Not so long ago, many of US President Barack Obama’s detractors were heaping criticism on his administration for its alleged lack of engagement with Asia, which is rapidly emerging as both a source of wealth and a potential military flashpoint.
In books, articles and on talk shows, specialists like Simon Tay(戴尚志) and others warned of a vacuum as the US was brought to its knees by the global financial crisis and military adventures from which it has had difficulty extricating itself.
While analysts argued that the US had been displaced in the Asia-Pacific by its own weaknesses and the rise of China, they also warned against what they perceived as signs of isolationism in Washington under an administration that has been weighed down by intractable domestic matters.
It was that inattention — a continuation of former US president George W. Bush’s selective engagement of Asia, focused almost solely on the “war on terror” — that allowed China to expand its power in the region, to such an extent that the US genuinely fears its own influence there may be a thing of the past.
The unstable mix of nationalism and expansionism that has characterized China’s rise in the past few years, however, is now forcing many of its neighbors, which until recently had bought Beijing’s “peaceful” rise, to revisit the assumptions that underpin their national security policies. As a consequence, what is emerging is a rebirth of the “spokes” or bilateral agreements that marked US engagement in Asia for the past half century.
The most striking symbol of this development is the burgeoning military relationship between the US and a country that 35 years ago was its sworn enemy after years of traumatic war — Vietnam.
Washington and Hanoi are cozying up on a number of issues, from civilian nuclear fuel and technology to handling claims by China and other countries over the South China Sea.
As China’s power relative to its neighbors continues to increase, the many countries that have disputes with Beijing over islands, natural resources or territory, have had to devise a mechanism to address the China challenge.
One would be to gang up on Beijing, at regional forums such as ASEAN. The problem with this approach, is that Asia’s regional organizations have little experience addressing security issues, and its constituents are too disparate to converge into a single voice likely to make Beijing reconsider its position.
The other option is to turn to Washington as a security guarantor, a role it has performed, with much success since the end of World War II. The distraction of Bush’s “war on terror” and military adventurism gave every indication that the US was on its way out in Asia. Obama’s first year in office provided little to indicate a policy change was in the offing.
This situation might have held, as long as Beijing kept its part of the bargain and continued to behave as a responsible stakeholder. However, given recent signs that this may no longer be the case, Washington has little choice but to re-engage with the Asia-Pacific, as the region has become too important to the global economy to be left to its own devices.
Unfortunately, this development risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the US strategy exacerbates fears in Beijing that it is being encircled by US allies — the latest of which is Vietnam — in a bid to contain it.
A more multilateral approach to China’s rise might be a wiser course of action, lest containment compel the dragon to lash out and undo all the development that has made this region such a vibrant and promising one in recent years.
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,
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