Op-Ed Contributors

The politics of a non-political agreement

By Shih Chih-yu
Updated: 2010-06-30 07:53

It is not clear, though, if the shift toward the economic aspect would succeed or even reflect the true intention of the Kuomintang. First of all, if the Kuomintang did not de-politicize the ECFA issue to its extreme, the ECFA would have had no chance at all from the beginning.

The Kuomintang consistently enlists a materialist discourse to address its cross-Straits policy, which basically treats the mainland disrespectfully as no more than a market or a supplier of resources.

This materialist discourse is intended not only to offset the political implications of the ECFA but also to pre-empt any nationalist arousal that pro-unification advocates might experience and enact.

Ironically, given the expanding scope of interaction across the Straits that the ECFA will surely bring about, the political parties will lose monopoly over what will come out of the ECFA. Political implications can go several ways. The ECFA-led broader and deeper interaction could, for example, render the political settlement a decreasingly relevant issue among the rank and file to the disillusionment of the pro-unification advocates as well as the alienation of the pro-independence forces.

It could, on the contrary, generate an atmosphere wherein political integration is no longer a so sensible issue that resistance to it could lose momentum.

It is politically useful for the opposition in Taiwan to politicize the ECFA issue only in the short run since the Kuomintang strictly adheres to the economic aspect. The Kuomintang's materialist approach is actually a response to the opposition's politicization strategy.

This materialist approach leaves the political implications of the ECFA unanswered. They cannot be answered indeed as the ECFA could result in alienation from politics on the one hand, and less resistance toward unification on the other.

The author is professor of political science, National Taiwan University.