Although he still faces uncertainty about where things may go with Beijing in the future, Ma Ying-jeou can look back over his first year in office with a reasonably high degree of satisfaction about achievements in cross-Strait relations. At the same time, he has confronted continuing doubts about the evolving state of Taiwan's economy as well as about the role of cross-Strait relations in helping restore the economy's upward track. The predictable negativism from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) toward Ma has not brought a concomitant rise in DPP popularity, despite Ma's tumbling popularity during much of the year. With the DPP riven by factionalism and by a lack of consensus over where the party should place its emphasis, a growing number of leading party members have picked up DPP Chair Tsai Ing-wen's charge that the party cannot defeat the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) by attacks alone; rather, it needs a positive vision and agenda. But as it struggled to come to terms on what such a vision should be—including about how to approach the Mainland—the party continued its remorseless attacks on Ma's policies.
The PRC's handling of cross-Strait issues was equally predictable. While much progress had been made, and maintaining momentum remained a priority, Beijing still harbors doubts about the extent of Ma's ambition and about how far to go in accommodating it. Beijing frets over the consequences of further “concessions” when the DPP returns to power and over whether, even under the KMT, PRC cooperation with Ma's agenda for larger aspects of cross-Strait relations and “international space” will not consolidate the political gap between the two sides and make ultimate reunification much more difficult. Meanwhile, the resumption of U.S.-PRC military-to-military dialogue—cut off after the Bush administration's Taiwan arms sales notification to Congress in October 2008—prompted both PLA and PRC civilian officials to remind Washington that U.S. arms sales to Taiwan remain extremely sensitive and that further sales will introduce a serious complication in Sino-American relations as well as in cross-Strait ties.
Even though municipal and county elections in early December 2009 will turn primarily on local issues and personalities, by then the public will have had time to judge not only how Ma handles his dual state and KMT responsibilities, but also whether the nascent economic optimism has been justified. Included in that judgment will be a calculation about whether various steps taken by the Mainland to help Taiwan's economy were having any meaningful effect and whether deepening cross-Strait economic ties were compromising Taiwan's economic autonomy and political status, as the DPP claims, or not, as Ma insists. Ma thus faces a dilemma in the negative interaction between continuing DPP opposition and lingering PRC hesitancy. The skepticism emanating from these two directions derives from very different sets of concerns, but there is a synergy between them, and their combined effect could contribute to some tough sledding for the Taiwan leader in the period ahead. The U.S. role in this will not be central, but it will be important, demonstrated by the fact that the DPP and Mainland are both seeking to enlist the United States in opposing the actions of the other.
