The EU's fifteen-year-old arms embargo against China will remain in place -- for now. Yet there's little cause for celebration, since all signs indicate that it's only a matter of time before the embargo is lifted. Right now, observers estimate it will happen in the spring of next year. However, the EU will be making a grave mistake if and when it does lift the ban. According to EU spokeswoman Francoise le Bail, "concern" about "civil rights, freedom of expression" and other human rights in China was the reason for the decision made during a two-day summit held between leaders of the Chinese and EU governments this week.
It's hard to imagine that human rights conditions in China will improve significantly in the future. After all, Beijing has had 15 years to improve things, but no serious efforts have been made. Human Rights Watch said it best in a statement released before the summit, in opposition to lifting the ban: "China's army turned its guns on its own people. If the ban is lifted, the next attack could be with weapons supplied by EU states." That is real food for thought, though EU governments are eager and desperate to export their advanced weapons to Beijing.
Proponents of lifting the embargo, including France and Germany, argue that things have changed over the past 15 years since Beijing's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy student protestors in Tiananmen Square. They are certainly right ? not only has Beijing failed to show any repentance for the crackdown and continued to abuse basic human rights, but they have gone on to become an even greater threat to regional peace. Fifteen years ago, China began developing economically, and today it is both backed by enormous wealth accumulated from rapid economic growth and propelled by its endless ambition. It has become a rapidly rising military power that poses a serious challenge even to the US, the world's superpower.
China's neighbors, of course, have a deeper appreciation of the threat posed by their powerful neighbor. Take Japan: Only this past Tuesday, the Japanese government lodged protests through formal diplomatic channels after confirming that a Chinese ship was conducting research off Japan's southernmost island Okinotorishima, and asked China to cease all unannounced geographical research in Tokyo's exclusive economic zone. Less than a month before, the Japanese protested a brief incursion by a Chinese submarine in Japanese waters.
Then there is of course Taiwan. Surely, no country in the world knows better what it is like to live with China's military threats, day after day. China's threat against Taiwan is so real that it was the reason the US opposed lifting the EU ban. According to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue (
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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