Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
05TAIPEI1173
2005-03-17 09:44:00
CONFIDENTIAL
American Institute Taiwan, Taipei
Cable title:  

ANTI-SECESSION LAW: TAIWAN CALLS FOR

Tags:  PREL TW 
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This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 TAIPEI 001173 

SIPDIS

STATE PASS AIT/W

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/17/2015
TAGS: PREL TW
SUBJECT: ANTI-SECESSION LAW: TAIWAN CALLS FOR
INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT

REF: TAIPEI 1085

Classified By: AIT Director Douglas Paal, Reason: 1.4 (B/D)

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 TAIPEI 001173

SIPDIS

STATE PASS AIT/W

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/17/2015
TAGS: PREL TW
SUBJECT: ANTI-SECESSION LAW: TAIWAN CALLS FOR
INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT

REF: TAIPEI 1085

Classified By: AIT Director Douglas Paal, Reason: 1.4 (B/D)


1. (C) Summary. Taipei is aggressively courting
international support in its opposition to Beijing's
Anti-Secession Law. Taiwan diplomats and representatives
abroad have been tasked with lobbying host governments, and
President Chen has given interviews to the foreign media. On
March 15, Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen convened a
meeting of Taipei's foreign diplomatic missions and
representative offices to elicit international support.
Painting Taiwan as the aggrieved party and Mainland China's
lack of democracy as the root cause of cross-Strait
instability, Taiwan officials presented a package they hoped
would appeal to the international community, especially the
European Union and the U.S. Taipei's international outreach
is also targetted at Taiwan's domestic political audience, to
seek support for the government's response to date and reduce
pressure on President Chen to take stronger measures that
would have long-term consequences for cross-Strait relations.
End Summary.


2. (U) Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen (Tang-shan)
invited all diplomatic missions and representative offices to
a meeting at MOFA on March 15 to lay out Taiwan's case
against Mainland China's Anti-Secession Law. Chen announced
"the Republic of China's solemn protest" against China's
"anti-separation law." Terming the law a "unilateral change"
to the status quo that threatened the peace and stability of
the region, Chen appealed to the international community to
jointly condemn China's action. Many in the international
community saw Taiwan as the troublemaker, Chen lamented, a
misunderstanding that the Anti-Secession Law should clarify.
The real threat to cross-Strait stability, he argued, was the
lack of democracy in Mainland China; only political reform
there would enable peaceful resolution of the cross-Strait
situation.


3. (U) Stating that the Anti-Secession Law provided "a blank
check" for the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to annex
Taiwan, Chen called on the European Union to recognize
China's military threat against Taiwan and "not lift its arms
embargo on China." Such military sales, he argued, "threaten
the security of the region." Chen concluded with the cryptic

comment that the Taiwanese Government would adopt "some
necessary measures" to deal with the Anti-Secession Law.


4. (U) In his impromptu follow-on remarks, Chen took
particular umbrage at China mistranslating its
"anti-separation law" into "anti-secession law," with the
obvious analogy to the U.S. fight against Southern secession
during the Civil War. "A ridiculous comparison," he scoffed,
since Taiwan had been separate from mainland China since

1895. Chen again called on the international community to
not be complacent, but to condemn the Anti-Secession Law,
offering his own historical analogy -- neutrality in the
1930's resulted in Hitler's genocide against six million
Jews.


5. (U) In a more scholarly vein, Mainland Affairs Council
(MAC) Deputy Chair (and former Academia Sinica researcher)
David Huang explained that Mainland China had simply
miscalculated. When the pro-independence Pan-Green faction
failed to win a majority in the December 2004, it was too
late for Beijing to stop the legislative process already
underway. The last-minute changes in the Anti-Secession Law,
he said, "make no difference at all" to Taiwan. The main
challenge to the cross-Strait status quo "as defined by the
U.S. and Japan," he said, was China's own arms build-up.


6. (U) Taiwan's greatest objection to the Anti-Secession
Law, Huang continued, was that it empowered the Mainland
government to decide when the law had been violated and what
form the prescribed "non-peaceful" punitive action would
take. This, he argued, would encourage more aggressive
behavior by Beijing and the PLA. Huang insisted that both
the draft counter legislation under consideration in Taiwan's
Legislative Yuan (LY),and the March 26 mass protest rally,
were logical and understandable ways to channel Taiwan's
anger over the PRC law into effective mechanisms.


7. (C) Comment. Taipei's outreach to the international
community is part of the Chen administration's effort to both
gauge and influence domestic and foreign response to the
Anti-Secession Law, as it works out its own policy response.
Government officials highlight, and the pro-government press
reports, criticism of the Anti-Secession Law from around the
world, to reassure the people of Taiwan that they are not
alone and that Taiwan's outrage is shared by other countries.
Solicitation of international support, however, is a
two-edged sword in Taiwan's complex political culture. While
Taiwan officials emphasize to AIT that a strong international
response will reduce pressure on the Chen government to adopt
stronger measures that could affect cross-Strait prospects
long-term, there are pro-independence hardliners who will use
this to validate their calls for a strong reaction by Taiwan
and to push for stronger countermeasures. Both President
Chen and Foreign Minister Chen, himself an experienced local
politician in Taiwan, are trying to prove to all stripes in
Taiwan's political color scheme that they are ardently
defending Taiwan while acting with restraint.
PAAL