Asian Regional Integration and the Cross-strait Controversy
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概要
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Any kind of Asian multilateral or regional framework necessarily faces the unique cross-straits reality. Two governments, China and Taiwan, which are at the same time politically antagonistic but economically interdependent, peacefully co-exist in the global society. How do existing regional institutions deal with the cross-straits controversy and authorize their affiliations? To answer the above question, this article examines the three cases of GATT/WTO, APEC, EAS, by focusing on the historical backgrounds and institutional bases for the participation of China and Taiwan.This study argues that conflicting parties within a divided state are able to co-exist in multilateral frameworks by means of adopting an operational name and devising flexible membership criteria. Simultaneous participation, however, remains risky unless the two parties remain disciplined to not bring their local problems into the regional arena.Dual and equal membership is most likely to happen in economic and functional organizations, where the rule of “Separation between Politics and Economics” functions. The GATT/WTO is such a case. In addition, throughout the process, the US-led major signatories had informally agreed that the membership question of China and Taiwan would be treated as a package on a equal basis. This “sit in the same bus” formula contributed to avoiding their conventional zero-sum game. Taiwan joined the international economic regime by adopting the status of a “customs territory.”The APEC case suggests that an institutionally weak framework is vulnerable to directly fall into the pit of a bilateral political battleground. As the nature of the APEC was shifting from economic to political, Lee Tenghui's “Chinese Taipei,” which was affiliated as an “economy,” aggressively advanced into the APEC with its pragmatic diplomacy. After years of mediation efforts the APEC members recently found the best compromise is to allow Taiwan's participation in the form of “non-governmental” or “private” status in the APEC summits.Meanwhile, China has isolated Taiwan from the EAS. Without US presence, China has actively taken initiative in organizing East Asian regionalism with ASEAN by emphasizing the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TAC) as the central instrument. China actively promotes the core values of the TAC such as sovereignty and non-intervention in order to pursue a non-conciliatory “One China” policy. This adversely affects Taiwan's possible association with the EAS. As long as signing the TAC is required as prerequisite for gaining its membership, the EAS will continue to prevent Taiwan from appearing in both security agenda and membership question.