Unmasking the ‘horse’
The confirmation that Diane Lee (李慶安) has US citizenship seemed to carry more implications than the exposure of a garden-variety hypocrisy from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-dominated legislature, given that deceit abounds in Taiwan today.
Pre-election promises notwithstanding, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), backed by the KMT, insists that cross-strait deals should take effect without either legislative vetting or public scrutiny.
Even without being privy to the premises behind those agreements, Taiwanese could still detect the ill effects unique to losing the nation’s sovereignty. There is then no doubt that we have been betrayed.
To many Taiwanese, Ma’s horror show is just getting started, given his propensity to steadily and quietly subjugate his government to Beijing.
At this rate, by the time the next presidential election rolls around, there won’t be any power left to transfer to his successor if Taiwanese decide to throw Ma out after one term. Ma is in essence pre-empting Taiwan’s democratic process.
It’s now a race between how fast Taiwanese can consolidate the opposition and Ma’s pace at undermining Taiwan. Even waiting until Ma’s one-year anniversary in office to constitutionally launch his recall might seem like an unaffordable luxury at this point.
Whistling in the dark, the KMT encourages the circulation among the Taiwanese public of the myth that the People’s Liberation Army would come to the KMT’s aid in case of a Taiwanese uprising.
What’s being ignored is the fact that Beijing’s launch of any invasion could only be with the intention of forcefully taking possession of Taiwan, not of helping out an — by then — irrelevant KMT. Ma and the KMT would be of value to Beijing only as long as these “Chinese compatriots” can hold down the lid on the pressure cooker Taiwan could one day become.
The KMT wouldn’t fare any better than the Taiwanese public if Beijing launches cross-strait military action.
Ma and many in the KMT leadership, such as Lee, appreciate this fine point and value the security of being a US national.
But they also don’t want to give up their power in Taiwan.
This desire to “have their cake and eat it too” gave birth to the Ma-patented fallacy of “automatic loss of validity” of US naturalization.
However, the reason US citizenship and immigrant status don’t automatically disappear is because they come with not only rights but duties too, not the least of which is filing an annual income tax return.
Lee’s case is noted for its being such a dead ringer for Ma’s, a fact that might also explain the timing of the exposure as it signifies the increasing wariness of Washington toward Ma.
It was once a common belief that as long as Ma was constrained by the US from instituting martial law to bury democracy, Taiwanese should have ample opportunity to fight for their own future.
That has proved to be a gross underestimation of Ma and the KMT’s treachery.
Ma’s pursuit of a stealthy dictatorship is taking Taiwan farther away from the West.
As a consequence, Washington could soon be forced to decide whether or not to give up on Taiwan’s democracy, and Taiwanese as free people, for the sake of an unjust peace.
Washington, by opting to expose Lee to minimize the cost of political capital while still hoping that the Taiwanese public can discern the inescapable conclusion, shouldn’t be surprised by the inability or unwillingness of many Taiwanese to connect the dots.
Ma’s popularity is stuck in the doldrums, however, thanks primarily to his mishandling of Taiwan’s economy, not to his dismantling of Taiwan’s sovereignty.
To restore some filament of its credibility in advocating democracy, Washington should stop beating around the bush and lay bare Ma’s real identity.
HUANG JEI-HSUAN
Los Angeles, California
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its