ROC Drags Taiwan into Beijing's South China Sea Cloud Cuckoo Land

Cain Nunn had an excellent piece in The Diplomat that echoed the concerns in my post from a couple of days ago....basically because Taipei claims to be the government of China, it claims the entire South China Sea (remember, the ROC proffered the famous Cow's Tongue map showing the entire area as China's prior to the PRC). This claim puts it at odds with potential allies, and hugely complicates America's security picture. Nunn has some great quotes:

Taipei makes its claim under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which would be fine if it was a party to UNCLOS, or any other U.N. body or agreement. But the Republic of China was expelled from the United Nations in 1971, when the General Assembly recognized “the Peoples’ Republic of China as the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations.”

While Beijing’s oft-criticized “nine-dotted line” claim has been ridiculed by its Association of Southeast Asian Nation neighbors, Taiwan’s virtually identical declaration has been hammered as “frivolous” and “out of touch with Asia’s diplomatic reality.”

“I wish they would shut up. There isn’t a single Asian country that even recognizes them. How are they relevant?” asks one Southeast Asian diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They lost their war 65 years ago and they still act like they are a great power. You would think show some humility where these frivolous claims are concerned. Discretion being the better part of valor, and all that.”

Even more importantly....

“They are working with China on this because our claim backs up Beijing’s. It’s this arrogance of a grand ultra-nationalist vision. But I would argue that if you want to use claims like this as potential bargaining chip in negotiations with China then there should be some credibility to them,” says Michael Kau, a former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs under the independence leaning Democratic Progressive Party. “This idea of treating this huge body of water as ours by right of dubious historical claims, it’s not only not credible, it’s crazy.” 

The DPP/KMT stability effect is not so easy to sort out. The PRC might be happy with Ma because he shares their right-wing Chinese nationalism -- in some ways the ROC is even farther right than the PRC. Recall that when the US handed back Okinawa to Japan the ROC protested -- Okinawa is "stolen territory" to many right-wing Chinese, awaiting recovery....

But here, as I have noted many times, is where Washington's Asia policy embodies a serious contradiction. Having Ma in office complicates things in the South China Sea -- where the US just conducted military exercises with Manila. Beijing rescuing Taipei in a confrontation is not yet in the cards, but it is barely visible on the horizon, like a false dawn, the kind the Arabs call the wolf's tail...

Ideally the DPP might be persuaded to be more rational about Taiwan's claims, as the quote from Michael Kau indicates. Problem is, that when the DPP was in office it used those islands for PR stunts while enhancing sovereignty claims. President Chen visited the Dongsha Islands three times while in office, and it was under him that they were designated a national marine park. He also visited Taiping Island in February of 2008 just before the election. It would be great if the DPP would spend some time educating its followers that Taiwan independence means being independent of Beijing's claims to the Senkakus and the South China Sea.

BTW, Nunn's claims about the national territory of China and the ROC Constitution are mostly wrong. Bo Tedards took the Taipei Times to task for similar mistakes a few weeks ago. Great article....

In a related view, The Taiwan Link has another high quality post that asks how the US should adjust its policies to the new realities in this part of the world. A taste:

The key question we should be asking is this: How could U.S. policy toward Taiwan best reflect a more accurate representation of the status quo in the Taiwan Strait? An unintended consequence of a thoughtful review of the TRA is the introduction of alternatives. When compared side by side, normalization of relations with both sides of the Taiwan Strait -- the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) -- is more consistent with US interests than abandonment of principles through repeal of the TRA. The more the Beijing and its supporters push for abrogation of the TRA, and by extension full adoption of the CCP position on sovereignty, the more attention should be directed toward the most viable alternative -- normalization of diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

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