Recently, China’s State Council Office for Taiwan Affairs and state media have been tampering history, declaring a series of articles named “92 consensus Q&A” would be rolled out in seven consecutive days in order to familiarize the people on the mainland and in Taiwan with the beginning and subsequent development of the “92 consensus”. In comparison with its making threatening gestures by exercising military drills in peripheral areas of Taiwan, this round of “literature strategy”, be it for domestic or external propaganda, is conspicuously aimed at disseminating some messages, such as passing the buck for the current tension of the Taiwan Strait to Tsai Ing-wen’s administration in Taiwan, which spurns the “92 consensus”, as well as paving the way for more furious actions Beijing is possibly going to take.

However, words from both sides have already been exhausted since 520 in 2016 during similar verbal battles. If the repetition of the old tale is again a war of empty rhetoric in which both accuse each other of being wrong, it can be spared for its meaninglessness.

For this reason, the messages delivered by top officials in Beijing via “92 consensus Q&A”  articles can be interpreted as the Chinese Communist Party(CCP) hoping for finding out a prescription together with Taiwan against the current predicament through the historical context of the “92 consensus” , instead of intensifying the situation of the Taiwan Strait or even triggering off by accident a tragedy caused by military conflicts, after examining the internal and external situation and conditions.

However, if the CCP really wants to heal current Cross-Strait relations with this archaic prescription – the “92 consensus” reached 28 years ago, it has to get a clear understanding of the key point of the issue: Since it founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the CCP has been denying the fact that the Republic of China does exist in Taiwan, and even though the “92 consensus” was reached bilaterally in 1992, the CCP kept on holding fast to the “one China”  principle in defiance of or even encroaching on the room for Taiwan to survive, maliciously subjugating Taiwan in the international community, treating Taiwan as an observer humbly taking part in conferences held by the WHO with an almsgiving and patronizing attitude, not to mention the CCP making military threats against the island at every turn.

Even though Taiwanese people have had cultural and state-nation identification with and a sense of a close-knit family towards the mainland, even though they have been pragmatic and held peace and harmony dear, the state on the opposite bank ruthlessly and groundlessly hurting their own country by all means time and again has been taking away their confidence in a normal and reasonable development of Cross-Strait relations, their confidence in the CCP and their affections to “China”, from generation to generation, from community to community.

Those that should be held responsible for this phenomenon is not Lee Teng-hui, Chen Shui-bian or Tsai Ing-wen, all of whom are considered having the Taiwanese consciousness, but the CCP leaders who have been disregarding the feelings of Taiwanese people, and the Kuomintang and former Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou,  who dare not argue strongly for what is right for the Republic of China in front of Beijing.

Today’s quandary stems from the fact that the CCP denies the existence of the Republic of China in Taiwan. Nonetheless, a new leaf has been turned over in the history, in which the “92 consensus”, religiously worshipped as a sacred stabilizer by the high echelon personnel cross the Strait in the past, has been ravaged by Beijing indiscreetly repressing “both sides of the Strait orally explain the principle respectively” with the “one China” principle. Despite China’s State Council Office for Taiwan Affairs on the other side and think tank intellectuals making every effort to patch up quarrels, it has had no substantial effects on mitigating the situation of the Taiwan Strait. Furthermore, while the “92 consensus” was just a makeshift consensus reached for putting heads together for “administrative matters” in those days, the issues confronted by the Cross-Strait stakeholders now have got way beyond “administrative matters” early on. Though the “92 consensus” used to be a sacred stabilizer, it cannot firm up anything now.

If Beijing understands there will be no winner in any military conflict in the Taiwan Strait and even brief regional gunfire would have a lethal impact on the future of the CCP and China, it will not insist on a historical research into the “92 consensus”, but create a position different from the past in Cross-Strait relations. If it persists in groping about for a prescription in the “92 consensus” to develop genuine, pragmatic, normal and sustainable Cross-Strait relations, acknowledging the “Republic of China” implied by  “both sides of the Strait orally explain the principle respectively”  may be the way out, of which Beijing should not get oblivious.

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