BEIJING — Seven years ago, President Xi Jinping became the first Chinese leader to publicly call for the exploration of detailed proposals for governing Taiwan after reunification. Seven years later, the first proposals from a handful of the mainland's leading research institutes have either been finalised or are nearing completion, the South China Morning Post has learned. Read from the resources desk, the entry is straightforward: a full accounting has been prepared for a transaction whose other party has not agreed to it. The paperwork is finished. The signature line is blank.
The scholars involved in the studies told the SCMP that, rather than setting out a single fixed model, there should be different scenarios. "We have prepared for every outcome," said Dr. Geng Lijuan, a senior fellow at one of the institutes involved. "Scenario one assumes cooperation. Scenario two assumes friction. Scenario three, costed last spring, assumes the island declines the offer indefinitely. That one required a second binder."
The ledger of the enterprise, reconstructed from standard practice, reads as follows. The state pays the salaries. The institutes pay the symposium honoraria. The printers are paid per scenario. Seven fiscal years of workshop catering have been expensed under cross-strait exchange. The island of Taiwan, the goods in this transaction, has been placed on a waiting list it did not join. It has not been invoiced, an invoice to a non-consenting party being, under local commercial custom, merely a letter.
"Nobody here considers the money wasted," said Hu, a grants administrator at a Beijing-based cross-strait research centre who reconciles the workshop receipts. "The deliverables exist. They are bound. If the transaction proceeds, the plans are ready. If it does not, the plans remain ready. Either way, the receipts reconcile."
Asked whether seven years of preparation for an unsigned deal constituted a purchase without a customer, a deputy director at a second institute called it a pricing decision. "Readiness is cheaper than surprise," he said. "The customer will come around. In our projections, customers always do."
The ledger, as usual, balances. In one column: seven years of salaries, honoraria, binders and catering. In the other: an island that has signed nothing, fully costed, bound, and awaiting the invoice for a service it has not ordered.
