On the eve of Premier Su Tseng-chang's (蘇貞昌) visit to Chad, the African nation broke off diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Behind this was the black hand of China. This episode makes it clear that despite Su's revision of President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁 ) policies, China still isn't satisfied, as what it really want is someone to completely sell out the nation the way former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) did last year.
Judging by China's foreign relations in recent years, it hasn't just been trying to cope with the "Taiwan issue" -- its overall policy has been to broaden and entrench an international anti-US front.
While everyone was focused on North Korea's missile launch and its connection with China, foreign Chinese-language media and South Korean media have been helping Beijing by trying to put some distance between China and North Korea. One Hong Kong media outlet had a special report claiming that there was a deep rift between China and North Korea, and that the two have different intentions. Is this really the case?
The report said that China was not given forewarning of the North Korean missile launch. This is what China itself says. The Chinese Communist Party has been lying since its founding, and anyone who believes it in this particular case has been duped. As for North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's refusal to meet with a representative from China, this is clearly an act put on for the US.
The Hong Kong report also said that China proposed sanctions against North Korea in the UN. This just wrong. China was opposed to sanctions, and only made a verbal condemnation that lacked any binding commitment. It says that North Korea may have the ability to print counterfeit Chinese money, but as of yet there is no evidence that the regime has done so.
Yet when counterfeit US money was found in Macau more than 10 years ago, the Yazhou Zhoukan weekly magazine reported that China had prevented the Macau government from making a thorough investigation.
The magazine report went on to say that the Bank of China had agreed to US requests to freeze North Korean accounts in its Macau branches. This was supposed to have happened last year, but no one is sure if it has or not. However, China has allowed North Korea to relocate its Macau office to the city of Zhuhai in Guangdong Province. Since Macau's international casinos make it a suitable place for the CIA to operate, moving to Guangdong put the North Koreans under direct Chinese protection.
If there really has been a rift in the relationship between China and North Korea, why doesn't China simply expel the North Koreans? Furthermore, even though China may have frozen North Korean accounts, China's President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) visited North Korea last November to give US$2 billion in aid. In a word, China is still opposing the US and supporting Kim's regime.
When China, Russia and four other former Soviet states established the Shanghai Co-operation Organization (SCO) in June 2001, it was intended to be a check on US influence. After years of work, it had a major breakthrough in June. Not only did it invite Mongolia, Pakistan and India to attend as observers -- the heads of state attended from all countries except India -- but it also invited the US' sworn enemy, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is believed to be developing nuclear weapons, has advocated that Israel be wiped off the face of the map and has helped stir up the conflict in Lebanon.
Ahmadinejad was the focus of media attention in Shanghai, and now the SCO is seen as an Asian Warsaw Pact. Following the collapse of the eastern European Warsaw Pact, China has gathered together former communist countries and terrorists to oppose Western democracies headed by the US, the most prominent democracy.
US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Iranian government dispatched at least one person to North Korea to observe the missile launch. It is evident that this Asian Warsaw Pact extends from the Middle East to East Asia, linking Iran with North Korea.
This group has a broader spectrum of participants than the the socialist members of the original Warsaw Pact, and poses a more serious anti-US nuclear threat. Under these conditions, how can the US please the communist party by short-sightedly encouraging Taiwan to accept China's "united front" strategy disguised as an exchange?
Paul Lin is a political commentator based in Taipei.
Translated by Marc Langer
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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