A panel of top US experts on Taiwan has praised President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) cross-strait policies, but warned that contingency plans were needed in case China should suddenly turn aggressive.
“Ma and Taiwan may not be ready for political talks, but the other side is sure interested in moving in that direction,” former US deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia Randall Schriver said.
He said that in relations with China, Ma’s plan was to deal with easy issues first and “the hard stuff” later.
However, there was a growing lobby in China that argued Beijing had given Ma a lot and that it was now time for him to reciprocate.
“As we get closer to the end of Ma’s term, particularly if the polls remain where they are at, you can see a great deal of pressure coming from Beijing to move in the direction of political talks, not just to institutionalize what has been accomplished,” Schriver said.
China will want to go further and “lock something in” before Ma leaves office, he said.
The panel was meeting at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Tuesday to assess the videoconference given earlier in the week by Ma and which was hosted by former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice at Stanford University.
Schriver stressed that Ma did not talk about China’s military buildup during his videoconference.
“Despite all the progress, the agreements and the improved political environment, the military buildup has continued and not retreated in the slightest,” Schriver said.
“You can see the potential for an unhealthy dynamic,” he added.
Schriver said that Ma had broken with a pattern set in other videoconferences to the US and had not mentioned the sale of any specific weapons systems.
“I think Taiwan would benefit from some of the major systems, like F-16C/Ds or submarines,” he said.
“If you look at how long Taiwan could hold out should there be conflict, that period of time is moving in the wrong direction and we need to arrest that and deal with it,” Schriver added.
Professor of international affairs at George Washington University Robert Sutter said that Taiwan depended on China holding to a steady course in cross-strait relations.
However, Chinese actions in foreign affairs were constantly changing and shifting, he added.
“I am nervous about this,” Sutter said
Sutter added that China was showing a new pattern of assertiveness along its eastern rim, as witnessed on the Korean Peninsula as well as Vietnam, the East China Sea and the South China Sea, the Philippines and Japan.
“China is using coercion and it is using intimidation and it is often extralegal,” Sutter said. “It is not something that is in line with international norms. Taiwan should keep this in its calculations because we will see more of it.”
“The leaders of China have a sense that they have been taken advantage of by the leaders of these countries along the periphery. They don’t want it to continue,” he added. “Ma should get ready for a China that is determined to be a bit more tough on key issues.”
“We are dealing with a rising China that is more assertive in a whole range of sensitive areas. I don’t want to be a nay-sayer, but this is something that needs to be dealt with,” Sutter said. “I would be careful, folks, this is something that is around the corner.”
Sutter said it was a situation that the US and President Ma needed “contingency plans” for to deal with.
Director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution Richard Bush said that the current momentum in cross-strait relations would slow, and that progress on political and security talks was unlikely in Ma’s second term.
He said that in private, Chinese officials agreed that they needed to be patient.
However, he said, others within China wanted results and it was possible that China would give up on a gradualist approach.
“It really is a worrisome situation that Taiwan and the US needs to be concerned about,” he said.
Another former director of the AIT and panel moderator Douglas Paal stressed that US deterrence had to be maintained and that Washington should try to “shape the character of China’s future thoughts about unification.”
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas