Ma: The de-Taiwanifier
British playwright George Bernard Shaw was once purportedly told by a beautiful lady: “Sir, imagine if we two got married — our children would get my looks and your brains.” To which, Shaw replied: “Yes, but what if they got my looks and your brains?”
That appears to be what Taiwan is getting from its president: the worst of both worlds.
A Taiwanese president by definition is expected to resolutely defend the nation’s sovereignty. He must also be deliberate yet tentative as if stepping on thin ice when it comes to rapprochement with China.
Instead President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is giving Taiwan little more than trivialization of its sovereignty and outright de-Taiwanification — both in terms of its name and strength.
Only the presence of clandestine arrangements with China could rationally explain why Ma would make only a half-hearted attempt at “bringing the 23 million Taiwanese” to participate in the UN’s peripheral organizations and then characterize Beijing’s brush-off of the attempt as an “unintentional slip.”
Meanwhile, the Ma administration was forced to deny reports of comments American Institute in Taiwan Chairman Raymond Burghardt allegedly made to him during his visit to the US. Burghardt is reported to have told Ma to not hint that China holds sovereignty over Taiwan and instead insist that China not be allowed to determine whether Taiwan can participate in international activities. The rebuttal was similar to his previous denial that he asked Washington to postpone arms procurement processing.
Ma appears to be trying to convince Beijing that Taiwan will be part of China eventually and that, in the current domestic and international atmosphere, he is doing all he can. One example is his recent description of Taiwan as a “region” instead of a nation, a proclamation that, if allowed to stand, could quickly lead the discourse on the status of Taiwan down a steep and slippery slope.
But Washington is reminding Ma that the significant contribution the US has made to Taiwan’s ability to maintain its sovereignty has in no measure diminished even if Ma, the presumptive symbol of Taiwan’s sovereignty, has shirked his responsibility to uphold it.
Going far beyond what’s necessary for mollifying international fear of cross-strait conflicts, Ma’s string of unabashed pro-China policies is causing fresh unease in both Washington and Tokyo.
Beijing hasn’t forgotten that the only path for China to annex Taiwan is through war.
Ma’s political capital can only carry him so far toward unification. All Ma can manage now is de facto unification via Taiwan’s open border for Chinese, but he can’t formally deliver Taiwan to Beijing without a nod from the US. That nod couldn’t possibly be forthcoming considering the potential adverse strategic impact on Japan.
Taiwan’s deterrence capability is declining rapidly and its psychological defense is nearly non-existent following the truce between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). These only serve to stoke Beijing’s adventurous instincts. A severe economic downturn or political turmoil in China could still mark the launch of China’s military invasion of Taiwan.
Ma, if left unchecked to pursue his unification dream, could cost Taiwanese their sovereignty, democracy and prosperity and cast them into the jaws of war — the worst of both worlds indeed.
HUANG JEI-HSUAN
Los Angeles, California
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