties throughout the world. It ranks as the 13th nation in total trade volume.

A glimmer of hope has arisen in Beijing’s tolerance of Taiwan’s return to active participation in the Asian Development Bank. Accepted by the bank under the name “Taipei, China,” the Taiwan delegates covered the nameplates and wore a Republic of China symbol on their lapels. Although offended, the mainland representatives refrained from walking out. Coupled with Beijing’s indications that Hong Kong will be able to retain its independent standing in international organizations, this episode suggests that the People’s Republic may see an advantage in Taiwan’s maintaining a separate role, at least in international financial institutions. If the “one country, two systems” principle means anything, a lenient attitude toward Taiwan’s return to key international organizations would seem an obvious test.

Where will these inclinations lead? Certainly not to reunification in the foreseeable future. But as intransigence erodes and contacts multiply, an amicable and mutually beneficial relationship seems within reach. The United States is more than a bystander in this courtship dance, but its main role may be a negative one: Don’t trip the dancers.