American Institute in Taipei Director Douglas Paal visited Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
According to Ma, Paal said that uncertainties in cross-strait relations create inconveniences for American businesspeople in Taiwan who also do business in China. Ma said Paal told him the number of American Chamber of Commerce Taipei members is dropping. He reportedly told Ma that if cross-strait contacts were more convenient, foreign businesses would be more willing to stay.
In view of Taiwan's precarious international status, the more foreign business interests here, the better. So why are foreign businesspeople leaving? It seems reasonable to interpret Paal's remarks as encouraging and supporting direct links. Of course, that kind of position coming from the AIT director is understandable. But are Paal's comments also representative of the US government's stance on direct links? If so, then the question becomes what is the US willing to offer to help direct links become a reality.
The government has been extremely cautious about opening direct links because of national security concerns. It must give priority to the lives of the people and the nation's survival. This is something surely Washington can understand, given its commitment and determination to combat terrorism at home and abroad despite an economic downturn. Paal was certainly right when he said, during a recent speech on the impact of the Sept. 11 attack on US policies, that a secure and confident Taiwan will be more able to to engage in political interaction and dialogues with China.
Taiwan's problem is simply that it does not feel confident and secure enough to open up direct links. So, if either or both the US and Beijing, at Washington's behest, can give Taiwan even more confidence and sense of security through either additional promises or substantive actions, thing will more than likely be entirely different. Until then, Taiwan won't feel ready.
However, the government must also shoulder responsibility for the departure of foreign businesses. As much as one hates to admit it, the biggest vulnerability of President Chen Shui-bian's (
But what are we to make of Ma's reporting of his talk with Paal? Traditionally the content of such closed-door meetings is not disclosed. Ma broke protocol by doing so. One has to wonder why? Was it perhaps because Paal's comments -- as reported by Ma -- closely fit with the mayor's own agenda? There has been much made in the past week of Ma's rising star in the KMT and his possible presidential ambitions. Perhaps he would do well to remember that diplomacy is a key element of the nation's top job and that includes knowing when to talk and when not to. After all, Paal, like his predecessors, must walk a fine line about what they can say publicly about Taiwan, about China and about direct links. AIT has its own spokesperson -- it doesn't need another in Taipei.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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