We've heard it all, from "serious" to "severe" to "irreparable," all used by Beijing to describe the consequences upon bilateral relations -- read trade -- of actions taken by states that work against its ambitions.
As recently as last week, Beijing was using that language to harangue the Canadian government for announcing that the Dalai Lama would meet Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa this week. Before that, it was the US for conferring upon the exiled Tibetan leader the Congressional Medal of Honor. And thus down into history: China turned the screws when states chose to recognize Taiwan, sell weapons to it, let certain individuals visit their countries -- such as when former president Lee Teng-hui (
That Confucian song in which the headmaster berates his students for doing something not to his liking is getting a little old -- so old, in fact, that it has almost become a Pavlovian response.
And like every other threat, if it is not acted upon over time, it gradually loses its dissuasive effect. If those threats had been made in earnest, one would imagine that in the past 30 years or so -- when Beijing began using this political grandstanding to pressure governments -- diplomatic relations between China and the rest of the world would have dwindled, because most countries have, at one point or another, done something that Beijing didn't like.
But the opposite has happened and China's ties to the international community have intensified, proving that the so-called "severe" consequences were nothing but hollow threats. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find examples of Beijing actually acting on one.
Vituperative language and dramatic ambassadorial posturing aside, China needs the world more than the world needs China. Numbers alone show us why. WTO statistics show that China's global exports of merchandise were worth US$762 billion in 2005, while its imports were US$660 billion. In other words, China had a US$162 billion trade surplus. Its principal export markets were the US and the 25 countries comprising the EU, which accounted for almost 40 percent of its exports.
What this success means for Beijing, however, is that even if it wanted to, it can ill afford to sever those ties. While the prevailing belief is that states threatened by Beijing will shift gear on policy decisions, the truth of the matter is that Beijing's warnings have had little traction, especially when the countries being threatened represent almost 40 percent of its export market.
Another factor that will weaken the effects of Beijing's threats is India, which some economists say could replace China as the world's No. 1 factory for global goods within as little as five years. The imminent Indo-Chinese competition for share of the global market, from manufacturing workforce to exports, means that China probably has reached the apogee of its economic lure and with it the capacity to threaten other countries with the stick of bilateral relations.
While China is presently the world's No. 3 exporter of merchandise, India -- a more politically stable country and a democracy -- is No. 29, meaning it has lots of room to grow.
Consequently, the Dalai Lama will continue to tread the world, receive awards and shake hands with heads of state, and the negative consequences upon those states will only decrease in severity.
China's no doubt a giant, but it's a tied one.
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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