It is hard to tell which idea is more problematic: a free trade agreement (FTA) with the US or the establishment of a Free-Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP).
Taiwan has been urging the US for years to establish a bilateral FTA, hoping it will set a diplomatic example to encourage other countries to sign FTAs with Taiwan in spite of China's constant bullying and intimidation.
Last week, Hu Sheng-cheng (
The very fact that Hu's speech was given in Washington should leave no doubt about the urgency of the call for closer economic relations with the US, the nation's strongest ally. It should also leave no question about Taiwan's deeply felt concern about the potential for economic marginalization in Asia.
But Washington's response was disappointing.
The US side has insisted on closer ties across the Taiwan Strait as a prelude to closer economic relations with the US -- witness recent remarks by US officials, including American Institute in Taiwan Director Stephen Young and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Christensen.
This sort of truth-telling was not easy for Taiwan to digest. The question is, is the nation ready to face this reality and take the necessary policy steps?
First, US President George W. Bush's fast-track authority to negotiate free-trade pacts is due to expire on June 30 next year, and with the Democrats' win in last month's elections, this power is unlikely to be extended beyond that time.
Second, the Democrat-controlled Congress is unlikely to be as friendly a partner to Taiwan on trade issues as was its predecessor. Many of the winning candidates campaigned on domestic employment and are less liberal in their outlook on trade. It is possible that Democrats could slow down free trade talks with other countries and push for a harsher response to perceived cases of "unfair" trade.
Taiwan-US trade negotiations will go nowhere until both sides see evidence that there are some solid gains to be made from a bilateral free-trade pact.
Compared to a FTA with the US, the agreement reached by APEC leaders at the summit in Vietnam last month to commence work on a FTAAP is ambitious and may take years to achieve.
The nation originally initiated the idea of an Asian Pacific free-trade zone in 2004 at the APEC Business Advisory Council meeting in Taipei, and was encouraged to see the Bush administration get behind it. Once it materializes, the FTAAP will help offset China's attempts to marginalize Taiwan.
But as Taiwan Institute of Economic Research president David Hong (
While the proposed FTAAP may help jolt non-APEC members to restart stalled talks for a new global trade accord, the government must closely track its early development. The government has opened its arms to this initiative, but whether APEC's transformation into the FTAAP will bring good or bad fortune to the nation is difficult to assess.
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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