[ LETTER ]

China and change Allow me to comment on Ai Weiwei’s (艾未未) insightful opinion piece (“Think sanctions hurt China? Then you are stuck in politics,” April 8, page 9). China appears to have been in Friedrich Hegel’s mind when he was saying that quantity changes quality. China is a massive human quantity, a tiny proportion of which is elite. The elite, if it gains power, can transform the whole. No matter how many ideological slogans the West may shout out to China, even with sanctions, China, with its quantity, need not budge much. In his article, Ai does not expect the Chinese regime to collapse because of some doings by external forces. However, a regime change might occur in China because of an implosion. According to famous Chinese novelist Jiang Rong (姜戎) the fate of a nation hangs on its culture, not its politics or economics. China’s history seems to indicate that it can change only after it experiences trauma. Once a change is forced, China reverts to uniformity and rigidity and corruption among the powerful elite, which builds up resentment toward another implosion. One can find the explanation in the Chinese character itself nurtured by its culture. If one uses colorful language, China is a colossal solipsist. It does not really care about what lies outside its borders as long as it is left alone. There is a glaring contrast between China and the US. The latter must keep telling the world that it is No. 1 to believe in its raison d’etre, while the former is happy if it does not even have to address the world. The ideology/religion/moral agenda of China seems to be that of China’s absolute being. A challenging question for contemporary China and the world is how to transform mainland China into a country where diverse cultural, ideological and political forces can

EDITORIAL CARTOON

EDITORIAL CARTOON

Global power games could blow the whole Middle East apart

The huge explosion that destroyed much of central Beirut is a daunting metaphor for the perils facing failing Middle East states. For years, the region has been described as the world’s most unstable, as a powder-keg primed to detonate at any moment. Last week’s awful tragedy begs a bigger question about how many shocks such fragile, vulnerable countries can absorb before they fracture, crash and blast apart. Is the Middle East as a whole about to explode? Nearly 10 years after the Arab spring’s hopes of reform were dashed in a storm of violence and counter-revolution, and at a time when regional tensions are again approaching boiling point, a possible watershed nears. As Thursday’s visit by French President Emmanuel Macron and global offers of assistance suggest, the world is suddenly paying renewed attention. Perhaps this could supply a wider impetus for the sort of fundamental changes many in Lebanon and neighboring countries now angrily demand. By many measures, the Lebanese republic, founded in 1943 at the close of the French mandate, was already in existential crisis. A failed state is defined as one unable to protect, feed and employ its people, defend its borders or pay its debts. Lebanon meets all these criteria. The official negligence that allegedly caused the disaster on Tuesday last week is typically a product of governance systems hollowed out by factionalism, sectarianism, corruption and a lack of democratic accountability. Again, the Beirut government ticks the boxes. Yet of all these many ills, the blight of foreign interference is perhaps the most pernicious — and Lebanon is a prime victim. The 1975-1990 civil war left a legacy of division and territorial occupation by Israeli and Syrian forces. Lebanon was ill-equipped to deal with large influxes of Palestinian and Syrian refugees. Its economic well-being depends on the kindness, or self-interest, of strangers. Power-sharing Lebanese

By Simon Tisdall

Recovering from the EU’s 750 billion euro recovery package

After arduous negotiations between member states’ governments last month, EU leaders are celebrating their agreement on a 750 billion euro (US$881.4 billion) rescue package for EU countries hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis, but it is too soon to pop open the Champagne. The plan for the Next Generation EU recovery fund has two major weaknesses that make it not only ineffective, but also a threat to the eurozone’s very existence. In addition to being too small, Next Generation EU lacks essential conditionalities for fiscal sustainability, including an orderly sovereign debt restructuring mechanism. The recovery fund’s 390 billion euro grant component is a mere 2.8 percent of the EU27’s GDP last year. Even if the 360 billion euro loan component and the 100 billion euro in lending through the Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency (SURE) program are counted, the total still reaches a mere 6.1 percent of GDP. Worse, even though fiscally challenged national governments need financial support immediately, the funds from the recovery fund are not available to member states until next year, at which point the 750 billion euro allotment would be expected to last for three years. (The relatively insignificant SURE program is already operational.) Nor can European governments expect much help from the 2021-2027 EU budget, which amounts to no more than 1.1 percent of annual EU GDP, and is not meant to provide additional funding for the COVID-19 crisis. To be sure, Next Generation EU could be significant from a longer-term perspective if it were to establish a precedent for either regular intergovernmental fiscal redistribution programs or, preferably, a supranational fiscal facility within the EU. A new joint facility that could borrow, spend and tax according to clear rules and with proper accountability to the European Council and the European Parliament would represent a significant

By Willem Buiter

EDITORIAL: Third force facing unclear future

A corruption scandal implicating six former and incumbent lawmakers has tarnished the image of all political parties involved, but none has taken more damage than the New Power Party (NPP), which has been pushed to the verge of implosion. Taipei City councilors Lin Ying-meng (林穎孟) and Huang Yu-fen (黃郁芬) on Tuesday last week quit the party, followed by the exit of former NPP chairman Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明), one of the six implicated, and the resignation of 10 NPP Decisionmaking Committee members a day later. Lin and Huang’s exit has greatly weakened the popularity of the party. The only remaining NPP members that have national recognition are former NPP executive chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), Kaohsiung City Councilor Huang Jie (黃捷) and legislators Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智), Claire Wang (王婉諭) and Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華). This is not the first time that the party is at risk of falling apart. Former NPP legislator Kawlo Iyun Pacidal was last year expelled from the party over allegations that her assistants had secured subsidies totaling NT$4 million (US$135,501 at the current exchange rate) from the Ministry of Economic Affairs for associations that they had set up. The incident indirectly triggered the exits of then-NPP legislators Freddy Lim (林昶佐), now an independent legislator, and Hung Tzu-yung (洪慈庸), whose position on whether to support President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who was seeking re-election, differed from that of members close to the party’s inner circle. This difference of opinion later that year also prompted the departure of Taipei City Councilor Lin Liang-chun (林亮君) and party member Wu Cheng (吳崢), who reportedly quit due to grievances over the NPP leadership flirting with the idea of teaming up with Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in the Jan. 11 presidential and legislative elections. The NPP was born out of the Sunflower movement and its

Lee exemplified new Taiwanese

Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), who died on Thursday last week, coined the phrase “new Taiwanese” and used it in some of his public speeches. The concept of “new Taiwanese” was an important link in the chain of his political thought. Lee proposed the term in August 1998 on the eve of the anniversary of the end of the Pacific War. His intention was to consolidate a common understanding around the idea of “new Taiwanese,” and to embody the Taiwanese spirit of never giving up and not fearing hardship, and to create bright prospects for generations to come. However, after central government power passed from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to the Democratic Progressive Party in 2000, the KMT still clung to the Chinese ideology of legitimate succession. The KMT still had a legislative majority, and it used that majority, along with the divided identities that persisted at a time when Taiwanese consciousness had not yet been fully awakened, to push Taiwan into a “democratic civil war.” Lee responded by quitting the KMT in 2000, and in 2005 he formally proposed the concept of “Taiwanese of a new era” to replace the “new Taiwanese” formula that the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had narrowed to comply with Chinese nationalism. An understanding of historical facts shows that during Lee’s 12 years as president, he devoted himself to reversing and dismantling the millennia-old Chinese feudalistic ideology and sociopolitical system, so that people who originated from various parts of China could come together to form a vigorous living community in Taiwan and join hands to create a new historical starting point. In April 1993, then-president Lee delivered a speech titled “This is a Historical Starting Point,” in which he said: “The 20 million Taiwanese compatriots have today formed a new community of life.” This shows that

By Chen Tsai-neng 陳財能

Campaign expenses should be limited

Six current and former legislators from three political parties, including former New Power Party chairman Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明), have been accused of taking bribes. President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) did not mince her words about the scandal, as she warned Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) members who might yearn for power and wealth that they should leave the party. The reason that lawmakers across party lines take bribes can be found in a fundamental problem with the political campaign system. Without thorough reform, it would keep happening. The problem with campaigns is their huge cost. Take the six lawmakers for example: They spent between NT$30 million (US$1.02 million) and nearly NT$100 million on elections. The monthly salary of a Taiwanese lawmaker is about NT$200,000, very close to that of a Cabinet member. Together with various special subsidies, a lawmaker can make about NT$16 million during a four-year term. Even if the salaries of their assistants were counted in, it would still be difficult to cover their election expenses. So what do they do? Following an unspoken rule, they hold public hearings, participate in question-and-answer sessions, co-sign draft bills and call meetings with officials, slowly turning legislation into a profit-making business through lobbying and putting pressure on the government. On a tacit understanding, no one says anything, while everyone is waiting to see who will be the first to get caught. Are election expenses really that high? One should not be so naive as to believe the figures in the Central Election Commission’s (CEC) campaign expense bulletin. Even ignoring the question of whether candidates dare buy votes or whether voters sell their votes, advertising expenses alone are substantial. One of the reasons Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) did not run for president was that someone on his team estimated that the campaign expenses would reach at least NT$2

By Andrew Huang 黃丙喜

[ LETTERS ]

Overworking teachers As part of the 12-Year Basic Education Curriculum Guidelines that started last summer, every senior-high school is required to increase available elective courses by more than 20 percent. However, many schools are unable to employ more full-time teachers due to the government’s strict faculty quota. As a result, schools can only relax restrictions on overtime hours to solve the personnel shortage. As teachers’ hours greatly increase, overwork has become increasingly common. In particular, teachers who work in remote schools need to teach as much as 10 additional hours per week, and they have no time to prepare for classes, which means that the effectiveness of such instruction may be questionable. Compared with the courses under the previous curriculum guidelines, it takes more time to design syllabi for the courses to meet students’ diverse needs under the current guidelines. How can we maintain teaching quality without enough teachers? The educational environment is affected by unavoidable factors, such as a declining birthrate and the government’s faculty quota control, and it seems that there is still a long way to go until schools can expand the quota limit. To reduce the overworking of formal teachers, one solution is to provide more openings for supply teachers and substitute teachers. Another flexible measure is to make good use of so-called “stray teachers” and retired teachers by treating them as a valuable human resource. Besides, many experienced retired teachers with teaching certificates are professional educators with great enthusiasm. The Ministry of Education should take a broader view and try to expand the teacher pool. It should amend regulations to allow retired teachers and once again give full play to their talent by bringing them back to classrooms to continue contributing to education. If the ministry could do so, older teachers could pass on their wisdom to younger colleagues, and the low teacher-student

EDITORIAL CARTOON

EDITORIAL CARTOON

Wall Street has a plan to remove racist fans from Italian soccer

Ivan Gazidis was just months into his role as chief executive officer of AC Milan when he saw two of the Italian soccer club’s black players subjected to racist chants from rival fans. Stamping out similar behavior could help make Italian soccer an international brand as valuable as the English Premier League, said Gazidis, who was installed after US billionaire Paul Singer’s Elliott Management bought the team two years ago. Firms like Elliott buy undervalued assets, fix them up and sell them for a profit. Tackling overt racism in the stands would help increase the worth of the league’s broadcast rights as well as the value of the clubs themselves, current and prospective investors say. Building better stadiums and improving the match-day experience of fans would also enhance the product, Gazidis said. “This is a huge opportunity if we look ahead five, 10 or 15 years for Italian football,” Gazidis said in an interview. “I think it’s got the biggest upside of any of the European leagues if we can get things right and we can make changes.” Elliott is just one of the international investors betting that cutting out racist abuse at Italian games would help make the league more valuable. US billionaire Dan Friedkin on Thursday last week agreed to buy AS Roma, while Serie A is working with an adviser to review bids for a stake in the league, a process that has attracted interest from a range of global private equity firms. At least two suitors see taking steps to curb racist game-day behavior as key to building a media product sellable worldwide, said executives with knowledge of the plans, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential deliberations. Potential investors have valued Serie A at as much as 13 billion euros (US$15.3 billion), Bloomberg News has reported. Advent International, Bain Capital, Cinven and

By Scott Deveau and David Hellier

Global powers must work together before their influence fades

Since 2017, the US National Security Strategy has focused on great power competition, and today much of Washington is busy portraying the US relationship with China as a new cold war. Obviously, great power competition remains a crucial aspect of foreign policy, but the US must not let it obscure the growing transnational security threats that technology is putting on the agenda. Power transitions among states are familiar in world politics, but the technology-driven shift of power away from states to transnational actors and global forces brings a new and unfamiliar complexity. Technological change is putting a number of issues — including financial stability, climate change, terrorism, cybercrime and pandemics — on the global agenda at the same time that it tends to weaken governments’ ability to respond. The realm of transnational relations outside of government control includes, among others, bankers and criminals electronically transferring funds, terrorists transferring weapons and plans, hackers using social media to disrupt democratic processes, and ecological threats such as pandemics and climate change. COVID-19, for example, has already killed more Americans than died in the Korean, Vietnam and Iraq wars, yet the US spent little to prepare for it. Nor would COVID-19 be the last or worst pandemic. Individuals and private organizations — ranging from WikiLeaks, Facebook, and foundations to terrorists and spontaneous social movements — are all empowered to play direct roles in world politics. The spread of information means that power is more widely distributed, and informal networks can undercut the monopoly of traditional bureaucracy. The speed of online transmission of information means that governments have less control over their agendas, and citizens face new vulnerabilities. Isolation is not an option. The US’ two oceans are a less effective guarantee of security than they once were. When the US bombed Serbia and Iraq in the 1990s, Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam

By Joseph Nye

EDITORIAL: The tide turning against China

US President Donald Trump on Thursday issued executive orders barring Americans from conducting business with WeChat owner Tencent Holdings and ByteDance, the Beijing-based owner of popular video-sharing app TikTok. The orders are to take effect 45 days after they were signed, which is Sept. 20. The orders accuse WeChat of helping the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) review and remove content that it considers to be politically sensitive, and of using fabricated news to benefit itself. The White House has accused TikTok of collecting users’ information, location data and browsing histories, which could be used by the Chinese government, and pose an economic and national-security threat to US interests. The orders came after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday stepped up the so-called “clean network” program to purge “untrusted” Chinese apps from US digital networks to protect Americans’ privacy and US companies’ sensitive information from intrusions by the CCP. They also followed efforts by the White House to pressure ByteDance into selling TikTok’s North American business to a US company by Sept. 15. Social media platforms — whether small or large, Eastern or Western — all collect users’ information, which shows how people view, share and engage with content. Coupled with the emergence of big data analytics, social media data provide valuable insight for companies and allow platforms to provide a more tailored user experience. However, unlike their global peers, Chinese messaging apps and social media platforms are subject to Beijing’s authoritarian rule and the CCP’s censorship. They can also be used to intimidate Chinese dissidents and political refugees living abroad or to spread disinformation to benefit the CCP. On the surface, Trump’s executive orders only ban US companies and citizens from conducting transactions with WeChat and TikTok, and seem to suggest an intensifying technology dispute between the world’s two largest economies.

Ryan Hass On Taiwan: Tsai’s steadiness should set the tone

There are few areas where Beijing, Taipei, and Washington find themselves in agreement these days, but one of them is that the situation in the Taiwan Strait is growing more dangerous. Such a shared assessment quickly breaks down, though, when the question turns to identifying sources of rising tensions. Several Chinese experts and officials I have consulted with recently have argued that Beijing’s increasingly belligerent behavior in the Taiwan Strait is driven mostly by fear. According to this narrative, Beijing is worried that unless it puts a brake on Taiwan’s move away from the mainland, Taiwan could be “lost” forever. They assert that President Tsai (蔡英文) is more “dangerous” than Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was because she is smarter, more cunning, more effective at organizing and executing strategy, and because she has the sympathy and support of the United States. According to these Chinese counterparts, a growing number of voices in Beijing are warning that unless the PLA stands in the way, Taiwan’s drift from the mainland could soon reach a point of no return. Many friends in Washington and Taipei find these plaintive arguments from Chinese colleagues unpersuasive. They are much more prone to see Beijing exhibiting a combination of bullying behavior and willful neglect of Tsai’s steady moderation. They judge that Beijing’s actions are designed to sharpen psychological pressure on the people of Taiwan. Beijing’s recent behavior has fortified these assessments. Exhibit A is Beijing’s recent imposition of a national security law on Hong Kong which, for all practical purposes, marks the abandonment of any pursuit of a “one country, two systems” approach for Taiwan. Xi Jinping’s (習近平) rhetoric has done little to disabuse such perceptions. In recent years, he has linked unification to China’s national rejuvenation, asserted that Taiwan’s status would not be passed down to the next generation, and insisted that

Lee Teng-hui and independence

In late 2015, ahead of the January 2016 presidential and legislative elections, then-Tainan mayor William Lai (賴清德) announced that he supported Taiwanese independence. Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) — who passed away on July 30 — responded by saying that if Taiwan sought independence, China would probably send the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to attack Taiwan. Lee also emphasized that he had never said Taiwan should seek independence, because it is already independent. Lee’s puzzling use of Mandarin and leaps of logic led to confusion and made it unclear what he really meant. However, I can testify that he was disapproving of de jure independence many years ago. My job relocation back to Taiwan from Los Angeles in 2006 coincided with a visit of Bruce Herschensohn, an old friend who is a professor at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy and the author of Taiwan: The Threatened Democracy. I once accompanied him on a visit to Lee. Herschensohn is an ardent supporter of the Democratic Progressive Party, so we initially had a great conversation. However, halfway through the chat, Herschensohn suddenly asked Lee about his Taiwanese independence strategy, which stupefied Lee. As Herschensohn pressed, Lee ended up giving him the silent treatment and turned to me, talking for five to six minutes in Mandarin about his philosophy of life, which derived from the passage: “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” in the New Testament’s Epistle to the Galatians. Embarrassed, I had no choice but to listen to his lecture. As Lee was a former president whom I highly respect, I was unwilling to interrupt him no matter how impolite he was to his other guest. It was really quite embarrassing. When I discussed the incident with Herschensohn afterward, we had no idea whether Lee had changed his stance on Taiwanese

By Michael Lin 林正二

China’s new satellite can pose threat to Taiwan

Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at a ceremony on July 30 officially commissioned China’s BeiDou-3 satellite navigation system. The constellation of satellites, which is now fully operational, was completed six months ahead of schedule. Its deployment means that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is now in possession of an autonomous, global satellite navigation system to rival the US’ GPS, Russia’s Glonass and the EU’s Galileo. Although Chinese officials have repeatedly sought to reassure the world that BeiDou-3 is primarily a civilian and commercial platform, US and European military experts beg to differ. Teresa Hitchens, a senior research associate at the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies, has conducted an in-depth study into the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Strategic Support Force. According to Hitchens, one of the three small satellites launched into orbit by the PLA in 2013 was equipped with a robotic grappling arm capable of interfering with or even destroying other satellites. From an early stage, Beijing sought to exploit space technology for its military value. In 2014, the PLA’s in-house newspaper People’s Liberation Army Daily and Huabei People’s Militia, a monthly periodical published by the PLA’s then-Beijing Military Region Political Department, featured an identically worded paragraph, which proves China’s intention to militarize space: “Whoever controls space occupies Earth’s commanding heights. Whoever occupies this commanding position will be able to gain the initiative during war.” Additionally, the Pentagon’s 2015 annual report to the US Congress on China’s military power revealed that all civilian satellites which China has launched into orbit use technology that can support its military’s operations west of the first island chain to perform a range of military tasks including day and nighttime reconnaissance and the transmission of intelligence. As the PLA is aware that mastering space would be key to winning wars, any communications, intelligence and navigation system based

By Yao Chung-yuan 姚中原

EDITORIAL CARTOON

EDITORIAL CARTOON

Mental health fears for Australia’s children of the pandemic

Hand sanitizers on school desks. Schools closed, then opened, and, in some places, closed again. Parents and carers working from home, or not at all. Masked adults at the supermarket. An omnipresent tally of sickness and death in the news and conversations around them. The emotional and physical world of children is vastly different to the one they once knew, or that the adults around them expected. “The ground’s been ripped from under them,” says professor Harriet Hiscock, a pediatrician at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia. For many children, life is expected to return to normal once the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis lifts. For many others, particularly those vulnerable due to preexisting mental health conditions or difficult family situations, the disruption, stress and uncertainty of growing up during this crisis threatens to have mental health consequences that might trail them into adulthood — unless they can access mental health support early. That support is not yet there. “I think the system as it is won’t cope with the demand. We have to do something about that,” Hiscock says. COVID-19 has hit the Australian mental health care system already under strain. Even before the crisis, many children with mental health problems were not receiving the level of care they needed. Research by Hiscock and others at the institute found that just one in four children with a mental health condition had last year accessed professional help.Now early signs are that demand for mental health support across the board is increasing as a result of the pandemic and its fallout. Services such as Kids Helpline have reported a 28 percent year-on-year increase in calls over the last three months. This week, the Australian Psychological Society, as it welcomed the Australian government doubling the number of subsidized psychological care sessions that

By Celina Ribeiro