Taiwan's Go South Policy: Deja vu all over again?

• Author: Bing, Ngeow Chow
• Position: Essay

The foreign policy of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who was elected in 2016, will be closely watched by Beijing and countries in Southeast Asia. Before her inauguration, Tsai stated that her administration would pursue a so-called "New Go South Policy" (xin nanxiang zhengce), i.e. a foreign policy focused on building up ties with countries in Southeast Asia as well as in South Asia. A similar policy was initiated by two former presidents of Taiwan, Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian. This article provides a framework to analyze the determinants, objectives, policy dimensions and scope of President Tsai's New Go South Policy. It examines and compares the Go South Policies of previous administrations, together with former President Ma Ying-jeou's policy towards Southeast Asia. Based on these discussions, a prospective policy analysis of President Tsai's Go South Policy is provided. It is argued that Tsai's Go South Policy will help enhance Taiwan's soft power, increase the island's presence in Southeast Asia but will not be used to counterbalance China-Taiwan economic integration.

Keywords: Tsai Ing-wen, Go South Policy, Taiwan-ASEAN relations, cross-straits relations, Taiwan foreign policy.

In September 2015, Tsai Ing-wen, the presidential candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of Taiwan, declared that if she won office a major foreign policy initiative of her administration would be a "New Go South Policy" (New GSP).' After her victory in the January 2016 presidential election, and inauguration in May, one of Tsai's first moves was to set up an Office of New Go South Policy which was placed directly under the Presidential Office. This office was headed by James C.F. Huang, a former foreign minister who served from 2006 to 2008 under the administration of the previous DPP President Chen Shui-bian.

In broad terms, the Go South Policy (GSP) refers to initiatives aimed at strengthening relations between Taiwan and countries "south" of Taiwan, especially countries in Southeast Asia. The New GSP, in fact, can also be termed "GSP 3.0". Two former presidents of Taiwan --Lee Teng-Hui (1998-2000) and Chen Shui-bian (2000-8)--each initiated "GSP 1.0" and "GSP 2.0" respectively, in the 1990s and 2000s. All presidents who initiated a GSP (Lee, Chen, and now, Tsai) are leaders who have deeply suspicious views of Mainland China; indeed, all of them can be considered as "independence-leaning" leaders. (2) The backdrop to these GSPs was the rapid economic development of China and the integration between China and other Asian economies, including Taiwan's. Hence, although GSP could be couched as an initiative to strengthen Taiwan's relations with Southeast Asia--and not necessarily tied to Taiwan's relations with China--in reality it has always been associated as a policy tool to counterbalance China--Taiwan economic integration, along with other strategic benefits, such as enlarging Taiwan's "international space" and increasing Taiwan's relevance and leverage in Southeast Asia. Over the past several decades, all Taiwanese presidents, in one way or another, were uncomfortable with Taiwan's growing economic dependence on China, with the exception of President Ma Ying-jeou (2008--16) of the Kuomintang (KMT) party, who was the only Taiwanese leader that did not formally announce a GSP during his term in office. Ma's government did, however, have a Southeast Asia policy, but it was not meant to counterbalance China-Taiwan economic integration.

Given that GSP is not new, an important objective of this article is to compare and analyze the past cases in order to provide context for President Tsai's New GSP. Other than being a counterbalance to China-Taiwan economic integration, what other strategic objectives underpin GSP? Did the past GSPs achieve what they set out to achieve? What lessons can the Tsai administration learn from the successes or failures of past GSPs? How did the different historical contexts of previous GSPs affect their performance? Based on what we know about former GSPs, in what areas should Tsai's government pay attention to? In what ways does the New GSP signal the general foreign policy approach of the Tsai administration? These are some of the questions that this article seeks to answer. The article utilizes an analytical framework to study the determinants, strategic objectives, policy dimensions and geographical scope of GSP. It then examines and compares the GSPs of Presidents Lee and Chen, together with the Southeast Asia policy of President Ma. This comparison and analysis of past GSPs serves to highlight whether or not they were able to achieve their objectives, and how the relationship between China and Southeast Asia, and between China and Taiwan, also affected their performance. Finally, the article offers a prospective analysis of President Tsai's New GSP, which may also reflect the general direction of her government's foreign policy. It takes note that under Tsai, the New GSP pays more attention to people-to-people ties and strives to increase both Taiwan's economic and cultural presence in Southeast Asia and Southeast Asia's economic and cultural presence in Taiwan. This could turn out to be a very sensible approach for GSP 3.0 to engage countries in Southeast Asia.

Analytical Framework

The GSP does not operate in isolation from the government's grand diplomatic strategy. As in the case of other democracies, Taiwan's president plays the most important role in the foreign policy decision-making process. The grand diplomatic strategy is formulated to reflect the president's worldview (such as whether Taiwan should ultimately be an independent state or reunify with China), approaches to foreign affairs, reading of the state of relations between China and Taiwan, assessing the contemporary alignments of global dynamics, understanding how Taiwan should position itself within such alignments and what kind of foreign policy priorities Taiwan should set. (3) These strategies are often encapsulated in a prescient four-character Chinese phrase that captures their essence. President Lee Teng-hui described his government's diplomatic strategy as "pragmatic diplomacy" (wushi waijiao); President Chen Shui-bian pursued an "offensive diplomacy" (gongshi waijiao); President Ma called his diplomatic strategy "viable diplomacy" (huolu waijiao); and President Tsai's government has talked about "steadfast diplomacy" (tashi waijiao), but so far this concept has yet to be articulated in greater detail.

The grand diplomatic strategy, therefore, plays an important role in determining the strategic objectives of GSP. (4) However, Taiwan's relations with Mainland China is also a very important determinant. As observed by Chen Jie, "Taipei's Go-South Policy was about China as much as Southeast Asia." (5) In general, "Go South" is usually juxtaposed with "Go West" ("West" meaning China here). While some Taiwanese scholars in the past had argued that Taiwan's GSP should be de-linked from the government's policy towards China, and that GSP and "Go West" could and should be pursued at the same time and presented no policy contradictions, the official rationale for both Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian in initiating GSP was, as mentioned earlier, very much about counterbalancing Taiwan-China economic ties.

GSP, henceforth, was not just narrowly an economic-related policy, although during both the Lee and Chen administrations the formal ministerial body in charge of GSP was the economic bureaucracy. As examined later, a number of non-economic diplomatic measures usually were undertaken in conjunction with the GSP's economic initiatives. Hence, a broader conception of GSP would see it as a focused strategic initiative undertaken by Taiwan towards Southeast Asia, albeit usually with economic policies as points of entry. Taken together, the government's grand diplomatic strategy and its policy towards China serve as the twin determinants of what strategic objectives a GSP should accomplish.

The formulation of a more detailed policy plan of GSP is meant to fulfil the above objectives. A GSP policy plan generally involves two parts: policy dimensions and geographical scope. In policy dimensions, considerations will be given to whether it is the economic, political, and/or cultural ties between Taiwan and Southeast Asia that need to be upgraded and strengthened. Ideally a GSP will upgrade Taiwan-Southeast Asia ties in all three policy dimensions, but in reality there are always priorities. These priorities will then guide the formulation of more detailed operational plans. Geographical scope refers to the countries that are within the ambit of GSP, and generally they are the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), but occasionally a GSP may go beyond ASEAN, or choose to focus on a select group of countries within ASEAN. Figure 1 presents this analytical framework, which will be used to analyze the GSPs of Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian, and the Southeast Asia policy of Ma Ying-jeou in the next section.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Taiwan's Go South Policies: A Comparative Analysis

Lee Teng-hui's GSP

Shortly after taking office in 1988, President Lee Teng-hui announced his administration would pursue "pragmatic diplomacy". (6) Before Lee assumed power, the previous leaders of Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek (1949-75) and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (1975-88), had strictly adhered to the "One China" principle in which Taiwan (the Republic of China) broke off diplomatic relations with any country that established diplomatic ties with Mainland China (the People's Republic of China). This principle resulted in a rapidly dwindling number of countries with diplomatic ties with Taiwan, as well as Taiwan's exclusion from international bodies that require statehood as a precondition for membership. Hence, the rapid shrinking of Taiwan's "international space" was what Lee's "pragmatic diplomacy" aimed to...