China watchers usually argue that the international community's willingness to look the other way on China's abysmal human rights record is the result of selfish business interests. Human nature being what it is, that rationalization generally holds water.
The Vatican's persistent wooing of Beijing, on the other hand, poses a mystery. After all, it does not own factories in China, nor, for all we know, does it have any financial investments there. Given that the lure of business -- or, in practice, financial blackmail -- do not apply to the Vatican's relations with Beijing, the Pontiff and his subordinates would appear to be free to act toward China as they see fit.
But except for occasional criticism -- mostly by Cardinal Joseph Zen (
There is no doubt, however, that if any of the three bishops had not been in Beijing's good graces, bishophood would have remained an elusive dream. This is par for the course with a central government that continues to meddle in religion, as prominently displayed in Beijing's treatment of Tibetan Lamas and the evisceration of religious tradition in Tibet proper.
Surely the Vatican is aware of this, as repression of religious groups -- Muslims and Falun Gong specifically -- has received no small amount of publicity.
So what happened? How could the Vatican choose to deal with Beijing and, above all, do so without a concomitant and sustained criticism of the regime's record on human rights, religious or otherwise?
The answer, inauspicious as it may be to say on Christmas Day, is that the Vatican is on its way to making a deal with the devil. Rather than harvesting financial gain the way countries and multinationals do, however, what it covets are the souls of millions of Chinese.
In doing so, the Vatican is continuing the long, ignoble tradition of a political message that sees humanity in zero-sum terms -- the more souls the better, regardless of local customs in foreign lands or the devastating consequences of their actions.
In return, what Beijing seeks most is neither the salvation of Chinese souls nor more religious freedom for its people. What it wants is diplomatic recognition from the Vatican at the expense of Taiwan.
Left unchecked, the Vatican's missionary zeal could very well mean that, just as happens with countries that deal with China regardless of the poor human rights conditions there, morality will be crucified for the attainment of a quantifiable objective.
Money, souls -- Beijing exploits both as goods that can be traded for the achievement of its political objectives.
If the Vatican hopes that by engaging Beijing it will be able to influence its behavior, it is in for a rude awakening. For in the end, the more it engages China without setting and enforcing human rights policies, the more complicit it becomes in the repression of Chinese.
And it would be pure delusion to think that Chinese Catholics would be spared.
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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