President-elect Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) last campaign ad prior to the presidential election used the slogan “We are ready!”
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was ready to win, but two weeks after that victory, Ma doesn’t seem prepared for the responsibilities he will soon shoulder.
To show his willingness to mend US-Taiwan relations, Ma said after his victory that he wanted to visit the US before his inauguration.
As Ma had not consulted with Washington over the issue, his remarks put the US in an awkward position and neither side seems to know how to handle the situation.
One of Ma’s election promises was to set up chartered cross-strait weekend flights and he wants to fulfill this promise and open the nation to Chinese tourism as soon as possible. But the deadline he has set for this— the first weekend of July — is proving difficult for the agencies that handle cross-strait contacts, the Mainland Affairs Council and the Straits Exchange Foundation. These organizations are still administered by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Ma’s team can do nothing until he takes office.
Airline industry representatives handling aviation talks have also complained that Ma is pushing too hard and too fast for changes and thereby undermining the nation’s negotiating advantages, while the military says that plans to operate cross-strait flights out of Taipei Songshan Airport could impinge on national security.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has the upper hand on many cross-strait issues. The CCP may prove more willing to show goodwill toward Ma than to the DPP, but there will still be limitations. Beijing will not back down on blocking Taiwan from securing observer status at the WHO, even if Ma offers to use the title “Chinese Taipei.” In any case, Ma is jumping the gun on these issues and undermining the outgoing administration’s application using the name “Taiwan.”
There are many issues to deal with in cross-strait relations and there is no need for Ma to bring up the issue of sovereignty before he has even been inaugurated, especially when doing so runs counter to his election pledges.
Former National Security Bureau secretary-general Ting Yu-chou (丁渝洲) has said that Ma’s actions and remarks since the election have broken his promise to be a humble president serving the interests of the public. Several unwise statements have been particularly unhelpful.
It seems that Ma is still in campaign mode, still focusing on wooing the public with promises. But Ma must realize that the public is already holding him to presidential standards. He must exhibit a capacity for caution and strategic thinking — the smallest indiscretion could have domestic and international repercussions.
Ma’s honeymoon will be short. Those with high expectations will want to see quick and concrete results, while opponents will be waiting to pounce on his every mistake.
From now on, Ma will be under constant scrutiny from all sides. His first step should be to listen more, say less and be cautious.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS