At the Asian security conference in Singapore on Saturday, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld vehemently criticized China's continued acquisition of missiles and the development of its air force and navy. This, he said, was not only creating a military imbalance in the Taiwan Strait, it was also threatening the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific.
Rumsfeld's talk was intended as a preview of the Pentagon's annual report on China's military to be released later this week. This report maintains the Defense Department's consistently held concerns embodied in the so-called "China Threat" theory, but it also specifically switches the focus from the Taiwan Strait to the entire Asia-Pacific region. It advises caution in no uncertain terms over the danger presented to the region by the expansion of the Chinese military.
The US is not the only nation to feel uneasy. Last year a Japan Defense Agency report identified China as a potential security threat, and the question of including Taiwan in the scope of the US-Japan Security Pact was discussed. In March and April, massive anti-Japanese protests erupted in China. Sino-Japanese relations were further tested with the appearance of Chinese submarines and other vessels in Japanese waters, giving Tokyo all the more reason for concern.
China has long chanted its mantra of "peaceful rise" in an attempt to calm its neighbors and the international community as a whole over its military, economic and political expansionism. But with passage of its "Anti-Secession" Law in March, the international community saw the true face of China. Criticism and censure followed, and the EU decided to postpone lifting its arms embargo.
The "China Threat theory" is no longer a possibility -- the threat is a reality. Taiwan has had to deal with this threat on its own for some time, but now other countries are gradually beginning to get the message. The Singapore meeting is just the starting point for international action, and hopefully we will see even more countries facing up to the threat posed by China's expansionism with more concrete action. Perhaps this will all lead to new policies designed to contain China.
Taiwan is at the center of the First Island Chain, the front line constraining China's expansion. It has shouldered this burden for more than 60 years, but now people in Taiwan and the US are becoming increasingly concerned that it will become a breach in the chain. The hurdles faced by the arms procurement bill in the legislature means that the imbalance in military strength between the two sides of the Strait will increase. The lack of commitment to self-defense might encourage China to take advantage of the situation with a military move.
China is now trying "panda diplomacy" to win over the Taiwanese people. The high status accorded to the visits of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
For Taiwan's sake and for regional security, the legislature should hold an additional session to pass the arms procurement bill as soon as possible.
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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