Following the revelation that some Taiwanese food manufacturers have unwittingly been using contaminated raw materials from China, the public should question the wisdom of signing a Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) with China. There should be no doubt after the past year’s chain of scandals that toxic products are a chronic problem in China. The public wants guarantees that what Chinese-language media have labeled “black-hearted” foods will not enter the country.
The CEPA would be a free-trade pact to enhance trade exchanges with China. Earlier this month, Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) cited the CEPA between China and Hong Kong as a model that could be used as a starting point in negotiations. The goal, Chiang said, would be to promote and protect Taiwanese businesses in China.
Hong Kong signed a CEPA with China in June 2003, the goal of which was to boost trade and introduce measures such as allowing Hong Kong companies to sell products tariff-free in China. On Jan. 1 the following year, Macau signed a CEPA with China to receive similar trade benefits.
What Chiang failed to mention, however, is that the pact is modeled not as an agreement between two countries, but as a deal between a country and its territories.
Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Jiang Zengwei (姜增偉) recently suggested that Taiwan and China ink a partnership based on the CEPA model “to allow Taiwanese compatriots to enjoy more preferential treatment and opportunities.”
It is hardly surprising that Beijing is eager to sign a CEPA with Taiwan. But by doing so, Taiwan would bolster China’s scheme to link Taiwan with Hong Kong and Macau as part of a Greater China economic zone, with ultimately political intentions.
Signing a CEPA with Beijing is, in other words, no light matter. It is not simply an issue of helping Taiwanese companies, because the arrangement could deal a blow to national sovereignty and bolster Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is little more than a local economic entity. Sadly, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is not interested in a public debate on the matter.
The KMT administration seems so focused on reaping the benefits of China’s growing economy that it is blind to the fact that Beijing would use the CEPA to further its political goals. For China, there’s no such thing as “non-political.”
China made its agenda perfectly clear when Vice Minister of Commerce Liao Xiaoqi (廖曉淇) said: “The CEPA is a successful implementation of ‘one country, two systems.’”
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has long proclaimed that his goal is “ultimate unification” with China. In an interview with the Mexican daily El Sol de Mexico, he clearly stated that relations between Taiwan and China were not state-to-state. Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長), meanwhile, is well-known for his “cross-strait common market” proposal, something that fits all too well with Beijing’s hopes for a CEPA with Taiwan.
Regardless of all the fantasies of Chinese riches, the sobering reality is that a CEPA based on Hong Kong and Macau’s trade with China could have an impact on Taiwan that all would come to regret.
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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