Former secretary-general of the National Security Council Su Chi’s (蘇起) recent resignation was long overdue. He ran the council as a powerful “independent kingdom” within the government, but his leadership proved surprisingly incompetent.
Perhaps Su’s biggest debacle was his announcement that Taiwan would relax restrictions on beef imports from the US. At the time, I was meeting senior officials in the newly formed Cabinet under Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義). They clearly did not know what was happening and confusion reigned for several days.
Su apparently believed that giving in to the US would help other negotiations. But the public and many legislators in both major parties expressed legitimate health concerns.
As a result, Taiwan will soon have a referendum on the subject. By giving in unnecessarily to the US on the beef issue, Su clearly sacrificed Taiwan’s interests and created unnecessary conflict with Taiwan’s most important ally.
Even though Su was performing poorly, he stayed in power as long as he did because he was so close to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) that many described the two as “close like brothers.”
Critics, including those in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), say that one reason for Su’s failures was an attempt to please his adversaries. When he gave a speech at the Central Party School in Beijing, he repeated Chinese slogans and failed to maintain Taiwan’s interests, just as he failed to do so on US beef imports.
In addition, Su tends to blame others. Even though he was intimately involved in former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) negotiations with China in his various senior governmental roles, in his book Taiwan’s Relations with Mainland China: A Tail Wagging Two Dogs, published last year, Su has nothing good to say about Lee. Rather he blames Lee and former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) for all of the cross-straits difficulties. On page 51, he argues the 1994 Qiandao Lake incident, in which Chinese robbers murdered Taiwanese tourists, and Lee’s interview with Ryotaro Shiba “hurt the feelings of the people on the other side [of the Taiwan Strait].” Where is the concern for the feelings of the dead Taiwanese or for the truth in Lee’s declaration that the KMT was originally an alien regime?
As a legislator from 2005 to 2008, Su also hurt Taiwan’s attempts to buy arms. He claimed the failure of the national defense referendum in 2004, which asked “Should mainland China refuse to dismantle the missiles against us, do you agree that the government should purchase more advanced anti-missile weapons to strengthen Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities?” meant that Taiwan should not buy arms from the US, including submarines.
This argument led to the legislature failing to pass the arms budget. Even Ma criticized the KMT legislators, but nothing happened.
Su’s book makes it clear he lacks any understanding of Taiwan. He twice incorrectly says that Portugal ruled Taiwan (pages viii, 285). He also says that a majority of “non-savvy voters from the countryside … probably just did not have an opinion” (page 212). Elsewhere Su expresses concern for what Mainlanders, Hakka and Aborigines think, but he neglects to mention the ethnic Taiwanese that account for 75 percent of Taiwan’s population (page 285).
Typhoon Morakot proved the bankruptcy of such narrow policies. At that time Su declared that Taiwan did not need foreign aid. In a context where Taiwan has suffered from restrictions on its foreign relations, anyone working on behalf of Taiwan’s best interests would have welcomed US aid whether needed or not.
Will Hu Wei-jen (胡為真) provide new leadership in the National Security Council? His record looks doubtful. Hu obtained his doctorate from the University of Pretoria in 1988, when South Africa was still very much under apartheid rule. As a diplomat, he was happy to accept the Chen administration’s appointment as representative to Germany in 2001 and again to Singapore in 2005. Strangely, it was only in 2007 that he resigned to complain about “de-Sinification.”
After stunning electoral success in 2008 in the legislative and presidential elections, the KMT under Ma has declined spectacularly. In continuing to appoint such figures from the former dictatorships of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) such as former premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) and Su as well as Hu, Ma works with people for whom he feels an affinity.
But in doing so, he is forgetting his robust attempt to project an image of strong Taiwanese identity during his 2008 presidential campaign.
If Ma wishes to be more than a failed one-term president, he must reinvigorate his government’s Taiwanese identity and give such people as Wu and Vice-Premier Eric Chu (朱立倫) a greater ability to look after the country’s genuine interests.
Bruce Jacobs is professor of Asian Languages and Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
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