Recently, major news media in the US and Europe have been awash with analyses on how the West got China wrong. Prominent publications such as the London-based magazine The Economist (“How the West got China wrong,” March 1) argue that since former US president Richard Nixon’s opening to China, the West had hoped that diplomatic and commercial engagement would bring political and economic openness, but that the gamble has failed.
In their seminal article “The China Reckoning” (Foreign Affairs, March/April), Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner, officials who served in the administration of former US president Barack Obama, write: “Nearly half a century since Nixon’s first steps toward rapprochement, the record is increasingly clear that Washington once again put too much faith in its power to shape China’s trajectory.”
"Neither carrots nor sticks have swayed China as predicted. China has instead pursued its own course, belying a range of US expectations in the process."
In his Washington Post article “We got China wrong, now what?” (Feb. 28), commentator Charles Lane argues that the US needs a long, sober policy rethink, and that it should “reinvest in traditional alliances with democratic nations in the Asia-Pacific region.”
That is where Taiwan comes in: For too long, Taiwan has been a victim of the over-optimism and unwarranted fascination the US and western Europe had with China. In the 1970s it was shunted aside by Nixon and former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, as it had to make way for the larger “strategic” interests associated with enhancing relations with China.
Little attention was paid to the fact that Taiwan was under authoritarian rule by the Chinese Nationalists of the Kuomintang. Fortunately for the people of Taiwan, the US Congress pushed through the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which maintained a semblance of unofficial relations.
Then, in the 1980s Taiwan went through its momentous transition to democracy, and in the early 1990s, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) presided over a vibrant democracy.
This new situation should have brought about a fundamental shift of Western policy toward Taiwan, but unfortunately it coincided with the economic rise of China: Tempted by the lure of China’s market, the West remained stuck “engaging” China at the expense of better relations with Taiwan.
China’s new strength brought about a major expansion of its political and military prowess, which it used to push Taiwan further into the corner of diplomatic isolation, while attempting to use economic ties to bring about political rapprochement, particularly during the administration of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
However, this approach was rejected by a Taiwanese populace that increasingly treasured its own unique identity, and valued its new-found freedoms and hard-fought democracy: In local elections in 2014 and national elections in 2016, the Taiwanese overwhelmingly voted for the Democratic Progressive Party, culminating in the 2016 election of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
There is a growing sense that Taiwan’s international isolation should be a thing of the anachronistic past.
Thus, as this much-needed rethink about policy toward China is ongoing, the US and western Europe have an opportunity to get their policy toward Taiwan right, and invest in strengthening relations with a strategic beacon of democracy in the region.
Gerrit van der Wees, a former Dutch diplomat, served as editor of Taiwan Communique from 1980 until 2016. He teaches history of Taiwan at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
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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