Date: July 8, 2010, 14:00~15:20

Venue: Grand Ballroom, Westin Chosun Seoul

 

Moderator: Chaesung Chun

 

What we did last year was introduce ourselves. Since we have a limit in budget and since we do not have a format for this meeting, let’s share what our research materials and plans are. We have new plans in EAI: making some progress in advancing our writing materials, but we need to expand our mother institutions. But it’s not systematic so one purpose for this ASI network is not just to produce research outcomes but also to establish networks to learn from each other. We have some plans for the second year. What I suggest is we take turns to introduce ourselves and your institution, your evaluation of one year’s performance. Then we can talk about very freely what we are going to do for the next year. Is there any suggestion for the meeting? (No answer) Okay. May I ask Professor Yen to start?

 

Tiehlin Yen

 

Thank you Doctor Chun. What actually I have been talking about in the last session regarding the Institute of International Relations in Chengchi University; what we’ve been thinking and what we have done. I really have to emphasize that the center for security studies under IIR in Chengchi University is a newly established institute, only established last November, purely based on the funding provided by the MacArthur Foundation. The director of the center Dr. Fu-Kuo Liu was supposed to be here. He had an idea probably 5 years ago, to get funding from the United States then do the cross strait peace research and eventually, hopefully, that our research would be useful for the cross strait peace and stability. Based on one of my observations, it would be very promising. Because only within the first 6 months, we have been very successful in terms of the exchanges between our institutions and the several different institutions in China.

 

I got an impression that when I arrived here, and I gained touch with all the participants, everyone knows F. Everybody was asking “do you know F?” So he has been very very successful, that’s for sure, and I believe his idea has been shared by everybody here. And he made things happen. And in the very short period of time we had very big project Like I said in the first session, at the end of this month, there is going to be the PhD. students engaging with each other discussing the future of China and Taiwan together – a one week program. And it will continue, next year, and the year after next. It will be institutionalized if we can get more funding. Hopefully Korean foundation might want to help.

 

The second big issue is after signed the AFGA, the Free Trade Agreement with China only just last week, people are talking about what’s next? Are we going to discuss political issues in the near future or not? There is a lot of debate. There are pros and cons. The current government is working on that. I believe the other side is considering this as well. Because talking about economic issues is already … we already have a mechanism, already have a system which is not… There is no way to turn backwards. So what we are really looking at is if there’s a possibility that China would initiate something like a signed peace agreement to end hostilities between both sides of the Taiwan Strait. If that kind of thing happens, if Hu Jintao in the next 3 to 6 months time, or the end of this year, makes a speech like year 2008, makes a 6 point, us a framework for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to get engaging with each other, saying that we would like to engage with Taiwan to talking about signed peace agreement to end hostilities, what will be the response of the Taiwanese Government? It is a big issue. There is a lot of debate currently in our academic journal public and also in the last slat of yen.

 

I believe the current administration sees that coming. It’s coming soon. And we also believe based on our observations President Hu Jintao has his own personal sense of nation, his own crusade, he wants to leave a legacy. In the year before he steps down in the year 2012, in terms of a cross strait relationship, even though he might not be able to see the unification of Taiwan in his lifetime, he wants to leave a legacy that makes this exchange mechanism between both sides of the Taiwan Strait a permanent one, which is irreversible. No matter which person is in power or the next generation political leadership… no matter what happens, the mechanism will be always there. The devotion between both sides of the Taiwan Strait, the people exchange will be still there, will be going on, down the road, forever. So, if that observation is true, sooner or later before the year 2012, something will happen. Something like Hu Jintao publicly announces “we want to sign an agreement.” So lots of preparation will be there for us to do. So our institution has mandated ourselves. We have to prepare for that, in terms of a political dialog and in terms of a military confidence building. This institution, Center for Security Studies has to engage in this kind of dialog first. We are thinking we can serve as a platform to let both sides of the active duty officers or people with influence to come to Taiwan or have conferences in the third country or in mainland China to talk about what will be, what will happen, what strategies for both sides that we can bring to the political discussion then help both governments, both regimes, to understand the issue, understand the challenges, understand the obstacles, the difficulties and find a way to proceed this dialog that makes this cross strait relationship develop positively forever. Thank you very much.

 

Moderator: Chaesung Chun

 

And what kind of research outputs are you focusing on? Like books, or briefings?

 

Tiehlin Yen

 

I believe I haven’t made myself clear in the first place. I’m really sorry about that. This institute has just been established. That’s the first 6 months time. This organization, we have about 30 scholars. Mainly they play part time roles. We divide them into 4 groups. The first is the Defense group talking about cross strait military balance. The second one is the National Security group, talking about regional connections, focused more on the neighboring country’s support for cross strait dialog, most importantly, in the future political dialogs and military dialog. For Taiwan, we have to consider, the Taiwan government needs to consider what’s the opinion of the opposition party, the general public, and also the opinion of the United States, Japan, and South Korea especially, regarding the future political dialog and the military dialog. The third one is a non-traditional security group. We focus on Taiwan, with a 300,000 armed forces, we do have the capability to conduct the humanitarian assistance, disaster relief kind of work, but this kind of capability Taiwan can contribute. But unfortunately we have never done that, number one is because, China feels not comfortable with Taiwan sending out military capabilities overseas to help do the disaster relief or humanitarian assistance kind of work, secondly the international community does not feel it is appropriate because they worry about Chinese might oppose that the whole thing may be undermined if Taiwan sends out the military force to do these kinds of things. But we really want to emphasize that we have about 200 helicopter fleets, that we have amphibious kind of ships that definitely can contribute if there is another tsunami, or disaster or earthquake. This capability, if you don’t use it, it is a waste, sitting there doing nothing, training for the future, an unthinkable kind of scenario, which is no good. We do want to contribute. And at this very moment, our parliament is discussing mandatorily asking the Taiwan armed forces to put the disaster relief as one of the main missions of our military. How do we use the capability we already own to help the international community when there is a disaster happening there. That’s the third group. The last one has to be the cross strait relations. That’s exactly what I’ve been talking about. Many focus on the cross strait relations, doing the student exchange, fostering the future leadership, the future elite, understanding each other, in order to, when they are in power, when they are in important positions, they can make decisions based on what they learned when they were young. What they understand about both sides’ situations, they will make their own decisions instead of precipitate kind of type. So, there haven’t been any specific publications so far, but eventually, over the time we’re thinking our research would be fruitful. Because those 30 different scholars, they are working on this. At the end of this year, there might be, we might have a couple of publications but since they are part time, so we don’t have the right to ask them, “You have to write something about us.” But we have a meeting every now and then, basically once a month, we have a policy dialog inviting the ministers of foreign affairs, defense and also mainland think tanks to talk about all the public issues and policy issues. And also we invited the ambassadors. We call them ambassadors even though we don’t have a diplomatic relationship, the director and division chiefs, to give us their point of view, the American point of view on the cross strait issue, all those kind of things. I believe, next year, our annual book will be very, very fruitful. Thank you very much...(Continued)

 

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Moderator

Chaesung Chun

 

Participants

Jae Ho Chung

Matthew Ferchen

Jing Gu

Xuetang Guo

Young-Sun Ha

Sung-han Kim

Jennifer Lee

Shin-wha Lee

Sook-Jong Lee

Paul B. Stares

Tiehlin Yen

 

Prepared by the Asia Security Initiative Research Center at the East Asia Institute. The East Asia institute, an Asia Security Initiative core institution, acknowledges the MacArthur Foundation for its generous grant and continued support. The East Asia Institute takes no institutional position on policy issues and has no affiliation with the Korean government.