Perfect time to test the water
The unexpected defeat of President Chen Shui-bian's pro-independence forces in Saturday's legislative election in Taiwan has created a situation that may finally be conducive to the resumption of cross-strait talks.
Mr Chen has repeatedly said that he will do whatever the 23 million people of Taiwan want. That being the case, he should now scrap his announced intention to rid government agencies and state-owned corporations with names that link them to China, such as China Airlines and China Steel Corporation. This is all part of a campaign to 'de-Sinicise' Taiwan, getting rid of anything that connects it to China and separating it from the mainland.
If, as had been widely predicted, pro-independence legislators had gained a majority in the Legislative Yuan, then Mr Chen would have had a mandate to proceed with his plan to draft a new constitution, have it approved by a referendum in 2006 and come into effect in 2008 - a process that Beijing has dubbed a timetable for Taiwan independence.
The fact that there is now an anti-independence majority in the legislature - consisting of the Kuomintang and its allies, the People First Party and the New Party - makes it much more difficult for Mr Chen to implement such a programme.
If Beijing had decided after a pro-independence triumph that it had no choice but to deal with the Chen government, it would have been acting from weakness, not strength. However, holding a dialogue with a weakened Chen regime is something else. Talking to Mr Chen when he is still encumbered by a KMT-led legislature is ideal, from Beijing's perspective.
There is little point procrastinating because, in three years, there will be another election for the legislature, and there is no way of telling whether the KMT and its allies can maintain their slim majority.
After all, even though the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and its ally, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, failed to gain a majority, both parties managed to increase the number of votes they received compared with three years ago, and the DPP even won two additional seats. If Beijing does not seize this opportunity, three years from now it may well be faced with both a DPP president and a DPP-controlled legislature.
One issue that both sides can use to test the water is the question of organising chartered flights to allow Taiwanese businesspeople on the mainland to return home for the Chinese New Year holiday. One-way charter flights were organised in 2002 but, for various reasons, there was no agreement last year.
In 2002, Beijing allowed Taiwan to operate the charter flights, while indicating that its airlines, too, wanted a share of the business. Moreover, at Taiwan's insistence, they could not be direct flights but had to take a detour via Hong Kong or some other place.
Now, it seems, Taiwan is willing to countenance direct charter flights as well as allowing the mainland a share of the business. Beijing may well want to see whether the Chen administration is sincere about its new approach. For its part, Taiwan will want to see if Beijing will politicise the issue by insisting that they be called domestic flights.
A pragmatic approach, avoiding any unnecessary political stipulations, is more likely to bring about results that will be of genuine help to the people that the flights are meant to serve.
There is general agreement that the coming few years are fraught with danger, with war between China and the United States the worst-case scenario. In the long term, both Taiwan and the mainland want an arrangement to preserve the peace. A KMT proposal of a 50-year peace accord between the two sides is certainly one idea worth exploring. Washington is likely to play an important role in the process.
Frank Ching is a Hong Kong-based journalist and commentator
