Contact is taking a holiday!

Does this hat make me look charming?

[The Economist]

For more than six decades after the Chinese civil war, the mainland did not allow its minister-level officials openly to set foot in Taiwan. This changed on June 25th when Zhang Zhijun, director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, visited the island in hopes of wooing democratic Taiwan back to the Chinese fold. 

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, elected in 2008, has eased tensions with the mainland through signing business pacts. But many Taiwanese remain suspicious of China’s intentions. Mr Zhang’s four-day visit followed mass protests earlier this year against a pact Mr Ma’s government signed with China allowing for liberalisation of cross-strait trade in services. The protests included a 24-day occupation of Taiwan’s parliament by students, known as the Sunflower Movement, and reflected worries that authoritarian China might use its growing economic influence over Taiwan to undermine its democracy. The services pact is now stalled in Taiwan’s parliament and the pace of economic integration has slowed. 

Mr Zhang’s response to this hiccup was unprecedented. On June 27th he met (pictured) with the mayor of the southern city of Kaohsiung, Chen Chu, a prominent member of Taiwan’s opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The party has long supported Taiwanese independence and therefore been reviled by China. 

Mr Zhang has a reputation in Beijing for being a poker-faced diplomat, but throughout his trip he exuded a twinkling-eyed geniality, at times speaking in Taiwanese dialect. After meeting with Ms Chu, Mr Zhang was especially cordial. He said China understood that Taiwanese people cherished their own social system and way of life, and that China respected the choices made by Taiwan’s people. He added all Taiwanese were welcome to participate in the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, regardless of their party affiliation or religion.

Mr Zhang avoided the affluent capital Taipei and mostly shunned meetings with Mr Ma’s officials. Instead he visited industrial areas outside Taipei and Taiwan’s poorer central and southern regions, including Kaohsiung, the heartland of the Taiwan independence movement. He hobnobbed with ordinary people: the elderly, aborigines and small business owners. Upon meeting him, many of these ordinary Taiwanese asked him for help with business.

But Taiwanese leaders also stood up for self-determination. Mr Zhang’s Taiwanese counterpart, Wang Yu-chi, told Mr Zhang Taiwan’s future should be decided by its 23 million people. Ms Chu told him no one in Taiwan agreed with a Chinese government spokeswoman who said on June 11th that Taiwan’s future needed to be decided by all Chinese people, not just Taiwanese.

And, in another reminder of Taiwan’s rumbustious democracy, Mr Zhang was dogged everywhere he went by protesters—some raucous enough to cause injuries—that included students, Falun Gong supporters and hard-core Taiwan independence activists. Protesters in Kaohsiung numbered in the hundreds. Mr Zhang cancelled visits to a Kaoshiung fishing harbour and to another southern village on June 28th, after anti-China protesters threw paint on his motorcade. The DPP, which organised protests in the early days of Mr Ma’s presidency, kept its distance from the street protests that greeted Mr Zhang.

No official agreements were signed. But Mr Zhang’s low-key visit and his efforts to win back Taiwan’s confidence in the wake of the Sunflower Movement protests hinted at the hallmarks of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Taiwan policies. 

Mr Zhang’s affability in Taiwan stands in sharp contrast to China’s relations with several other Asian nations, where rows have flared over contested claims to sea territories. More pointedly, it contrasts with China’s tone in the former British colony of Hong Kong, which reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 and now is beset by significant political turbulenceas activists try to pressure China on electoral reforms. 

Lin Chong-pin, a Taiwanese former deputy defence minister, says China is still determined to regain Taiwan. Mr Zhang, he suspects, has been ordered to be charming by Mr Xi who, during his 1999-2002 tenure as governor of Fujian (the Chinese province closest to Taiwan), found that economic treats were useful for winning over some Taiwanese people. Beijing’s leaders have long used this strategy, Mr Lin says, but Mr Xi has taken it farther. One important milestone was a meeting in February between Mr Wang and Mr Zhang that marked the first official contact between the governments of China and Taiwan since 1949 and a large step in expanding cross-strait dialogue beyond trade.

Mr Zhang’s willingness openly to meet Ms Chen also suggested China may be be uneasily preparing for the possibility that it will one day have to deal with a DPP government and should try better to understand the party. Mr Ma is one of the most unpopular elected presidents in Taiwan’s history. The prospects of his Kuomintang (KMT) party in municipal elections at the end of the year, which will set the stage for presidential elections in 2016, seem grim. Corruption scandals are hurting KMT candidates in traditional northern strongholds; even in a Taipei constituency traditionally seen as safe for the party, polling shows that a DPP-backed independent is mounting a credible challenge.

The DPP’s decision to shun protests during Mr Zhang’s visit implies a new pragmatism and less reluctance to engage with China. Even die-hard pro-independence DPP members or activists have held informal meetings with Chinese officials. 

China still does not formally recognise the DPP as it supports Taiwanese independence. Mr Zhang did not meet with Tsai Ing-wen, the party leader. Some in the DPP want to tone down the party charter by “freezing” its key pro-independence article, in hopes of winning over centrist voters. While Joseph Wu, the DPP’s Washington envoy, denies this is the view of DPP leaders and says instead the DPP will wait for more compromises from China, behind the scenes, says Mr Lin, DPP leaders are engaged in agonised soul searching as to whether the party should compromise its ideal of creating an independent Taiwanese state in order to get elected. 

Mr Zhang’s visit also suggests that China has now written off Mr Ma as a lame duck. In a break with its usual practice of offering business agreements to Mr Ma’s government for the benefit of ordinary Taiwanese, Mr Zhang went over Mr Ma’s head and made direct contact with ordinary Taiwanese. Mr Lin says Beijing is frustrated with Mr Ma’s poor leadership, particularly his inability to force his lawmakers to pass the services pact. “Beijing has realised the utility of the KMT is seeing diminishing returns,” Mr Lin says. Beijing will try to make new friends among people such as DPP members and fishermen, Mr Lin adds. As elections draw closer, Beijing’s search for new friends will only intensify. 

(Picture credit: AFP/Kaohsiung city government)