By Sheng Lijun

WHEN Presidents Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo were in power in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, Beijing never suspected them of seeking Taiwan's independence. Chairman Mao Zedong knew his old rival Chiang Kai-shek too well to think he wanted independence.

In his view, the latter's resistance to the mainland was ""because he is unwilling to confess being defeated''.

Indeed, the two Chiangs cracked down on independence advocates as harshly as on communists in Taiwan. Beijing considered the two Taiwan Presidents to be patriotic.

Rather than being against reunification, their close alliance with the United States against Beijing were thought to be because of the need for survival and anti-communism.

It is now widely known that in the 1950s and 1960s, General Chiang Kai-shek maintained secret channels with Beijing and, several times, he send his men for secret discussions on reunification with leaders in Beijing.

For example, from 1956 to 1965, Hongkong journalist Cao Juren, who had close personal ties with leaders of both the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Kuomintang (KMT), made trips between the two sides that resulted in six mutually-agreed conditions for reunification:

Gen Chiang Kai-shek and his comrades return to the mainland and settle in any province except Zhejiang. He will remain as the leader of Kuomintang.

Mr Chiang Ching-kuo will be the governor of Taiwan province. Taiwan will retain what it has for 20 years but give up rights over diplomatic and military affairs.

Taiwan will not receive any aid from the US. Beijing will provide the aid.

Taiwan's naval and air force will be reorganised into Beijing's control. Its infantry will be reduced to four divisions stationed in Jinmen, Xiamen and Taiwan island.

Xiamen and Jinmen will be merged as one free city standing between Beijing and Taipei as a buffer and liaison zone.

The official ranks and salaries of all the civilian officials and military officers in Taiwan remain the same.

Based on these six conditions, Gen Chiang agreed to negotiate in 1965.

Other secret channels also helped to achieve this breakthrough. For example, in October 1958, Mr Zhang Shizhao, who had close relations with leaders in both Beijing and Taipei, went to Hongkong to pass two proposals from Beijing to Gen Chiang through KMT connections there.

The first was for the two sides to initiate contacts such as direct post and telecommunication -- and then direct flight and sea transportation --links between Taiwan and the mainland.

The second proposal was that Taiwan may have its own government, army and party organisations as long as Taiwan accepts itself as part of the People's Republic of China. Taiwan did not respond to these two proposals.

In another secret meeting with ""special guests'' from Taiwan in 1960, Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai proposed to Taiwan a plan of yi gang si mu(""one principle and four points'') for negotiation on reunification.

The principle is that Taiwan must return to China. The four points are:

After the return, Gen Chiang retains all the rights over the arrangement of key local government and military personnel. Diplomatic rights should be handed over to Beijing.

Beijing will provide financial support to Taiwan's army, government and economy.

Mainland-style socialist reforms in Taiwan may not be conducted immediately, waiting for ripe conditions -- respecting Gen Chiang's views and after consultations with him.

Each side should refrain from any behaviour harmful to the unity of the other side.

These proposals were the embryonic forms of the ""one country, two systems'' formula Mr Deng Xiaoping proposed in the early 1980s.

With the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), contact between the two sides ceased.

It started again when Mr Deng resumed power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the late 1970s. From then, Beijing launched one initiative after another towards Taiwan for peaceful reunification.

US. INTERVENTION KILLS BID FOR TALKS

FAVOURABLE responses came from Mr Chiang in the 1980s, as claimed by senior Chinese leader Qiao Shi in a conversation with Professor Wang Chi of US Georgetown University.

Mr Qiao also disclosed that Beijing and Taipei had discussed ways to reunify when Mr Chiang Ching-kuo was alive.

According to other Chinese sources, Mr Chiang and Beijing kept secret and informal channels open for contacts for several years in the 1980s.

In 1987, he finally initiated steps for beginning negotiation on reunification. But, this process stopped almost as soon as it started.

One reason is that he died early the next year.

Second, according to Chinese sources, the Americans intervened. Washington sent CIA officials to see Mr Chiang. After the CIA officials left, he said to the people around: ""We are still a colony.'' This American ""concern'', if it did not terminate the process, must have made him more cautious than before.

While he was trying to contact Beijing, he adopted several steps leading to a thaw in the cross-strait relations. One of them was to allow people in Taiwan to go to the mainland to visit their relatives. Beijing saw him as doing his bit to prevent Taiwan's independence.

After his death in January 1988, Beijing put its hope on Mr Lee Teng-hui to continue the process, as shown in the two telegrams to Taiwan by then CCP general secretary Zhao Ziyang.

One hoped ""the new Taiwanese leader would carry further the recent favourable developments in the cross-strait relations''. The second one was addressed to Mr Lee and reaffirmed the hope that he would make efforts at reunification.

China waited with high expectations for Mr Lee to send a secret delegation for talks on reunification. It never happened.

In mid-1991, the anxious Beijing made an open call for negotiation by issuing a three-point ""June 7 Talk'' -- calling for earlier talks and direct links between the two sides.

NO SECRET DEAL, SAYS TAIWAN

AT THE end of that year, Taiwan, through an informal channel, informed Beijing that the legislative and political changes in Taiwan in 1991 made such a secret deal out of question because of the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) victory in the National Assembly and its successful demand on transparency in the mainland policy and on any deal with Beijing.

It did not directly respond to the appeal of the ""June 7 Talk'' until two years later at the first Wang-Koo meeting in Singapore.

At a dinner, Mr Tang Shubei, vice-chairman and secretary-general of China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (Arats), asked why Taiwan had not responded to the ""June 7 Talk'' call. His Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF) counterpart Qiu Jinyi answered that the proposed negotiation was on party-to-party basis (CCP versus KMT instead of government versus government).

Therefore, it could not be accepted.

However, by the end of 1991, Beijing felt uneasy about Taiwan's position on reunification.

Chinese President Yang Shangkun changed the wording in an internal document from ""placing our hope on the government of Taiwan and placing our hope on the people in Taiwan'', to ""placing our hope on the government of Taiwan but more hope on the people in Taiwan''.

According to former Xinhua director Xu Jiatun, Mr Deng, then Premier Zhao Ziyang and himself discussed the issue and the three concluded that Mr Chiang's rejection of Mr Deng's ""one country, two systems'' was because of ""the loss of face'' that would result from Taiwan's government being downgraded to a local government after reunification.

There were no personal relations between Mr Lee and Chinese leaders like that between the two Chiangs and leaders in Beijing.

Beijing, therefore, was not sure of his ""true self'' as it was sure of the Chiangs.

Secondly, Mr Lee was a native-born Taiwanese (though his ancestral home is in the mainland's Fujian province) and never lived in the mainland. He may not have the strong personal feelings towards the mainland as the two Chiangs had.

Thirdly, Mr Lee's coolness on reunification talks was mainly because of his anti-communist ideology.

Fourthly, some even thought that Mr Lee could not afford the political price to go too far on the reunification issue because he was still weak compared with other veteran KMT leaders.

Though Beijing was not sure of what Mr Lee would do once he consolidated his position in KMT, they did not want to make a premature judgment of Mr Lee at that time.

Consequently, Beijing did not try to influence the internal transitional politics of Taiwan in the early 1990s in the belief that there was no fundamental difference between Mr Lee and Mr Hao Paocun or other veteran KMT leaders who were engaged in a fierce power struggle with Mr Lee for the KMT leadership. It was seen as purely a power struggle, not a struggle between those who were for Taiwan's independence and those who were against it.

After the informal meetings between Arats and SEF in 1992, especially the one in August, where Taiwan's insistence on nci yi ge zhong guo, ge zi biao shu mtr (""one China but free interpretations''), China became suspicious of Mr Lee's real intention on reunification.

Whereas its previous uneasiness about him was largely because of lack of personal information, contact and therefore understanding, now it felt that it had somewhat, through these informal meetings, seen through his true position on reunification. This marked a significant milestone in China's perception.

Before an SEF negotiation team went to Beijing in April 1993 to finalise the details for the forthcoming first Wang-Koo meeting, Taiwan issued instructions to the negotiation team, barring it from raising political issues and contacting high-level mainland government officials.

Just before the SEF team left, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) phoned from Taipei to tell its negotiation team to not sign an agreement which had been mutually arrived at -- that the Wang-Koo meeting should be regularised for once a year.

The MAC even said that if China did not agree to this, Taiwan would rather cancel the forthcoming Wang-Koo meeting.

Annoyed as he was, Mr Wang Daohan still accepted this sudden change of mind and went for the first round of Wang-Koo meeting in Singapore on April 27, 1993, where, in order to make it a success, he concentrated on practical matters rather than political issues.

Despite the outward celebrations over the Wang-Koo meeting, Beijing leaders began to feel suspicious of Mr Lee.

One reason was that while China claimed the meeting as a historic step towards reunification, Taiwan claimed it as a step towards recognition that Taiwan and China are equal, and that China was divided and separately administrated.

By late 1993, Beijing had noticed that the tendency towards independence in Taiwan had accelerated alarmingly with many pro-independence organisations mushrooming and many Taiwan pro-independence figures returning from overseas. The government, for the first time, tolerated them when they actively advocated Taiwan's independence.

Some Chinese strategists suspected Mr Lee of protecting and encouraging this independence trend.

But, it seems that by this time, Chinese leaders had not reached a consensus and final conclusion on Mr Lee yet.

With hindsight, Mr Lee's intention in pushing for the Wang-Koo meeting was a well-designed tactic to mislead Beijing into a belief that he was for reunification, and the increasing independence tendency in Taiwan was not something that he was willing to see but something he was not able to stop. Such tactics worked well at least in making Beijing hesitate in putting its weight behind Mr Hao in his power struggle with Mr Lee for KMT leadership in 1993.

But when Mr Lee tried to use the prospect of the second round of Wang-Koo meeting in July 1995 to make Beijing acquiesce to his push for his ""pragmatic diplomacy'', such as his US trip or his potential trips to other countries, and Taiwan's bid for UN membership, Beijing was not willing to pay such a high price.

Taiwan's independence is never anything Beijing will agree to exchange for.

Despite the nagging suspicions over Mr Lee, Beijing did not reach the final conclusion that he was totally for Taiwan's independence. In fact, it thought he would accept reunification even when there had been evidence after 1993 indicating otherwise.

By August 1993, with Beijing standing idle, the so-called ""main-streamers'' under Mr Lee finally tipped the balance of power in the KMT. They ousted most of the KMT leaders who advocated reunification, but still Beijing saw Mr Lee as someone it could negotiate with on reunification.

This point was confirmed in my talk with Arats chairman Wang Daohan in October 1996. He said that China never expected cross-strait relations to proceed smoothly always. 8 iblcom,18 2 BEIJING BEGINS TO HAVE DOUBTS 8 BUT at the time of the first Wang-Koo meeting in 1993, when he was the chief Chinese negotiator, he only expected that the threat to reunification would be international, from the US or Japan.

But from 1994, Beijing began to have doubts about Mr Lee. By now firmly in control of the KMT, he seemed to care less about Beijing's reaction. Many incidents that shocked Beijing into reconsidering Mr Lee's true stand on reunification happened after this time.

His ""pragmatic'' diplomacy, such as the bid for UN membership, had since become intensified, including his ""vacation'' visits to the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and several African and Latin American countries in 1994, and to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Jordan in 1995.

Mr Lee became more outspoken about his views on Taiwan's independence and more unconstrained in attacking Beijing verbally. His reference to Beijing leaders as ""a group of bandits and hooligans'' -- in a Presidential Office press release after the Qiandao Lake incident in 1994 in which Taiwanese tourists were killed by criminals in mainland China -- hurt the leaders in Beijing.

But, two significant events proved to be turning points in Beijing's perception of Mr Lee: his conversation with Japanese writer Ryotaro Shiba in May 1994; and his speech to his alma mater Cornell University in the US in 1995.

Mr Lee's conversation with writer Shiba made many people in Beijing -- who previously had some hope in him regarding his stand on the reunification -- realise the truth. He expressed his determination to lead Taiwan away from mainland China, his preference for Japanese culture and his unwillingness to see a strong and united China (""a Chinese empire''). Many people in Beijing felt they had been fooled from the very beginning by a sweet-talking Mr Lee.

But, this did not result in a fundamental policy change towards him at first.

One reason is that some in Beijing doubted that he had the determination and capability to push for Taiwan's independence.

Others thought the drift towards independence would likely be slow and manageable, and, therefore, there was no need to take dramatic actions for the time being.

Secondly, some were unwilling to admit being wrong about Mr Lee, either because of the political repercussions to themselves or because it meant a denial of the work they had done in the past. They warned of the danger of a premature final judgment on him.

Thirdly, some believed that what he had done was because of the political and social situation in Taiwan. Any other politician who was in his position would also have done the same, if he wanted to survive politically.

There were also other differences in views. For example, some People's Liberation Army (PLA) and other think-tanks warned in 1994 that Mr Lee and Washington would soon go further and faster in their cooperation to reach his first target in his ""pragmatic diplomacy''. But the Ministry of Foreign Affairs considered this unlikely.

Meanwhile, Chinese President Jiang Zemin still made the eight-point proposal on Jan 30, 1995, calling for a termination of hostility across the strait and the first meeting of leaders of both sides.

Why did Beijing make such a proposal still, despite its suspicion of Mr Lee?

The proposal was prepared from the first Wang-Koo meeting in April 1993.

It was finished in November 1993 but was not announced because most of those KMT leaders for reunification were out and relations were seriously strained following the Qiandao Lake incident and Mr Lee's interview with the Japanese writer in 1994.

By the time it was announced in early 1995, Beijing did not have too high an expectation of Mr Lee. Mainly, it wanted to put a stop to the deteriorating cross-strait relations.

It thought that even if the eight-point proposal failed to produce the best result, it would check the pace of Taiwan's drift towards independence. Also, some Chinese leaders still felt that Mr Lee would turn around after ""further observation''.

But what Beijing got was worse than the worst scenario it expected. Mr Lee's six-point response in April 1995, essentially sidetracked the eight-point proposal.

At first, Beijing suspected that it was Washington who tried to sabotage the improvement of the cross-strait relations by driving such a wedge through granting Mr Lee the visa for his US tour

SO, BEFORE Mr Lee's speech in the US, it only made a sharp response to the US but not to Taiwan. Articles published later in Chinese newspapers, criticising Mr Lee, were actually prepared from early June 1995 but not allowed to be published because Beijing wanted to see his behaviour and speech in the US first.

Every word of his speech at Cornell University and his actions in the US were sent quickly to the Chinese leaders, who made the final judgment on him after studying every word of it.

Then came the decision to make a strong response to stop him. The die was thus cast. Articles highly critical of him were finally allowed to appear in all major newspapers in China.

Now, Beijing saw the threat also coming from Mr Lee, who pushed for Taiwan's independence out of both ideology and his personal feelings and belief.

And he had the determination to go far to ""challenge the impossible'' (Mr Lee's own words). In Beijing's view, his push helped the ""international forces'' to contain China. The anger at ""Chinese helping foreigners to contain Chinese'' went along with a feeling of being fooled by Mr Lee.

The Central Meeting in Beidaihe in July 1995 passed the decision to hold military exercises. It was decided originally to hold one first to see Mr Lee's response. As it turned out later, he took an uncompromising stance. 1.5 Beijing, therefore, decided to maintain the pressure by holding more exercises. China suspended the Wang-Koo meeting and held military exercises, from July 1995 to March 1996, near the Taiwan Island as a strong warning.

The writer, a scholar at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies, Singapore, contributed this article to Sunday Review.