HONG KONG — Taiwan should study Singapore’s strategies when it comes to defending its interests and dealing with Beijing and Washington, a former top Taiwanese diplomat said on the sidelines of Asia’s biggest security forum.

Mr Jason Hu Chih-chiang, 71, Taiwan’s former foreign minister and a retired vice-chairman of the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang, said the self-ruled island should maintain peaceful engagement with the mainland while edging closer to the United States.

“Taiwan has been a pawn of [the US] since the cold war … but the current situation is better than in the past — at least we have almost made sure that Beijing doesn’t want to attack Taipei, unless it announces independence,” said Mr Hu, who was attending the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore over the weekend.

“This has been achieved through Taipei’s own efforts [over the past two decades] without US involvement, and it may have surprised the Americans because they didn’t expect the possibility of a war over the Taiwan Strait could be so low today.”

But Mr Hu said Taiwan’s value had been downgraded in Beijing’s eyes amid the growing rivalry between China and the United States.

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“In the politics of big powers, small countries will never be a protagonist … in the eyes of the Americans, Taiwan is the same as Pacific island countries like the Marshall Islands and Palau,” he said.

Hu was appointed as Taipei’s official representative in Washington in 1996, when then president Lee Teng-hui’s “two-state theory” spurred mainland China to carry out a series of missile tests across the Taiwan Strait. He became foreign minister in 1997, a portfolio he held for three years.

To defend its interests now, Mr Hu said Taipei should take note of the strategies used by Singapore, which he described as “bat-like” in its ability to manoeuvre.

“You should find a position from where you can defend your core interests. You can’t give everything to the US just because you’re afraid of them — and vice versa when dealing with Beijing. That’s the case in Singapore, the way it protects its interests,” said Mr Hu, who is now vice-chairman of Want Want Group, a media and food conglomerate that operates on both the mainland and Taiwan.

“It’s very hard for Taiwan because the mainland is now so powerful, but we should make clear that as a good leader, avoiding war is much more important than fighting war,” he said.

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Beijing considers the democratic island of 23 million as a breakaway province that must return to the mainland fold, by force if necessary.

Mr Lee Chih-horng, who teaches cross-strait relations at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said Mr Hu’s remarks could be taken as criticism of both the KMT and independence-leaning ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) policies over the past nearly two decades.

“Hu wants to warn the KMT and DPP to be cautious when they come up with new cross-strait policies, with the island’s presidential election kicking off in January,” Mr Lee said.

“The KMT and the DPP have congenital defects, causing them very easily to divert their bias to either Beijing or Washington.”

Mr Lee said the KMT leadership had strong bonds with mainland China since the party was founded there, fleeing to Taiwan in 1949 after being defeated in the civil war. The DPP, meanwhile, leaned more towards the US, which gave the party a boost during the suppression of the ruling KMT in the 1970s and ’80s.

When Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979 under KMT rule, “Taipei was kicked out of the United Nations”, Mr Lee said. “That’s why the KMT doesn’t much trust the US, but the DPP doesn’t have that bitter experience,” he said.

“Hu wants to warn both the KMT and DPP not to be driven by their emotions when making cross-strait policy.” SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST