When Taiwanese officials signed up to take part in next year’s Shanghai World Expo, there was always the probability that the Chinese would use Taipei’s participation to promote Taiwan as Chinese territory.
After all, this is the distorted view of reality that the Chinese government has relentlessly tried to impose on people in every corner of the globe over the last few decades.
So when officials discovered this week that, contrary to the contract signed by the two sides, Expo organizers had included Taiwan in the China Pavilion on their Web site, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
Nevertheless, protests were made, and although the organizers made hasty alterations to the Chinese Web pages (the English Web page still has Taiwan in the Chinese Pavilion), it is hard to believe this will be the last attempt to promote Taiwan as part of China during the event.
Although this would seem like a trivial matter to most people outside Taiwan, it is just the latest example of China’s long history of paying lip service to agreements it has signed.
Another recent example would be the Chinese government’s reneging on its commitment to provide uncensored Internet access to journalists during the Beijing Olympics.
Ever since its proclamation in 1949, the People’s Republic of China has made a habit of ignoring the terms of pacts and agreements it has forged.
The Seventeen Point agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet guaranteeing religious freedom and autonomy for Tibetans signed in 1951 is one of the earliest instances of this behavior.
In 1998, China signed the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Yet just this week Chinese police charged dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) with subverting state power. His crime? Publishing a document calling for democratic reform, a goal fully in line with the articles contained in the covenant.
More recently, Taiwan and China have signed a number of cross-strait agreements on food safety and fighting crime, for example, yet Taiwan has seen little or no action from Beijing on repatriation of wanted white-collar criminals or compensation for last year’s exports of poisoned milk powder.
Time and again China has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted, yet the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government ignores this and plows ahead, signing ever more agreements.
That China cannot be counted on to implement such agreements in full, or may even renege on them completely, bodes ill for Taiwan’s future as the present government becomes more entwined with Beijing.
Still, there are those in the government that want to go even further, talking of military confidence-building measures, political talks and even a peace agreement.
These people are stretching the boundaries of credibility if they believe Beijing can be trusted to stick to the terms of important agreements, especially on a subject as sensitive as Taiwan.
The probability is even higher that, as in the case of the Shanghai Expo, the inclusion of Taiwan under China will have serious implications for this nation.
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