| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 中國大陸研究所碩士在職專班 === 98 === In 2008, with the second “party alternation in power” in Taiwan, the Kuomintang Party took over the power again. However, the domestic and international situation of Taiwan was not so optimistic.
The domestic economy stagnated due to various factors. During Lee Teng-hui’s Administration period, Taiwanese businessmen, one after another, started to set up factories and make investments in Mainland China. Unfortunately, they encountered with the financial crisis in Southeast Asia in 1997. In addition, during the latter period of Lee’s Administration, he introduced the "no haste, go slow" policy to restrain excessive expansion of investment in Mainland China. Then, the DPP came to take over. At the beginning, the DPP loosened the policy towards Mainland China. However, on the New Year''s Day of 2006, it initiated the "active management, effective opening" policy to tighten the cross-strait trade, which only resulted in more hardships of Taiwan''s economy. At the same time, the overall national strength of comprehensive economy and trade in Mainland China increased greatly, with the regional economic integration, China-ASEAN (10+1) then came. All of these posed Taiwan’s economy in a hard position.
The international situation of Taiwan differed from that under the previous administrations. The KMT came to Taiwan from the mainland in 1949, and the two sides confronted each other both politically and militarily. Moreover, both adopted the “mutual non-recognition” policy. All of these resulted in two major diplomatic setbacks of Taiwan. One is Taiwan withdrew from the United Nations, and the other is the U.S. terminated the diplomatic relations with Taiwan and started it with Mainland. Until Lee Teng-hui came to power, he felt that the cross-strait "zero-sum" diplomatic competition put Taiwan at a disadvantage situation, so he focused more on the reality in respect of the diplomatic principle and manner. Thus, the "pragmatic diplomacy" which Lee declared in 1988 at that time did help Taiwan make diplomatic allies with some Central and South American countries. However, during Chen Shui-bian’s administration, due to the economic situation in Taiwan and the increased overall national strength of the Mainland, Taiwan was unable to compete with the Mainland internationally. Then Chen adopted the “scorched earth diplomacy" policy which in reality proven to be a failure. Combined with some elements in the election, the relation between Taiwan and the US began to fall apart. Therefore, Taiwan was faced with severe challenges domestically and internationally in 2008.
After the KMT lost power, they began to be close with Mainland and established platform for communication between CPC and KMT, with no hostility towards Mainland China any more. Therefore, after Ma Ying-Jeou came into power, he knew that the only opportunity to solve Taiwan’s inside and outside problems is the peaceful coexistence with the Mainland. Therefore, he put forward a series of policies with regards to Mainland China, including the resumption of the talks conducted by the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), the 12 agreement signed with a consensus item. All of these are generally in favor of Taiwan.
As to the foreign affairs, President Ma put forward the “flexible diplomacy” policy and "diplomatic truce" policy in replacement of the DDP’s "scorched earth diplomacy" policy. His fundamental principle is to explore a way out for the diplomacy of Republic of China (ROC) and his specific way is to find interaction for both sides to deal with the international affairs in the cross-strait relations.
With the gradually loosened cross-strait relations, Taiwan also needs to the international space and more foreign allies, which is in close relation with Mainland China. Therefore, the study motivation of this paper is to explore if the "diplomatic truce" policy of the Ma administration could have good response from the CPC, Taiwan will gain much broader international space than ever before, and the cross-strait relations will be better in the future.
This paper outlines the concept of “flexible diplomacy” policy, makes comparison of the diplomatic policies and their impact with the previous administrations, assesses the policy through various aspects, explores the pros-and-cons of the policy and put forward the author’s suggestions. This paper could serve as a reference in the academic study.
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