ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the tricky question of whether Ma Ying-jiu’s China and foreign policy gained more or less ‘international space’ for Taiwan. This ‘international space’ is measured by the number and quality of Taiwan’s bilateral relations with other sovereign actors in the world and by the extent of the freedom that Taiwan has to participate in international non-governmental organisations and other multilateral fora. The author argues that Ma’s low-profile approach to gaining meaningful participation in international settings was quite successful. Ma did fairly well in achieving ‘some more’ international space for Taiwan; he secured a tacit understanding from Beijing that no diplomatic allies of Taiwan should be lured to the Chinese side, was granted access to a number of IGOs as observer or ‘guest’, and signed at least two free trade agreements in the aftermath of the ECFA (with New Zealand and Singapore). Ma arguably created the best of all worlds available for Taiwan in terms of international space, although this assessment will be challenged continuously by those who claim that such space should not be a dependent variable of cross-Strait and US-China relations.
