China Wins Its Fight Over Flights With Rival Taiwan

accessed January 29, 2018

這是一篇登載於Forbes 雜誌有關M503航線兩岸鬥法的分析。作者來信謝謝在下提供的淺見。他說此篇點閱已超過一萬，並被編輯選為推薦報導。

林中斌 2018.1.29

"The hard prong had already reached a point of saturation,” says Lin Chong-pin, a retired strategic studies professor, referring to acts such as military maneuvers. “There’s no point in going further.”

Hi Mr. Lin,

Thanks for your quotes last week. This story topped 10,000 views and received an "editor's pick" mention on Forbes

Ralph Jennings

Chong-Pin Lin January 29, 2018

China Wins Its Fight Over Flights With Rival Taiwan

China and Taiwan have been fighting over civilian aviation most of this month. China opened four aircraft routes in the 160-kilometer-wide ocean strait between them January 4, angering Taiwan because it wasn’t consulted. One route, code-named M503, connects Shanghai to Hong Kong. Letting planes fly the new routes so close to a yours-and-mine median line in endangers flights in and around Taiwan, Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration says in a Chinese-language statement here.

China has essentially won this battle. First, here’s how it started:

Cross-straight relations are a little icy

Leaders in Beijing authorized the flight paths, over Taiwan’s complaints, for political reasons, scholars and legislators in Taipei say. The action “pushes Taiwan into a corner” and follows a series of other moves aimed at the government in Taipei, ruling party lawmaker Lo Chih-cheng said in an interview for this post. China sees self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory.

China wants eventual unification with Taiwan, citing unfinished business from the Chinese civil war of the 1940s. But in 2008 China and Taiwan agreed to open direct flights as the start to building stronger economic relations.

Since Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen took office in 2016, relations have deteriorated because Chinese officials resent Tsai for rejecting their idea that both sides belong to one country. During her term to date, Beijing has also passed military aircraft near Taiwan, cut back on tourism and let two Taiwanese diplomatic allies switch allegiance. Usually Taiwan just complains. But after the air routes opened, Taiwan answered by freezing an application from two of the other side’s airlines, China Eastern and Xiamen Air, to add a combined 176 flights next month for the Lunar New Year holiday hat both sides celebrate.

How the battle was won

China didn’t openly re-retaliate against the freeze in approving extra flights, but it essentially won the battle.

It had a massive advantage. The two airlines stuck on hold have plenty of business elsewhere, both domestic and offshore. China’s new flight routes include the full opening of a third major path, called M503, between the crowded skies around Shanghai and those over Hong Kong. That means shorter waits before takeoff on either side, for any airline, says Eric Lin, aviation analyst with the investment bank UBS in Hong Kong. Airport delays have become a notorious problem in China due to gluts of traffic, he says.

China as a member of the U.N. International Civil Aviation Administration has already gained formal, international approval for the routes. Taiwan is not a U.N. member.

Open hard-fisted retaliation against Taiwan’s freezing of the extra holiday flights would risk angering the island’s public, pushing voters in turn to elect leaders who take a harder line toward Beijing than Tsai does. "The hard prong had already reached a point of saturation,” says Lin Chong-pin, a retired strategic studies professor, referring to acts such as military maneuvers. “There’s no point in going further.”

No need, either. The freezing of holiday flights sort of backfired on its own. A Chinese government-linked association of Taiwanese business people, the Association of Taiwan Investment Enterprises on the Mainland on Saturday accused Taiwan's move of "trampling on the rights of Taiwanese business people," per this news report by a mainstream Taiwan newspaper.

Beijing’s deflection of the flight issue to the business association suggests it wants Taiwanese to blame their own government for any trouble getting home for the holiday, which starts February 16. If the estimated 1 million Taiwanese investors and their family members in China can’t get home smoothly for lack of extra flights, who would they blame, the pioneer of new air routes or the freezer of additional flights? Ditto for tourists in China wondering whether to travel in Taiwan for the same holiday. At least that's how China might frame things.

"It's Tsai's first act of retaliation, but given cross-Strait traffic, it hurts travelers more, rather than China," says Joanna Lei, chief executive officer of the Chunghua 21st Century think tank in Taiwan.