Sun, Sep 26, 2004 page8

• Don't be fooled by the Hu-boosters

  • By the Liberty Times editorial
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  The power struggle between former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and his successor, President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), has finally come to an end. On Sept. 19, Jiang resigned as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) Central Military Commission during the Fourth Plenum of the16th CCP Central Committee in Beijing. This means that he officially handed over his military power and withdrew from the power center, thus ending China's so-called "third generation" of leadership.

  Meanwhile, Hu now controls the government, the party and the military, and has become the core of fourth-generation leadership. He has also begun the "Hu Jintao era" in consolidating power for himself and Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶).

  The struggle between Jiang and Hu was a fight for power between the Chinese leaders, not a fight over different directions for the country. Therefore, drastic internal and external changes are unlikely to take place -- especially in cross-strait relations. Those who are dazzled by Hu's public image and political tactics expect him to carry out political reform in China, further liberalize the Chinese economy, construct a peaceful international environment and ease the tensions between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. However, history will prove that not only have they misjudged him, they have also failed to understand the nature of the autocratic CCP regime.

  Now that Hu has replaced Jiang, some pro-unification media and experts in Taiwan have glorified Hu's rise as "openness replacing brutality" and "pragmatism replacing harshness." They imply that cross-strait tension was a result of the hardline stance of a few hawkish Chinese leaders in the past -- including Mao Zedong (毛澤東), Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), and Jiang. They believe that cross-strait relations will improve now that a relatively moderate leader has consolidated his power, and that Taiwan and China will live just like a prince and princess in a fairy tale: happily ever after.

  If the people of Taiwan are misled by such notions, both our psychological and national defense will be weakened, and a happy ending will certainly not be the result. Instead, the Taiwanese people will walk step by step into a death trap.

  When studying China, we need to understand which issues are structural, such as issues of political direction or principle, and which are matters of individual policy, opinion or method. In other words, we have to be able to determine which issues will remain unchanged regardless of the people involved, and what issues will change depending on who is in charge.

  Hu, for example, is given a more positive assessment by outsiders than is Jiang. A deeper analysis, however, shows that these positive assessments apply to individual qualities and methods. When it comes to structural issues such as ideology, nationalism and the supremacy of the CCP, Hu and Jiang are products of the same party, and we see no differences between the two. Nor is one of them more enlightened and the other tougher. Hu once cruelly and brutally cracked down on the people of Tibet, an example of how he is far from being a moderate.

  China's unification policy toward Taiwan is a predetermined policy. The "one-China" principle, which says that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China, has become part of the CCP canon passed on by previous generations of leaders.

  Hu neither can nor will change this policy, especially since the unification idea was long ago implanted deep in his individual consciousness, making it even more impossible that he would accept a factual separation of Taiwan and China.

  We must recognize that although Jiang did let go of his military power, the fourth plenary session of the CCP's 16th Central Committee also issued a communique regarding Taiwan. The communique rehashed the CCP's "peaceful unification" and "one country, two systems" policies, both of which are part of Jiang's "Eight Points."

  What's more, as Jiang was about to resign his post at the expanded meeting of the Central Military Commission, he issued a warning to his successor, Hu, and the generals in the People's Liberation Army (PLA). He said that based on the importance of cross-strait unification to core national interests, China cannot promise to give up the option to use military force to resolve the Taiwan issue.

  He also demanded that the PLA prepare for battle in order to carry out the sacred mission of protecting national sovereignty and the integrity of national territory, saying that the more prepared the military is, the greater the possibility of achieving peaceful unification. In other words, regardless of who is in power, China's ambition to annex Taiwan will remain unchanged.

  When some people see hope for an improvement in cross-strait relations based on specific Chinese leaders, they are not only being unrealistic -- they are deceiving themselves and others.

  In fact, Hu is one of those politicians who is unyielding in matters of principle but flexible in his tactics. Superficially he may seem very liberal. But the irony is that since Hu came to power, China has adopted a more threatening posture than it did under the inflexible and brutal older generation of rulers. This is because unification with Taiwan is part of unalterable party and national policy.

  The brutal older generation of leaders believed that threats were sufficient to subdue the enemy, so they regularly made verbal and military threats, even staging missile tests that brought tension across the Taiwan Strait to the brink of war.

  All this did was to arouse the animosity of the Taiwanese, making them more suspicious of China and forcing the two countries even further apart. Their activities only served to guarantee an increase Taiwan's security and independence.

  Now that the mild-mannered and liberal-seeming Hu has taken power, China continues to increase its military preparedness and training for a war with Taiwan. But his stance in the unification struggle is much more supple. For example, he uses various preferential policies to buy the support of Taiwanese businesspeople, promotes the three links and promotes unification through requests rather than demands.

  As a result, Taiwan is no longer alert to China's ambitions, and crisis looms. Take the arms procurement budget, for example. China's military budget has seen double-digit growth over the last 14 years and it currently has the world's third largest military budget.

  If Taiwan does not increase its own military preparedness, then it is likely that China's military will supersede Taiwan's qualitatively within 25 years. Although the NT$610.8 billion (US$18 billion) arms purchase bill represents a staggering amount of money, if we can cut about NT$100 billion from it and implement it over 15 years, it would come to just NT$33 billion a year.

  The Ministry of Defense proposal that "if everyone cut their consumption of pearl tea by one cup a day, that would be enough to buy top-of-the-line military equipment" is very persuasive.

  But some politicians and academics -- now including a minority from the Academia Sinica -- have given the forces opposed to the arms purchase a boost. If the leaders of the pan-blue camp now decide to put on a mask of peace, this could kill the arms purchase bill. If that happens the country will put itself in serious danger -- and the painful price will be borne by the people.

  Now that Hu is firmly in charge, China's policy towards Taiwan will remain unchanged. But its tactics will become more subtle and its aims will be less obvious, and this will cause confusion among Taiwanese.

  Another worry is that Hu will use nationalist sentiment over the Taiwan issue to divert attention away from the numerous domestic problems that he now faces -- including the overheated economy, the widening gap between urban and rural wealth, the related imbalance between the coast and inland regions, unemployment and factional struggles within the party.

  Ultimately, unless China renounces the use of force against Taiwan, it will make little difference who China's leader is. Taiwan's only choice is to make itself strong, to ensure its own survival and continued security. To put its trust in Hu is to seek its own destruction.

  Translated by Perry Svensson, Eddy Chang and Ian Bartholomew
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