Under exceptional circumstances or between trusting allies, countries will sometimes exchange police, customs inspectors, military personnel and intelligence officers to fulfill liaison requirements. When the situation warrants it, or when allies are especially close, those officers will sometimes be granted extraterritorial powers — in other words, the right to enforce the law on another country’s territory.
Such a measure was launched in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US amid global efforts to combat the proliferation of dangerous weapons. In 2002, for example, the US and Canada launched talks to place customs inspectors on each other’s territory to inspect the millions of tonnes of cargo that arrive at North American ports each year. A similar move, known as the Container Security Initiative, was made by the US Department of Homeland Security whereby US inspectors were placed at major ports around the world to look for chemical, biological and nuclear material.
In every case, the postings were made possible either as the result of high levels of trust between the participating countries, or for immediate security considerations based on a serious threat.
News last week that Taiwan’s Crime Investigation Bureau (CIB) may be considering an initiative in which Chinese police officers would be deployed in Taiwan — and vice versa — could be rationalized in the light of such global initiatives.
The problem, however, is that the level of trust necessary for this measure to be undertaken is lacking and crime-fighting in the Taiwan Strait does not threaten security to the extent that it would make this move imperative — not to mention the odious symbolism of the presence of Chinese police on Taiwanese soil.
Another factor that, in other scenarios, makes officer exchanges possible is mutual recognition of sovereignty among all participants and the limits on extraterritoriality that this implies.
When it comes to China, however, the fact that it does not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state and claims it as its own poses additional problems. Among these are the specters of the application of Chinese law on Taiwanese territory and the reinterpretation of Taiwanese laws that could stretch the definition of crime to include “splittism” and speech on topics that are illegal in China.
The initiative also raises questions such as whether Chinese police officers would have power of arrest or be limited to working as liaison officers. Would they be allowed to carry weapons? To investigate? Collect intelligence on dissident groups in Taiwan? Which chain of command would they answer to? If they overstepped their responsibilities, would they be subject to reprimand, or be demoted based on Taiwanese law or China’s?
Despite the need for cross-strait cooperation in fighting crime, the problem is not serious enough and Beijing not trustworthy enough to require the presence of Chinese police in Taiwan. While liaison officers would be acceptable, anything more would be catastrophic for the sovereignty of this nation and should be vigorously opposed. Otherwise, given Beijing’s non-recognition of Taiwan and the risk that these personnel could be used as fifth columnists, allowing Chinese police to operate in Taiwan would be akin to the Czechs welcoming Soviet police to their country prior to the invasion in 1968.
We’ve already seen a surge in police abuse since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) came to office. The last thing this country needs is the presence of police from a country whose legal system is the byproduct of an authoritarian and colonial mindset.
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
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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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