If new Kuomintang chairman Ma Ying-jeou is elected Taiwan's president in 2008 as many think likely, expect the sun to shine brightly on cross-strait relations.
In recent interviews, Mr Ma has touched on three key themes that will define his China policy: accommodating the mainland, ending self-imposed isolation from China, and waiting for conditions that would make unification palatable to the Taiwanese people.
Mr Ma has come out against the Chen administration's proposed US$10 billion arms purchase from the US. He has repeatedly argued that the point is not the cost - the major issue in the domestic debate over the purchase. The issue for Mr Ma is that the arms purchase is unnecessary in principle, because Beijing does not pose a threat unless Taipei provokes it with steps towards independence. The Chen administration, Mr Ma argues, has created an artificial need for advanced weaponry by repeatedly provoking China with such steps.
At the same time, Mr Ma believes that his party, the Chinese nationalist KMT, has eliminated the casus belli between China and Taiwan with the meeting between his predecessor Lien Chan and Chinese president Hu Jintao in April. That meeting, Mr Ma claims, ended the Chinese civil war and with it, the military threat to Taiwan.
Thus the first theme of Mr Ma's China policy is accommodating Chinese sensitivities. He will not provoke China by buying US weaponry or host events Beijing says can only be hosted by sovereign entities. Under Mr Ma, Taiwan's Quixotic attempts to join the UN or even the World Health Organisation would probably be gutted or abandoned.
Other than Mr Ma's opposition to further arms purchases, the most important feature of his policy of accommodating China is his acceptance of the 1992 Hong Kong consensus. The 1992 consensus is a complex issue whose very existence is denied by the Chen administration.
