During separate press conferences with local and foreign media on Tuesday, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) announced that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrew Hsia (夏立言) — who came under fire over a leaked memo ordering overseas missions to decline offers of aid in the wake of Typhoon Morakot — had tendered his resignation.
That Ma would make this information public implies that Hsia’s resignation has, for all intents and purposes, been accepted.
Heads are starting to roll following the government’s amateurish handling of the emergency, and this is a welcome development, but it is also evident that Hsia is a scapegoat. Admittedly, Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) was not in the country when the decision to refuse aid was made, but it is hard to believe that he was not aware of the matter.
Furthermore, Ou was on a diplomatic mission that sources claim included Jordan and the Czech Republic. In other words, he should have been in the decision-making chain — and should be reprimanded for his ministry’s inappropriate policy and the likely deadly consequences.
A well-placed source claims that the aid memo came from above Hsia (who would not have had the authority to decide on the matter) and probably even higher than Ou, which means that it was either the National Security Council, the premier or the president who was responsible. Why they would have ordered this remains a mystery.
The top officials who were behind this decision, therefore, are likely to remain unaccountable, while Hsia is being sacrificed to an angry Taiwanese public.
One possible reason for the decision to delay the approval of foreign aid, another source said, was that the top leadership did not know what kind of material assistance was required and therefore did not want other governments to start sending planeloads of unnecessary material. What allegedly followed was an internal screw-up and a departure from the internal chain of approval for the memo, which may have bypassed both a section director-general for review of the draft and Hsia altogether. If this is true, then Hsia is being forced out for something he did not do.
It is unlikely that Beijing would have ordered Taipei to reject foreign aid, or to have threatened retaliation if it did. After all, Beijing does not stand to gain anything by Ma coming under criticism or his administration being undermined. What China needs is a strong, popular Ma who can forge ahead with his cross-strait policies and bring Taiwan closer to unification.
It is possible, however, that Taiwan’s policymakers decided to wait for a green light from Beijing for fear of “angering” it by opening the doors to foreign aid, especially from the US and Japan, whose presence on Taiwanese soil has sensitive implications. In other words, a misreading by Taipei of the importance that Beijing attaches to the symbolism of foreign help in Taiwan, rather than actual Chinese interference, could help explain the decision to reject or delay approval of aid.
Hsia is the first fall guy for a development that, in the end, was far less consequential than the more pressing question of why it took so long for the military to deploy in the south to launch rescue operations. Ma can claim all he wants that heavy rain over three days prevented the deployment of helicopters, but the fact remains: Rain or no rain, there should have been boots on the ground — and there weren’t.
Whose head will roll for that one?
J. Michael Cole is a writer based in Taipei.
US President Donald Trump has gotten off to a head-spinning start in his foreign policy. He has pressured Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States, threatened to take over the Panama Canal, urged Canada to become the 51st US state, unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and announced plans for the United States to annex and administer Gaza. He has imposed and then suspended 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for their roles in the flow of fentanyl into the United States, while at the same time increasing tariffs on China by 10
As an American living in Taiwan, I have to confess how impressed I have been over the years by the Chinese Communist Party’s wholehearted embrace of high-speed rail and electric vehicles, and this at a time when my own democratic country has chosen a leader openly committed to doing everything in his power to put obstacles in the way of sustainable energy across the board — and democracy to boot. It really does make me wonder: “Are those of us right who hold that democracy is the right way to go?” Has Taiwan made the wrong choice? Many in China obviously
US President Donald Trump last week announced plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on eight countries. As Taiwan, a key hub for semiconductor manufacturing, is among them, the policy would significantly affect the country. In response, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) dispatched two officials to the US for negotiations, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) board of directors convened its first-ever meeting in the US. Those developments highlight how the US’ unstable trade policies are posing a growing threat to Taiwan. Can the US truly gain an advantage in chip manufacturing by reversing trade liberalization? Is it realistic to
Last week, 24 Republican representatives in the US Congress proposed a resolution calling for US President Donald Trump’s administration to abandon the US’ “one China” policy, calling it outdated, counterproductive and not reflective of reality, and to restore official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, enter bilateral free-trade agreement negotiations and support its entry into international organizations. That is an exciting and inspiring development. To help the US government and other nations further understand that Taiwan is not a part of China, that those “one China” policies are contrary to the fact that the two countries across the Taiwan Strait are independent and
RSS