US embassy cable - 05TAIPEI1173

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 TAIPEI 001173 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE PASS AIT/W 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/17/2015 
TAGS: PREL, TW 
SUBJECT: ANTI-SECESSION LAW:  TAIWAN CALLS FOR 
INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT 
 
REF: TAIPEI 1085 
 
Classified By: AIT Director Douglas Paal, Reason: 1.4 (B/D) 
 
1.  (C) Summary.  Taipei is aggressively courting 
international support in its opposition to Beijing's 
Anti-Secession Law.  Taiwan diplomats and representatives 
abroad have been tasked with lobbying host governments, and 
President Chen has given interviews to the foreign media.  On 
March 15, Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen convened a 
meeting of Taipei's foreign diplomatic missions and 
representative offices to elicit international support. 
Painting Taiwan as the aggrieved party and Mainland China's 
lack of democracy as the root cause of cross-Strait 
instability, Taiwan officials presented a package they hoped 
would appeal to the international community, especially the 
European Union and the U.S.  Taipei's international outreach 
is also targetted at Taiwan's domestic political audience, to 
seek support for the government's response to date and reduce 
pressure on President Chen to take stronger measures that 
would have long-term consequences for cross-Strait relations. 
 End Summary. 
 
2.  (U) Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen (Tang-shan) 
invited all diplomatic missions and representative offices to 
a meeting at MOFA on March 15 to lay out Taiwan's case 
against Mainland China's Anti-Secession Law.  Chen announced 
"the Republic of China's solemn protest" against China's 
"anti-separation law."  Terming the law a "unilateral change" 
to the status quo that threatened the peace and stability of 
the region, Chen appealed to the international community to 
jointly condemn China's action.  Many in the international 
community saw Taiwan as the troublemaker, Chen lamented, a 
misunderstanding that the Anti-Secession Law should clarify. 
The real threat to cross-Strait stability, he argued, was the 
lack of democracy in Mainland China; only political reform 
there would enable peaceful resolution of the cross-Strait 
situation. 
 
3.  (U) Stating that the Anti-Secession Law provided "a blank 
check" for the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to annex 
Taiwan, Chen called on the European Union to recognize 
China's military threat against Taiwan and "not lift its arms 
embargo on China."  Such military sales, he argued, "threaten 
the security of the region."  Chen concluded with the cryptic 
comment that the Taiwanese Government would adopt "some 
necessary measures" to deal with the Anti-Secession Law. 
 
4.  (U) In his impromptu follow-on remarks, Chen took 
particular umbrage at China mistranslating its 
"anti-separation law" into "anti-secession law," with the 
obvious analogy to the U.S. fight against Southern secession 
during the Civil War.  "A ridiculous comparison," he scoffed, 
since Taiwan had been separate from mainland China since 
1895.  Chen again called on the international community to 
not be complacent, but to condemn the Anti-Secession Law, 
offering his own historical analogy -- neutrality in the 
1930's resulted in Hitler's genocide against six million 
Jews. 
 
5.  (U) In a more scholarly vein, Mainland Affairs Council 
(MAC) Deputy Chair (and former Academia Sinica researcher) 
David Huang explained that Mainland China had simply 
miscalculated.  When the pro-independence Pan-Green faction 
failed to win a majority in the December 2004, it was too 
late for Beijing to stop the legislative process already 
underway.  The last-minute changes in the Anti-Secession Law, 
he said, "make no difference at all" to Taiwan.  The main 
challenge to the cross-Strait status quo "as defined by the 
U.S. and Japan," he said, was China's own arms build-up. 
 
6.  (U) Taiwan's greatest objection to the Anti-Secession 
Law, Huang continued, was that it empowered the Mainland 
government to decide when the law had been violated and what 
form the prescribed "non-peaceful" punitive action would 
take.  This, he argued, would encourage more aggressive 
behavior by Beijing and the PLA.  Huang insisted that both 
the draft counter legislation under consideration in Taiwan's 
Legislative Yuan (LY), and the March 26 mass protest rally, 
were logical and understandable ways to channel Taiwan's 
anger over the PRC law into effective mechanisms. 
 
7.  (C) Comment.  Taipei's outreach to the international 
community is part of the Chen administration's effort to both 
gauge and influence domestic and foreign response to the 
Anti-Secession Law, as it works out its own policy response. 
Government officials highlight, and the pro-government press 
reports, criticism of the Anti-Secession Law from around the 
world, to reassure the people of Taiwan that they are not 
alone and that Taiwan's outrage is shared by other countries. 
 Solicitation of international support, however, is a 
two-edged sword in Taiwan's complex political culture.  While 
Taiwan officials emphasize to AIT that a strong international 
response will reduce pressure on the Chen government to adopt 
stronger measures that could affect cross-Strait prospects 
long-term, there are pro-independence hardliners who will use 
this to validate their calls for a strong reaction by Taiwan 
and to push for stronger countermeasures.  Both President 
Chen and Foreign Minister Chen, himself an experienced local 
politician in Taiwan, are trying to prove to all stripes in 
Taiwan's political color scheme that they are ardently 
defending Taiwan while acting with restraint. 
PAAL