The EU placed an arms embargo on China in 1989 to sanction the authoritarian regime for disregarding human rights in the wake of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. The EU should now lift the embargo, the French and Germans have argued, as the human rights situation in China has improved, thus nullifying the reason for the embargo.
But beneath this political superficiality, we all know that the Chinese government hasn't changed, the most recent example being the jailing of the Chinese surgeon who exposed China's cover-up of SARS, for no apparent reason.
What has changed is French and German estimates of weapons sale revenue from China. Russia has been a major beneficiary of this, as a non-participant in the ban.
Leaving aside the grand talk about the ideal of respecting human rights, what matters to the French and German governments is the need to balance their trade deficit with China and sustain favorable economic conditions for both their national defense and private sectors.
In light of a "real" need for economic prosperity, "idealistic values" such as human rights and democracy go out the window. So the Taiwanese government, and other non-governmental organizations, in trying to find friends in the EU to continue the embargo, should start thinking from the Europeans' point of view.
We don't stand a chance of making an impression if we start by urging a shared responsibility of Asia Pacific regional safety, or the immorality of making money from an untapped market -- even enhancing the military capability of an authoritarian regime.
We might receive a more receptive response if we point out to EU countries that lifting the weapons sales ban is unlikely to result in a significant increase in their sales revenue.
Since China has been purchasing weaponry from Russia for decades, the compatibility of China's existing weaponry with Russia's supply exceeds what EU countries can offer. Even with the current ban, EU countries were given considerable room to interpret and hence have been able to supply components or subsystems to China. After the 1989 declaration, European countries such as the UK, Italy and France continued to permit the transfer of non-lethal and dual-use equipment to China, including helicopters, radars, jet engines and satellite technology.
The amount of weapons China would want to buy from France and Germany that Russia can't make or offer at better structural compatibility is uncertain. So what does the EU stand to gain with the lifting of the ban?
Enhancing China's military capability may be a subconscious manifestation of the EU's dislike of the US' unilateral imperialism. But it cannot be denied that such a step would destabilize regional security in the Asia Pacific -- an already tense situation, with North Korea's constant false alarms on their nuclear programs and China barking across the Taiwan Strait. A war in the Asia Pacific might be of little concern to European countries, since their sensitivity to the possibilities of war may have faded with the passing of time. But it is the shared experience of war and impoverishment among EU countries that binds them.
It is the shared values on which the EU rests -- respect for human rights and dignity, liberty, democracy, equality and the rule of law -- that binds these governments together, not the individual country's self interest.
So before the EU countries cast their vote on the lifting of the embargo on China, whose government tramples on human rights, we would like to remind them that their current ability to pursue economic prosperity is built on their values. Do they now forgo the foundation on which their identity is based?
Wen Wei-ni is a freelance writer based 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,
RSS