A “shellacking” is how US President Barack Obama described his party’s treatment in the US midterm elections last week. Angered by economic hardship, unprecedented in recent US history, including high unemployment, mass foreclosures and a widening gap between the rich and poor, US voters turned out in numbers high for a non--presidential election year to punish the ruling party, giving Republicans control of the House of Representatives and significantly trimming the Democratic majority in the Senate.
Not that any of this was a surprise. A poor economy is the curse of any incumbent and in this case, Americans had plenty to be unhappy about. Nor, however, did last week’s results spell the end of Democratic hopes for 2012 — perhaps the opposite. Many Republican victories were close, and this with traditional Democratic supporters such as blacks and youths remaining at home. More importantly, as the new leaders of the House, Republicans must now share responsibility for the economy. Clearly neither party has an all-clear for the next election; voters have put both on notice.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have each tried half-heartedly to spin the results of the US elections to their advantage in the Nov. 27 special municipality elections, with little success on either side. Of course, the Nov. 27 polls have no direct bearing on the legislative balance of power. And with Taiwanese experiencing nothing remotely like the economic conditions in the US, there seems little reason to expect similar fireworks.
Yet, if “it’s the economy, stupid” may not pertain in the current campaigns, there are growing reasons for Taiwanese voters to take it seriously as a way to send a similar message to ruling and opposition parties.
One of these messages stems from the US midterm results themselves. With the change in congressional numbers, it is expected that Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen will head the influential House Foreign Affairs Committee. A staunch supporter of Taiwan, Ros-Lehtinen has spoken against President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement and urged the US to move forward with arms sales to Taiwan. Should she be successful, Ma may be forced to do more than pay lip service to the need for new fighter jets, which, should they finally arrive, would test relations with China already under fire because of rising nationalism across the Taiwan Strait and Beijing’s aggressive behavior toward others in the region.
A strong showing by KMT candidates on Nov. 27 could strengthen Ma’s cross-strait position and give him the confidence to decline the US fighters. It would further cripple the DPP’s chances for a comeback in 2012. By contrast, a DPP success could well do the reverse, supporting the party’s position on sovereignty and nudging it toward alignment with those, including the US, increasingly looking for ways to contain Chinese power in the region.
Happily, none of these scenarios will likely occur. If Taiwanese voters turn out in fair numbers for the special municipality elections, they will probably send the same political message that Americans sent. Even if one party comes up with more wins, the races will be close, with all bets off for 2012.
Such an outcome will force party strategists to think less about fixed agendas and more about practical solutions that serve the best interests of the people. It would not only place pressure on the DPP to develop its own cross-strait dialogue, but would also caution the KMT on its dealings with China, which many feel have exposed Taiwan to undue economic and military risks. Best of all, close elections in three weeks would return balance to party politics, which has been lacking since 2008.
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the
Delegation-level visits between the two countries have become an integral part of transformed relations between India and the US. Therefore, the visit by a bipartisan group of seven US lawmakers, led by US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul to India from June 16 to Thursday last week would have largely gone unnoticed in India and abroad. However, the US delegation’s four-day visit to India assumed huge importance this time, because of the meeting between the US lawmakers and the Dalai Lama. This in turn brings us to the focal question: How and to what extent