The NCAFP's Forum on Asia-Pacific Security (FAPS) convened a Track 1.5 meeting on June 1-2, 2016 in New York City that included a group of officials and scholars from the Taiwan Affairs Office of the PRC State Council to discuss U.S.-China and cross-Taiwan Strait relations.
The Democratic Progressive Party’s sweep of the January 2016 elections in Taiwan ushered in a DPP Administration led by President Tsai Ing-wen. In the four months since her election in January 2016 the Mainland has been focused on whether or not she would follow its strict directive that she accept the so-called 1992 Consensus and the One China principle as a baseline for continued relations across the Strait.
The Mainland’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) gave her an ‘incomplete grade’ on her May 20 inaugural speech and has also suspended official exchanges between the TAO and Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) as well as the Association of Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) and the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF).
The key question following these developments is whether we are at the beginning of a process in which constructive relations between the Mainland and the DPP can still be developed, or whether we are likely to see a vicious cycle of action and reaction that portends an end to the positive trend of the last eight years under KMT rule of Taiwan and a potential crisis in the future.
Please click here for a report that provides a summary of key discussion points followed by the meeting’s major policy recommendations.