Ever since the government proposed the signing of an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) between Taiwan and China, every ECFA-related opinion poll has showed that public doubts over the issue have increased while support has continued to slide. It’s only natural the government finds this worrying and therefore offers more explanations on the issue, while the Chinese government has rushed to give up some of its benefits as a favor to Taiwan. The more explanations Taipei offers and the more Beijing agrees, the stronger the doubt among the public.
Why? Because the government’s approach to the ECFA talks includes many unreasonable conditions that appear very strange no matter how they are interpreted. One must never enter into trade talks saying that an agreement must be signed at any price and even setting a deadline for it. Doing so means giving up every bargaining chip one has. Somehow, the government remains oblivious to this.
In any trade negotiations, the parties involved evaluate the short and long-term impact on domestic industry and labor. This means the government must make concessions and compromises with its negotiating partner, while also informing and lobbying the domestic audience. This is why negotiations are often full of twists and turns and sometimes fail. In the ECFA talks, however, Beijing has continuously made concessions and constantly joins the Taiwanese government in assuring the public that Chinese labor and agricultural products will not be allowed into Taiwan, disregarding its own interests. This is unprecedented in the history of negotiation.
However, this is not strange at all, since China’s aim is to create “one China.” The ECFA talks nominally maintain a “one China” framework while in practice bringing Taiwan into China’s economic sphere as well as co-opting the public. This is key to China’s strategy of promoting unification through economic means and using business to bypass politics in order to infiltrate Taiwan and win the minds and hearts of Taiwanese. Its strategic and tactical goals are both clear and well-integrated and President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) plays along. Given this situation, it is clear that Beijing’s offer to forgo some of its benefits as a favor is simply bait to win over the public.
Ma constantly stresses the advantages of an ECFA and cooperates with Beijing to sell it to the public. The Ma administration has effectively stopped acting as a government, functioning instead as Beijing’s business representative in Taiwan. This alone erodes Ma’s credibility. Thus, instead of negotiating with China, the government is busy convincing the public to accept an ECFA. Beijing does not really plan to negotiate with Taipei either. It only wishes to further integrate Taiwan’s economic interests and tie its economic future tightly to China. What Beijing needs to figure out, then, is how many gifts it needs to offer to help Ma sign an ECFA and win the 2012 presidential election to ensure its strategies prevail.
This is the tragedy for Taiwanese. Beijing is the stronger power, while Taipei is like a businessman who only cares about the short-term interests of certain local industries and Taiwanese businesses investing in China. As it proudly brags about the Chinese gifts it brings, the Ma administration has given up on a national strategy for Taiwan. Today, the government is selling out Taiwan’s sovereignty and liberal democracy, and neglecting the widening income gap and rising unemployment rate. What is the Taiwanese public to do?
The choice is for us to make.
Lee Wen-chung is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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