ECFA’s Empty Promise and Hollow Threat

Chinese soft power has special implications for Taiwan and cross-Strait relations. PRC sources insist that, as a still-developing country, China's principal foreign policy principle long will be to seek a peaceful and stable international order in which to pursue economic modernization. Although Ma Ying-jeou's East China Sea Peace Initiative and approach to the killing of a Taiwanese fisherman in disputed waters near the Philippines created new distance between ROC and PRC positions, Taipei has remained relatively closely aligned with Beijing and at odds with other claimant states and, to some extent, the United States (US) on the fraught issues of sovereignty and jurisdiction over contested land masses and maritime areas. Beijing's support for international relations norms of "non-interference" in states internal affairs and concepts of nearly impermeable sovereignty has served another, largely defensive soft power agenda that matters for Taiwan and cross-Strait relations that are ameliorating the consequences of China's unattractive domestic political order.