It’s probably no coincidence that former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou landed in Shanghai just a day before his successor, Tsai Ing-wen, took off for a two-night visit to New York on Tuesday.

Described officially as only personal travel, Ma’s visit to the mainland has seemed carefully stage-managed to shadow Tsai’s own so-called private “transit” through the United States, which Chinese officials have described as a “provocation” due to Beijing’s characterization of the self-governing island as a renegade province.

From their arrivals in New York and Shanghai, respectively the most populous cities in the United States and China and each country’s primary financial and business center, to their effusive praise for their host government, the trips have had an eerie mirror quality.

The only difference has been in where the praise has been directed.

“The bond between Taiwan and the United States is strong today,” Tsai said in New York, calling Taiwan a “beacon of democracy” in Asia and calling for closer ties between the island and the United States.

Ma, by contrast, on Thursday praised China’s “effective control measures” in Wuhan after the outbreak of COVID-19 there as a “contribution to the whole of humanity,” a report in Xinhua said. 

He also called for more cross-strait cooperation and applauded the Chinese authorities for “preventing the large-scale spread of the virus,” seemingly in spite of the global pandemic that has followed.

‘Propaganda effect’

Tsai departed on Friday for official visits over the weekend to Guatemala and Belize – the ostensible primary reason for her travel, necessitating the two rounds of “transit” through the United States – but returns on Tuesday for two further nights in Los Angeles. 

A planned meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has already drawn threats of “countermeasures” and “confrontation” from Beijing.

Ma leaves China for Taiwan on April 7, a day before Tsai’s return. 

Austin Wang, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said the reason for the mirrored trip was likely the “international propaganda effect that Beijing is hoping to achieve” by having Ma on the mainland during Tsai’s U.S. stays.

“After all, Ma Ying-jeou is a former president, and from the attention of domestic and foreign media, his visit to China gives a sense of ‘balance,’ as if Taiwan's public opinion is not all leaning towards the U.S.,” Wang told Radio Free Asia on Thursday. 

The first leg of Tsai’s visit to America mostly passed without controversy, with Beijing seeming to be more concerned about her plans to meet McCarthy next week. Taiwanese and American officials have appeared careful to avoid a flare-up in relations between Washington and Beijing amid efforts to cool down months of mounting tensions.

Tsai on Thursday night, for instance, delivered a speech behind closed-doors at the InterContinental New York Barclay hotel – with media not invited – after receiving a global leadership award from the Hudson Institute, a conservative foreign-policy think tank. 

A leaked recording obtained by The Washington Post quoted Tsai as saying that Taiwan wanted to cool down relations with Beijing amid growing threats and predictions of an invasion, but also seek to keep a status quo where the island is not under China’s thumb.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a wake-up call to us all, and served as a reminder that authoritarianism does not cease in its belligerence against democracy,” Tsai reportedly said. “Taiwan has also long endured the peril of living next to an authoritarian neighbor.” 

‘Their battle is our battle’

At the same event on Thursday evening, Hudson Institute President John Walters praised Tsai, to whom the think tank presented an award for leadership previously granted to former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for resisting what he termed Beijing’s aggression.

“The Chinese Communist Party fears her because she and Taiwan are an inspiration for the Chinese people who aspire to be free and yearn for democracy,” Walters said, according to the event recording obtained by The Post. “Her battle – their battle – is our battle.”

It’s the kind of language Beijing had described as a “red line” and a violation of the “One China” principle that Taiwan belongs to China.

At a press briefing on Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning responded to Tsai’s praise of closer U.S.-Taiwan ties by saying that it proved her U.S. trip was not just “transit” on the way to Central America, but a visit in service of “Taiwanese independence.”

“Let me stress that no matter what the Taiwan authorities say or do, it won’t change the fact that Taiwan is part of China,” Mao added. “No one and no force can hold back China’s reunification.”

Wang from the University of Nevada said the Biden administration would likely be hoping to weather the two legs of “transit” through the United States by Tsai, a close ally, as it seeks to re-engage with Beijing, with Taiwan’s leader forced to accept that reality.

“The United States is currently in a position of hoping to observe whether there will be any changes or opportunities to re-engage with China after the two sessions, which may explain the low-key attitude of the U.S. towards handling Tsai Ing-wen's transit,” he said.

“Taiwan is mostly in a relatively passive position.”

Private citizen

Tsai’s visit has already apparently been pared back, with reported plans for another speech – at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library next Wednesday, when she meets McCarthy – having apparently been canceled amid growing concerns from the Biden administration.

Melissa Giller, the library’s chief marketing officer, confirmed that Tsai would not speak at the event, and denied that had been the plan.

“We just said that we had invited her,” Giller told RFA on Friday. “No speech has been cancelled, as there was never a speech set up.”

While both Ma and Tsai’s trips out of Taiwan have been described as private, rather than official travel, one of the trips is clearly more private than the other, according to Bonnie Glaser, the director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Glaser told RFA that Ma is “a private citizen and as such can speak for himself,” but, unlike Tsai, “not for the rest of the citizens of Taiwan.” She said Tsai’s trip would serve the purpose of cementing U.S.-Taiwan ties. 

“The success of a transit should not be measured by whether or not there is a breakthrough. I expect that the transit will underscore the close U.S.-Taiwan relationship, including our shared interests and values,” Glaser said, adding that Beijing needed to look inward.

"There are many drivers of change in U.S.-China-Taiwan dynamics,” she explained, “but the most important is the growing coercive nature” of Beijing’s own recent approach to cross-strait relations.

Coming elections

The two leaders’ trips, in the end, appear at the very least to have drawn battle lines for the self-governing island’s January 2024 presidential election, which will decide Tsai’s successor.

The president is term-limited from running again, but her vice-president, Lai Ching-te, is expected to be the nominee for the ruling Democratic People’s Party, and has praised Tsai’s visit.

“I’m proud to see President Tsai represent our country with dignity. No matter the difficulties we face, Taiwanese people are calm, pragmatic, and confident in who we are,” Lai tweeted on Thursday.

Ma’s Kuomintang party, meanwhile, won the Taipei mayoral race in November and hopes to retake the presidency next year. 

Amid his trip, a spokesperson for Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, Zhu Fenglian, said in a speech Thursday that Taiwan’s 23 million people would “enjoy tangible benefits after unification,” and promised they could maintain “a social system different from that of the mainland.”

Nonetheless, party spokesman Alfred Lin said a Kuomintang victory next year did not necessarily mean imminent reunification. The opposition party merely wanted to “engage in peaceful exchanges and coexist” with Beijing, he said, while keeping the status quo.

“The Kuomintang has always been opposed to the ‘One country, two systems’ model, and has never advocated for unification with the Chinese Communist Party, as we do not want to live under such an authoritarian regime,” Lin said, calling for forbearance.

“When a small country confronts a large one, we must have wisdom and patience,” he said. “We may never win this game, but we must never lose it. The best way for Taiwan is to maintain this game.” [RFA/NS]