According to newspaper reports, when Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met a delegation of pro-unification supporters from Taiwan in Beijing on Sept. 26, he said that Chinese and Taiwanese people should have a “spiritual contract.” Xi’s comment came like a bolt from the blue and left many people feeling shocked or flustered.
China’s former leaders have made threats about bloodshed. On many occasions, China has prevented Taiwan from taking its place on the world stage, using any means at its disposal, including belittling, oppressing, denigrating and isolating Taiwan.
Beijing wants to stop Taiwanese institutions from using any wording to do with “country” or “nation.”
The word “national” in the titles of Taiwanese universities or museums is anathema as far as China is concerned, and the same goes for university institutes of national development.
In China’s opinion the word “nation” can never be applied to Taiwan as a whole, or to any subordinate entity.
China never addresses any Taiwanese civil servant, from the president all the way down to cleaners and clerks, by their official titles, but only as plain old “you.”
The same rule applies to all official letters and documents sent from China to Taiwan. If, by chance, someone on the Chinese side at a conference calls a Taiwanese minister “minister,” the Taiwanese authorities are ecstatic and the media report it at great length. You would think they had found the Holy Grail — how pathetic.
Let us remember how Chinese diplomat Sha Zukang (沙祖康) insulted Taiwanese people by saying: “Who gives a fig about you?”
If Chinese athletes see Taiwanese team members carrying the national flag, they rush over and snatch it away. All these insults are backed up by nearly 2,000 missiles aimed in Taiwan’s direction, forcing the nation to accept the peculiar title of “Chinese Taipei.” In terms of personal behavior, it is tantamount to hurling insults, punching and kicking.
Taiwan lives next door to a burly thug who is always snarling and breathing down its neck, but now all of a sudden the thug is turning on the charm with talk of a “spiritual contract.” Anyone, man or beast, would be scared to death, or even run away screaming for help.
Even more unacceptable is the fact that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has gone out of his way to lay bare his inner thoughts, telling a German reporter that aligning itself with China was the nation’s only practical means of survival, and that Taiwan should learn from the experiences of the former West Germany in handling its relations with East Germany to achieve eventual unification.
Although Ma denied it later on, past experience suggests that it would be wiser to believe the Germans than the Presidential Office.
Xi also said that Taiwanese people should understand Chinese people’s feelings and respect their choices and ambitions. We know that Chinese people have been brainwashed for a long time and all believe that Taiwan should belong to China.
However, opinion polls indicate that more than 60 percent of Chinese, or two people out of every three, would prefer not to be Chinese in their next life. Figures show that the great majority of the top echelon of China’s rich and powerful have obtained foreign nationality or are preparing to do so. Most Chinese people do not want to be Chinese, but they want to force Taiwanese people to be Chinese. Where is the sense in that?
Listening to high-ranking Chinese officials takes a lot of nerve and as for listening to top Taiwanese officials, that requires the patience of a saint.
Peng Ming-min is a former presidential adviser.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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 Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises, the largest naval exercise in the region, are aimed at deepening international collaboration and interaction while strengthening tactical capabilities and flexibility in tackling maritime crises. China was invited to participate in RIMPAC in 2014 and 2016, but it was excluded this year. The underlying reason is that Beijing’s ambitions of regional expansion and challenging the international order have raised global concern. The world has made clear its suspicions of China, and its exclusion from RIMPAC this year will bring about a sea change in years to come. The purpose of excluding China is primarily
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