IT WAS a long handshake, a full minute’s worth. Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan’s president, and Xi Jinping, his Chinese counterpart, wanted to milk the historic importance of their encounter on November 7th in Singapore. Yet the two men intended their citizens to draw very different messages. For Mr Ma, it showed that the policy he has pursued in office since 2008 of fostering better ties with the mainland has ensured smoother relations, and so safeguarded Taiwan’s prosperity and security, ie, the status quo. For Mr Xi, the meeting implied that China’s reciprocal policy of encouraging economic and other ties with Taiwan has lowered tensions and helped pave the way for its eventual unification with the mainland. They cannot both be right.
Mr Xi’s gesture, in agreeing to meet the leader of a government China views as the illegitimate usurper of local authority in one of its provinces, was remarkable. Such a meeting had never happened since Mr Ma’s Nationalist party, the Kuomintang or KMT, turned Taiwan into its last redoubt as it lost China’s civil war to the Communists in 1949. The summit was perhaps the biggest concession on a “core issue” of sovereignty any Chinese leader has made since the early 1980s when, under Deng Xiaoping, China offered Taiwan a “one-country, two-systems” solution and agreed with Britain on a similar deal for Hong Kong. Taiwan rejected China’s promise that, in exchange for recognising the authority of the government in Beijing, the island would enjoy self-government and even get to keep its army.

Mr Xi could be confident that he would not, as Mr Ma did, face street protests over the meeting at home. But he, too, was taking a bold risk. He has gained some kudos by presenting himself as a magnanimous, peacemaking statesman. But he has also put the issue of cross-strait relations into the domestic and international spotlight. His people might now expect to see some progress towards unification. They are likely to be disappointed.Mr Xi’s grand gesture suggests again that he is the strongest leader in China since Deng, able to shun decades-old shibboleths without fear of opposition. Of course, China was careful not to give Mr Ma too much status. The leaders addressed each other as plain “Mr”, and met not at an international economic summit, as Taiwan had hoped, but in a hotel, where they split the bill. To the irritation of many in China, state television cut away from Mr Ma as soon as he opened his mouth.
It is widely assumed China had a tactical aim: to influence voting in the presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan in January. Polls suggest that the KMT’s presidential candidate, Eric Chu, will lose to Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The DPP may even for the first time gain control of the legislature. China abhors it, because the party’s roots are in the movement agitating for Taiwan’s formal independence from China. The KMT at least adheres to the woolly notion, known as the “1992 consensus”, that there is only “one China”—with both sides agreeing to disagree on what this means (Taiwan’s official name remains the Republic of China). In their meeting both men emphasised the importance of this consensus, though Mr Xi, as Chinese officials are wont, made no reference to the differing interpretations part. The DPP denies such a consensus exists.
Mr Xi and—even more so—Mr Ma emphasised their people’s ethnic and cultural links. “Brothers connected by flesh even if our bones are broken”, as Mr Xi put it; “descendants of the Yellow Emperor”, in Mr Ma’s words. But growing numbers of people in Taiwan see themselves as primarily “Taiwanese”, rather than Chinese. Most people in Taiwan come from families that lived on the island for generations before 1949. A small aboriginal population is not Chinese at all. Apart from during the chaos of the civil war China has not even pretended to rule Taiwan since 1895, when it ceded the island to Japan. China says a declaration of independence could provoke it to use force, so few Taiwanese support formal independence. But even fewer want unification.
So the subtext in Singapore to all the bonhomie, the mutual congratulation about improved ties and the promises of even closer future co-operation was an implied threat for Taiwan’s voters: elect the DPP and jeopardise all this. Mr Xi was also reminding Taiwan’s international friends, especially America, that they, too, have signed up to the idea of “one China” as the price of relations with the People’s Republic. The emphasis on the consensus was, in effect, a warning that a DPP government may face reprisals if it does not accept it. The DPP would prefer to dodge the issue, but Mr Xi seems to want to force its hand. He is an ambitious leader, and the son of a Communist revolutionary grandee. Perhaps he sees himself as the man to complete the core mission of Chinese “reunification”, unfulfilled for nearly seven decades.
An empty locker
Yet, unlike Deng, Mr Xi has no further big concessions to offer, beyond symbolic ones, like this meeting. Surely he does not want to contemplate unification by force, so he needs to win the consent of Taiwan’s government, and hence, in a democracy, its people. In the past dire warnings and even crude military threats—as in 1995-96 ahead of Taiwan’s first direct presidential election, when China conducted missile tests in the Taiwan Strait—have served only to alienate Taiwan’s people further. Nor has being friendly, eg, by offering trade concessions and boosting tourism and other links, helped much. As in Hong Kong, the more contact people have with the mainland, the more conscious they seem to become of the distinctness of their local identity.
“Who among the descendants of the Yellow Emperor wishes to go down in history as a traitor?” China asked in a message to Taiwan on January 1st 1979, when America ditched its diplomatic relations with the island in favour of the mainland, and China stopped its ritual shelling of Taiwanese outposts. With each passing year the number of would-be traitors seems to grow.