During his visit to Japan, US President George W. Bush called on China to learn from Taiwan and raised the level of the US-Taiwan relationship. China offered an immediate reaction to Bush's speech, with cliches about "interference in domestic affairs." Bush then attended church in Beijing and noted that there is no religious freedom in China. US officials later said they were disappointed with the meeting between Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤). These are all signs that the US is shifting its China policy away from the idea that economic development will automatically put China on the road toward democracy, toward a mixture of containment and exchange.
This, of course, is not what the people in China and Taiwan who wish to suppress Taiwan's independence want to see. Some media outlets in Taiwan also oppose this change, saying that the US is dealing with the rise of China by once again moving toward contact and cooperation, reducing Taiwan to a pawn that may be abandoned as the benefits to the US and China from their relationship increase. They reason that as US policy comes into conflict with its core interests, Washington will prioritize those interests.
At the second China-US conference held on the eve of Bush's visit to Beijing, Xiong Guangkai (熊光楷), a deputy chief of general staff of the People's Liberation Army, got into a heated argument with Brent Scowcroft, senior national security advisor to former US president George Bush. Xiong repeated the cliche that Taiwan is China's domestic affair. Scowcroft stressed that the Taiwan issue also involves fundamental US interests.
Ignoring the question of "domestic affairs" and equating fundamental and core interests in this way serves to highlight the US' determination. Economic cooperation with China is in the US' practical interests, while democracy is part of its fundamental interests, not only because it is part of the US' founding spirit, but also because it affects its national security.
Unlike the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) which will elevate the interests of a small clique of privileged leaders to the level of national interests. Americans frankly admit when something affects their national interests. This is why the Chinese media are full of pretty slogans such as "flesh-and-blood brothers," "serve the people," "oppose hegemony" and "liberate mankind."
When Scowcroft mentioned US national interests he should actually have said that since democratic Taiwan is a model for Asia, its existence and development is relevant to the fundamental interests of the region and even the world at large. That's because in a struggle between a democracy and a tyranny, the victory or defeat of the democracy will have a domino effect that affects the individual interests of tens of millions of people. This is also the most fundamental reason why the US and China are locking horns over Taiwan -- one of them is a leader of global democracy, the other a bastion of tyranny.
Taiwan belongs on the side of democracy. Even during the authoritarian era, Taiwan took sides with the free world. Today, however, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is not above joining hands with the CCP to suppress Taiwan and the US in order to protect its own interests. It keeps harping on the demise of Taiwan and the US, and instilling distrust for the US among the Taiwanese public.
Following the obstruction of the special arms procurement bill, this is yet another attempt to upset the relationship between Taiwan and the US, and achieve what the CCP has been unable to accomplish. This kind of ungrateful behavior shows us the utter degeneration of some pan-blue politicians and media outlets.
Paul Lin is a commentator based in New York.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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