In recent months, a number of Chinese apologists have made the case that “abandoning” Taiwan to China would help improve strategic cooperation between Washington and Beijing. In their view, Taiwan remains the last impediment to a flourishing relationship between the two giants, and therefore yielding to Beijing’s irredentist claims on Taiwan would somehow unlock a future of manifold promises and stability.
In the name of journalistic neutrality, this newspaper has given space for this argument and has allowed those who disagree with such a strategy to also make their case. However, facts alone suffice to discredit calls for the international community — and ultimately on Taiwanese themselves — to sacrifice Taiwan for a more constructive relationship with Beijing.
One need look no further than news over the weekend that Beijing prevented the release of a damning UN document on missile proliferation involving Iran and North Korea, as well as the possibility that China may have acted as a transshipment point for related prohibited technology.
In light of this development, how could any of the academics who made the case for abandoning Taiwan still argue that once the “Taiwan problem” is resolved, everything will be fine? North Korea, Iran and the proliferation of dangerous technology has nothing to do with conflict across the Taiwan Strait, and to put it mildly, it would be naive to assume that Beijing would become a more responsible stakeholder in a post-“Taiwan problem” scenario.
Why Beijing would reassess the utility of Iran and North Korea (and the other repressive regimes it props up) after unification with Taiwan is a question that none of the experts appear to have pondered seriously. The reality is, if Beijing no longer had to focus on a “Taiwan contingency,” it would be in a position to devote even more resources to other problematic areas, such as a border dispute with India, contested claims in the South China Sea — and yes, its support for dictatorial or nihilistic regimes, which, potentially as a result of Chinese assistance, are now in the possession of dangerous items such as nuclear technology and the means to deliver nuclear warheads.
A consequence of Beijing’s refusal to play by the rules is that deadly technology has landed in the hands of crackpot regimes, such as those in Tehran and Pyongyang. The risk then increases that this technology will be further proliferated, ending up in the arsenal of additional countries, or perhaps more alarmingly, in that of even less accountable non-state actors, including terrorist organizations. As a result, global security is undermined as a result of decades of proliferation on China’s part.
Anyone who has done business with China or any country that has been party to a bilateral or multilateral agreement with China knows by now that Beijing observes legal commitments in the breach. If, as the China apologists would argue, Taiwan is to be considered as mere business transaction, then one would logically assume that in exchange for goods, China would be expected to deliver a service, or commit to something. However, to act in the belief that China would respect its side of the contract is one hell of a gamble and history clearly shows us that Beijing would continue to selectively behave as per Western expectations.
If the past is any indication, sacrificing Taiwan in the hope that this point of contention, once eliminated, would bring China in from the cold, is beyond academic speculation: It is sheer stupidity.
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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