In the 1960s, the US went to some lengths to persuade dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to be pragmatic and accept a two-China arrangement in an attempt to preserve Taiwan’s international status.
Chiang dug his heels in. At the time, US State Department officials predicted that two Chinas, or one China and one Taiwan, would only be accepted after Chiang’s death, when a new generation would be in power in China and Taiwan.
This prediction was borne out: Chiang’s son and successor, Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), launched a policy of “innovation to protect Taiwan”; former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) set about democratizing Taiwan and advocating a two-states policy; and former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) added his approach of “one country on each side” of the Taiwan Strait.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is currently reversing this process with his vassal state mentality, however, and China has him exactly where it wants him.
Ma is a strange fish: His is neither your average Chinese nor your average Taiwanese family, and as such he has neither empathy for, nor a natural affinity with, ordinary people. He is the product of a very specific mindset meticulously engineered by his elders. He studied in the US, yet the spirit of democracy has not rubbed off on him; he grew up in Taiwan, yet he has no natural affinity with this country.
He has inherited the vested interests and exile mentality of his father and has remained consistent throughout his rise to power in that he doesn’t really instigate anything: He only knows how to oppose. From the very beginning, he has spoken out against the two enemies of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — the Chinese communists and Taiwanese independence advocates. This has won him friends in the older generations in China.
With the democratization of Taiwan and the expansion of his political arena, his mindset has run into conflict with political considerations. He fears Beijing, but doesn’t like to talk of being “anti-communist”; he worries about losing votes, but declines to elaborate on his objections to Taiwanese independence; he is not pro-democracy, but you will only see this in his actions, for he will not articulate it.
To continue his oppositionist tendency, he needed to find a new enemy, so he chose Chen. Chen’s “one country on each side” got officials’ tongues wagging, and the fact that certain family members were sending large sums of cash of unknown origin abroad just so happened to give these same officials the excuse to take aim at Chen under the guise of attacking corruption.
Under these two banners, Ma attacked the idea of one country on each side of the Strait, mobilizing staunch pan-blue supporters and moderates to give him the presidency. Once in power, however, he has proven to be arrogant, incompetent and cold, and seems to be content to associate with criminals.
However, Ma doesn’t seem to realize any of this, and blames anyone and anything for problems as they arise. When he is criticized for errors that he has made, he has had the audacity to make comparisons with Chen.
Then, after being hit by an election setback, he returned to persecuting the former president. One minute he is taking his cues from Chen, the next he is criticizing him.
Does he really think the public is fooled by such duplicity?
Opposing Chen no longer works, but then again, Ma’s biggest enemy now is his own incompetence and lack of affinity with the public’s expectations. If he needs something new to fight against, he should look no further than himself.
James Wang is a media commentator.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
With polls in as many as 76 countries, 2024 is the biggest election year in history. This year’s raft of elections has already produced a left-leaning government in Britain, political gridlock in France, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s return to office for a third term, and the elevation of the pro-sovereignty William Lai (賴清德) as Taiwan’s president, but with his Democratic Progressive Party losing its majority in the legislature. But no election will have a greater global impact than the one in the US. Whether American voters elect Kamala Harris or Donald Trump as the next president, and whether the Republicans
There is an old saying in Chinese that essentially means that when an academic tries to reason with a warrior, they might as well be talking to a wall. Times have changed, and military men are far more reasonable now than when this saying emerged. Retired army general Yu Pei-chen (于北辰) is a good example of this. Today, academics are now often the ones who cannot be reasoned with. Alice Ou (區桂芝), who teaches Chinese Literature at Taipei First Girls’ High School, and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Weng Hsiao-ling (翁曉玲), who is also an associate professor at National Tsing Hua
Minnesota Governor and Democratic US vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has connections to China dating back decades that could help inform US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ approach to the world’s second-biggest economy, but might also spell trouble with leaders in Beijing and Republicans back home. The little-known Minnesota governor taught English in China’s southern Guangdong Province in 1989 and 1990, making him the first person on a presidential ticket to have that kind of experience living in the country since former US president George H.W. Bush, who served as US ambassador in Beijing in the 1970s. Walz
Japan’s and China’s top diplomats met on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum on July 26, hoping to increase exchanges that promote mutually beneficial relations. However, the Chinese ministry misquoted the Japanese official’s comments on the “one China” issue, further fueling tensions between two sides. Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs Yoko Kamikawa and her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi (王毅), had their first one-on-one talk in eight months on the sidelines of a gathering of foreign ministers in Laos to discuss issues between the two sides, including Japanese nationals being detained in China, Beijing’s bans on Japanese food imports and Japan’s