One talk, two tables: A study of the 1998 Koo-Wang meeting across the Taiwan Strait

From October 14 to October 19, 1998, Koo Chen-fu, Chairman of the Taipei-based Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), met his mainland counterpart, Wang Daohan, Chairman of the Beijing-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS). This paper uses the Koo-Wang meeting to examine the question of how two divergent parties either come to terms or fail to reach agreement and what factors may be involved in their calculations. How significant are those “shadow participants”—domestic constituencies—during the push and pull process at the international negotiations? In this case study, domestic factors claimed more weight than international factors because domestic constituencies had set up strict conditions for each delegation team before the meeting. The result was more of an appearance of dialogue than an effort at sincere problem solving.