The National Immigration Agency (NIA) and the Tourism Bureau announced on the weekend that 9,500 employees of the Beijing-based Pro-Health Company and their family members would come to Taiwan on a sightseeing tour late this month, adding that the south would not be part of the itinerary.
This time, the claim that visits by or documentaries about individuals (such as Uighur rights activist Rebiya Kadeer) who are loathed by Beijing was behind the decision to spurn the south cannot be sustained, even if no reason has been given for the decision.
What Beijing — and by extension the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration — is doing is fairly transparent, however: It is using Chinese tourists as an economic weapon to punish and sideline a segment of the country that is perceived as a bastion of Taiwanese independence and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) support.
In response, Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) is said to have begun looking into alternative sources of tourists by focusing on Japanese and Europeans, among others.
Whether this new gambit by China and its tourism proxies succeed in hurting the south economically remains to be seen and will be contingent on Chen and others being able to mitigate the effects. What will happen, however, is a further political fragmenting of the country along a north-south axis. It is not hard to imagine that after tourism, Chinese institutional investment in Taiwan, which the Ma administration is now allowing in a growing number of sectors, could also be used as a means to isolate the south and widen the wealth gap between the two parts of the country.
If such a strategy were successful, the south could eventually face a disadvantage vis-a-vis other parts of Taiwan and the region. In such a scenario, residents there would face a choice between economic opportunity or discrimination, compelling them to compromise their political beliefs and support for independence. One result would be the possible sidelining of the DPP, as only votes for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) or other pro-unification parties would be perceived to hold the promise of Chinese tourism and investment.
By quickly liberalizing trade with China, the Ma administration has made it possible for China to use the economy as a weapon to reward and punish. The “good” north is being rewarded, while the “bad” south is being forced into a corner to either rot or “reform.”
The political polarization of Taiwan along geographical lines would be an unhealthy development that would undermine the unity that is necessary to protect the nation against Chinese encroachment on its sovereignty.
National unity that transcends geography and political differences, as well as efforts to limit economic dependence on China, will be the best means to counter Beijing’s strategy of divide and conquer.
There will be costs in doing so, and China could “punish” tour operators or firms in the north that refuse to go along with its plan, but in the end, it would be far costlier to this nation if it allowed China to cleave Taiwan in two.
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,
RSS