President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) seems to speak with confidence only when talking about pie-in-the-sky goals for cross-strait trade or plans to crack down on corruption — as long as it’s not about members of his own party — and judicial reform — as long as it involves judges who are viewed as too lenient on former political rivals. When it comes to standing up for Taiwan and representing this nation on crucial international issues, however, he waffles.
During a visit to the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei on Thursday morning to mark the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) 116th anniversary, Ma was asked about North Korea’s unprovoked shelling of a South Korean island on Tuesday, which killed four people, and was the latest in a string of provocative acts by Pyongyang that threaten peace and stability in the region.
“We condemn North Korea,” Ma was quoted as saying.
Great. Except he was quoted as speaking in his role of KMT chairman, not as Taiwan’s president. While his words were clear, the fact that he waited until Thursday to say them and then did so at a KMT-themed outing dulled their impact.
Taipei had condemned the incident on Tuesday night, calling on North Korea to stop such provocations. However, this message came not from Ma, but Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添). Granted, with world leaders from Washington to Moscow and everywhere in between weighing in, and given Taiwan’s position on the sidelines of the world stage, few people outside Taiwan were waiting for a statement from the Presidential Office.
However, the two major flashpoints for conflict in the region, if not the world, remain the Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula. Taiwanese have lived with the threat of hundreds of Chinese missiles targeted at them for more than a decade, missiles Beijing has not hesitated to “test fire.” So Taiwan should be more sensitive to, and appreciative of, the threat that South Korea faces from the North — no matter how angry some people are over the recent taekwondo imbroglio.
We would do well to remember that Pyongyang has a very nasty track record of being aggressive, especially at times of generational change and economic stagnation, and it has shown a willingness to attack far from home. In the early 1980s, in preparation to succeed his father, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il gained key seats and consolidated his power in the North’s political and military apparatus. Not surprisingly, in 1983, Seoul accused Kim of being behind the bombing of a temple in Rangoon (now Yangon) that killed 17 members of a visiting South Korean delegation, including four Cabinet ministers. In addition, Kim was more concretely linked to the bombing of Korean Air flight 858 in 1987 that killed all 115 people aboard.
Now Kim is evidently ill and preparations are under way for his youngest son to succeed him. Consequently, we have seen a naval skirmish with the South in 2002 that killed several South Korean sailors, underground nuclear tests in 2006, the “test firing” of missiles over the Sea of Japan last year and then the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel this March.
If Ma really wanted to extend Taiwan’s role on the international stage, he should be using what limited influence he has with China to encourage Beijing to take a tough line with Pyongyang, which needs Chinese aid to prop it up. Ma should also be reaching out to Tokyo, Seoul and Washington to discuss other options.
Ma should remember that he was elected to represent the 23 million people of Taiwan, not just the KMT. So far, he has shown great unwillingness to do so, from his Uriah Heep-like willingness to be called “Mister” by visiting Beijing functionaries to his focus on an agenda of economic unification with China.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS