TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — There are two questions worth asking about the Kuomintang (KMT) that should inform voters when they vote in the KMT primaries and in the election next November. How much is the KMT colluding with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and how pro-China is KMT Chair Eric Chu (朱立倫)?
That the KMT is colluding with the CCP isn’t in question, it’s a question of how much, in what ways and to what purpose. There is no way to definitively answer these questions because we don’t know what is discussed behind closed doors, such as during KMT Deputy Chair Andrew Hsia’s (夏立言) recent trips to China.
However, by collecting the pieces we do know from public sources, we can form something of a picture.
As previously charted out in-depth, starting in the early 2000s, especially after the 2005 meeting between then-KMT Chair Lien Chan (連戰) and the then CCP-General-Secretary Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), the KMT openly drew close to the CCP. The high water mark of this period was the November 2015 meeting between then-President and KMT party Chair Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Chinese leader Xi Jinping (習近平) in Singapore.
At the time of the summit, the KMT chair and presidential candidate was Eric Chu, the same chair as now. Chu’s stance was the same as Ma at the time, saying: “President Ma's economic and political strategy for engaging China has been reasonable and very effective."
This openness by the KMT to cooperating with the CCP lasted even after Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won in a landslide election in 2016, on a pro-Taiwan and China-cautious platform. The KMT elected deep blue Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) party chair and ran similarly deep blue Daniel Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) as their presidential candidate in the 2020 election.
Enter Johnny Chiang
This closeness to the CCP lasted until March 2020 when Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) was elected party chair. The light blue Chiang was openly pro-US and wanted to get rid of the deeply unpopular “1992 consensus," of which the KMT version runs “there is one China, each side with its own interpretation” (the CCP version is only “there is one China” with no two sides about it).
Chiang was the first KMT chair in a long time to receive no congratulatory message from the CCP chair. During Chiang’s term, he said there was only “low level” communication with the CCP, and he didn’t come across as being very pleased with even that.
What Chiang may have been referring to is personal communications by some deep blue members of the party, like Hung Hsiu-chu and the President of the KMT’s Sun Yat-sen School, Chang Ya-chung (張亞中). The latter, incidentally, has declared recently he will be seeking the KMT nomination to run for president.
Now that Eric Chu is party chair again, where do he and the party stand on the CCP? He’s been giving different messages that keep changing over time, and is also different depending on the audience he’s addressing.
I have laid out before how KMT members are on a spectrum when it comes to China and Taiwan sovereignty issues, and that there are four broad categories of KMT member. Two are important: Light blues who are more pro-US, strong on defense and want to maintain the status quo across the Taiwan Strait indefinitely; and the deep blue pro-unificationists, who want Taiwan to be annexed into the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Like many light blues, Johnny Chiang held views that were approaching the mainstream of public opinion. Deep blues can be broadly split into two camps, those who want annexation to happen soon, and those who want it to happen slowly over the longer term.
Hung Hsiu-chu and Chang Ya-chung are in the annexation soon category. Ma Ying-jeou, who laid some of the groundwork for eventual unification during his presidency, is probably in the gradual unification camp.
Where Chu fits in
So where does Chu fit in? In 2015-2016, during his first tenure as KMT chair and during his presidential campaign he sounded very much like a slightly toned-down Ma Ying-jeou, but in essence his stance was the same as Ma. Chu came out and told Xi Jinping he supported eventual “reunification.”
Chu also flew to Beijing to meet with Xi in 2015, and said his trip, “Includes efforts that seek to promote regional economic integration such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and ‘one belt, one road.'” Both of those organizations are attempts by China to reduce the influence of the current U.S.-led rules-based system and create a parallel one that China can dominate and would have increased Taiwan’s reliance on the PRC.
Then during his campaign for KMT chair in 2021 Chu took a very different stance, strongly pro-U.S., strongly in favor of preserving Republic of China (ROC) sovereignty and in favor of boosting the military to stand up to China. He sounded like he was trying to outdo Johnny Chiang.
It didn’t last. Unlike Chiang, and in spite of his tough talk during the chair race, Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory message to Chu, and Chu replied to him with a message that can only be described as toadying with lines like these:
“In recent years, however, the DPP administration has changed the status quo across the Strait by adopting ‘desinification’ and ‘anti-China’ policies. That created a tough situation across the Strait and an extreme sense of insecurity among the people across the Strait”
That language mimics the CCP’s own. Notice that Chu puts all the blame on the “DPP administration.” This ignores that it is a government democratically elected by the people to handle the status quo the way it has been.
There is no acknowledgement that it has been China changing the status quo, and the message praises cooperation with the CCP. It also stated: “People on both sides of the strait are the descendants of Yan and Huang” (Chinese people) and praised the "1992 consensus" (see detail here).
Chu changes tack, twice
Then, abruptly, he changed tack again during a trip to the U.S. in June 2022. He claimed the KMT has “always” been pro-U.S., has never been pro-China, has fought communism for over 100 years, and called the "1992 consensus" a “non-consensus consensus,” and held those positions for a few months during that summer.
Then in August, just after the live-fire war games held around Taiwan following the Nancy Pelosi visit, and just after China released their combative “reunification” white paper, Chu dispatched Andrew Hsia and a delegation to China. The timing drew considerable condemnation even from within the KMT.
Clearly not pleased with Chu’s comments over the summer, it wasn’t a very welcoming trip for Hsia, but he did meet with the then-Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) head Liu Jieyi (劉結一). Though they would probably deny it, they clearly talked about Chu’s comments and CCP-KMT cooperation.
The reason we know this is that late in Hsia’s trip, Eric Chu abruptly changed tack again and suddenly dumped his summer slogan of “pro-U.S., oppose CCP, keep distance from China” to “pro-U.S., friendly with Japan, peace with the mainland," hyped the "1992 consensus" and reiterated the KMT is anti-Taiwan independence. The same announcement also touted a new “2D strategy” of “defense” and “dialogue” to “maintain regional peace."
Just as the spy balloon incident was at its peak and once again making the timing problematic, Andrew Hsia led another delegation to China. This was markedly warmer and the reception from the Chinese side noticeably higher profile.
Hsia not only met with the new head of the TAO Song Tao (宋濤), significantly, he also met with Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Huning (王滬寧). Hsia solicitously expressed his gratitute to Xi Jinping and asked after him, and they spoke in glowing terms of the 2005 Lien-Hu “ice-breaking meeting.”
The relationship between the two parties is now once again close. And once again, they’re colluding.
CCP-KMT collusion
As a result of the trip China announced it was willing to “facilitate” allowing banned agricultural and fishing products from Taiwan back into the country. It then went a step further saying it supported “sharing development opportunities with farmers and fishers of the Taiwan region.”
The KMT says, of course, that this was because they care so much about the farmers and fishermen in Taiwan, and perhaps they do. But something much bigger is going on. This is all about the KMT winning the next election.
By colluding with the CCP, the KMT is undermining Taiwan’s democratically elected government’s foreign policy apparatus in order to undermine the DPP. For the KMT, the message they are sending is that they are capable of maintaining a good relationship across the Taiwan Strait, and it doesn’t hurt that farmers and fishermen previously tended to vote DPP but may reward the KMT next time.
This coming election cycle the KMT plans on campaigning on a “war vs. peace” platform. According to a Storm Media report, party insiders told the publication that with all the recent talk of war, they assess that voters will choose the KMT in order to lower tensions with the PRC.
That’s naive. Any reduction in tensions will in the end come at Taiwan’s expense, the CCP will only reduce its aggression if it thinks it can get concessions on Taiwan’s sovereignty.
Unfortunately, it’s now quite possible the CCP and KMT will be colluding on aggressive military actions taken by the Chinese side, whether explicitly or implicitly. China won’t let up on recent increased military activities, or may even accelerate them, to keep the pressure on the DPP and support the KMT’s narrative.
There is another very worrisome element to Hsia’s meeting with Wang Huning. Nikkei reported that an inside CCP source said that Xi “instructed Wang Huning to chart a new "theoretical" course for relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait” in order to replace “one country, two systems.” There is no way this will at its core be any friendlier to Taiwan as long as the CCP is set on annexing Taiwan.
Worryingly, the KMT may be colluding with them to come up with a new formula that sounds friendlier to Taiwanese, and may be planning how to sell it to voters.
