As representatives from the mainland and Taiwan signed the historic Economic Co-operation Framework Agreement in Chongqing on Tuesday, pro-independence media outlets in Taiwan prominently ran a famous picture of a smiling Mao Zedong toasting a beaming Chiang Kai-shek during the 1945 peace talks between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Like this week's negotiations, those talks were also held in Chongqing, which served as the Republic of China's provisional capital during the dark days of the second world war. Four bloody years later, Chiang fled Sichuan for permanent exile in Taiwan.
While mainland and Taiwanese negotiators blandly denied any historical significance to the choice of Chongqing, those opposed to the agreement in Taiwan obsessed over the historical parallels. The lesson they drew is that history repeats itself: the KMT has once again been duped by the Communist Party.
They will be proved wrong. The agreement does not signal the end of Taiwanese democracy but, rather, the beginning of the end of Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou's somewhat one-sided love affair with the mainland. The real lesson that should be learned from the meetings in Chongqing this week and those 65 years ago is an old philosophical one: appearance does not always reflect reality. Especially in East Asian politics.
Much as the United States once believed that economics drove politics in China in the 1990s, the mainland now thinks the same about Taiwan. Beijing's strategy is to wait for the magical economic elixirs it has given Taiwan to take effect. Once the Taiwanese have tasted the benefits of direct flights, millions of mainland tourists in Taiwan, and the fruits of free investment and trade across the Taiwan Strait, Beijing is optimistic that a political accommodation with Taiwan can be reached through negotiations and patience. This betrays a fundamental lack of understanding about the arc of Taiwanese history over the past three decades and what matters to the Taiwanese now. During the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, a mass democracy movement forced the KMT to hold free elections, end military law and censorship, and normalise Taiwanese society. While Taiwan's politics are messy and its judiciary weak, Taiwan's vibrant civil society enjoys the same political freedoms as people in North America or Europe.
During Taiwan's struggle for political emancipation, however, it deferred the problems of economic and social inequality. By 2000, it had become clear that the economy in particular had serious long-term problems. Incomes stagnated and unemployment rose as the promised knowledge and service-oriented economy never materialised. To this day, Taiwan's economy remains overly reliant on low-margin contract manufacturing that is itself dependent on the exploitive and dehumanising labour practices seen in Foxconn's recent problems on the mainland. Taiwan's educated and ambitious people aspire to much more.
When the heroes of the democracy movement proved themselves to lack the imagination, interest and, most importantly, integrity to remake Taiwan's economy, the electorate decided, with considerable justification, to throw the bums out in 2008.
They put current president Ma Ying-jeou and the KMT back in power on the strength of promises that Taiwan's economy could be rebuilt by opening up to the mainland. And Ma has been largely successful in liberalising relations with the mainland as both sides have signed a series of agreements, culminating with the signing of the trade pact this week that reduces tariffs on more than 500 Taiwanese exports to the mainland and more than 200 mainland exports to Taiwan.