Taiwan's representative to the US, Chen Chien-jen (
He is the most fortunate, but also the most unfortunate, representative to the US since the two countries severed diplomatic ties. He is fortunate because US President George W. Bush's ideology has created the best Taiwan-US relations. But he is unfortunate because President Chen Shui-bian's (
Standing on the front lines of diplomacy, Chen Chien-jen has a clear understanding of the cold wind blowing in Washington.
He is a career diplomat with an excellent educational and professional background. He is a man of good character and has a good way with people and a wide personal network. Add to this that he has many talents, and even though he might not be called the renaissance man of diplomacy, he can without feeling ashamed call himself half a renaissance man.
He is, however, no George Yeh (
Though Chen Chien-jen cannot compare to his two predecessors, he is not one to do whatever he is told.
But he has run into a president who likes to shoot his mouth off on impulse. As soon as Taipei starts a fire, he has to work hard in Washington to extinguish it.
Although Chen Chien-jen's contacts in Washington are quite good, he does not have the access to the White House that Yeh or Hu had, access that allowed them to immediately clarify misunderstandings or resolve crises.
His Washington friends may be sympathetic as they see his constant efforts at putting out fires, but his credibility suffers.
Anyone involved in diplomacy has heard the following metaphor: A president's relationship with the diplomatic system is like that of a conductor with his symphony orchestra. No matter how well the conductor plays the violin, he cannot play first chair violin or he will not hear the other instruments. As a result, the whole orchestra will lose its rhythm and direction.
The reason that Taiwan's diplomacy is a mess is that the conductor is playing first violin.
There is one almost religious rule in diplomacy -- politics must come to a halt at the water's edge of diplomacy.
But the president has tied foreign policy closely to domestic politics, and politics has therefore muddied the diplomatic waters.
A diplomat's worst nightmare is the nation's leader personalizing and politicizing diplomacy, placing it in the realm of ideology. This is what has now happened to Taiwan's diplomacy.
A diplomat's nightmare among nightmares is having the president go so far in his ideology that his reasons for doing things become unrelated to diplomatic reality, set foreign policy according to this ideology and let short-term political interests (particularly electoral interests) decide diplomatic activities.
This shows just how unfortunate Chen Chien-jen really is.
Taiwan's diplomacy is now a matter for domestic officials and not for diplomats. Foreign affairs officials such as Chen Chien-jen, and even foreign minister Eugene Chien (簡又新), no longer make up the core of decisionmakers.
Instead, the officials in the Presidential Office participate in decisionmaking at an earlier stage in the process, and to a greater extent.
The president and his associates cannot avoid responsibility for the sharp deterioration of the Taiwan-US relationship, and they have only complicated the difficult job that Chen Chien-jen and other diplomats must do.
Wang Chien-chuang is the president of The Journalist.
Translated by Perry Svensson
On March 22, 2023, at the close of their meeting in Moscow, media microphones were allowed to record Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) telling Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin, “Right now there are changes — the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years — and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Widely read as Xi’s oath to create a China-Russia-dominated world order, it can be considered a high point for the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea (CRINK) informal alliance, which also included the dictatorships of Venezuela and Cuba. China enables and assists Russia’s war against Ukraine and North Korea’s
After thousands of Taiwanese fans poured into the Tokyo Dome to cheer for Taiwan’s national team in the World Baseball Classic’s (WBC) Pool C games, an image of food and drink waste left at the stadium said to have been left by Taiwanese fans began spreading on social media. The image sparked wide debate, only later to be revealed as an artificially generated image. The image caption claimed that “Taiwanese left trash everywhere after watching the game in Tokyo Dome,” and said that one of the “three bad habits” of Taiwanese is littering. However, a reporter from a Japanese media outlet
Taiwanese pragmatism has long been praised when it comes to addressing Chinese attempts to erase Taiwan from the international stage. “Taipei” and the even more inaccurate and degrading “Chinese Taipei,” imposed titles required to participate in international events, are loathed by Taiwanese. That is why there was huge applause in Taiwan when Japanese public broadcaster NHK referred to the Taiwanese Olympic team as “Taiwan,” instead of “Chinese Taipei” during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics. What is standard protocol for most nations — calling a national team by the name their country is commonly known by — is impossible for
India is not China, and many of its residents fear it never will be. It is hard to imagine a future in which the subcontinent’s manufacturing dominates the world, its foreign investment shapes nations’ destinies, and the challenge of its economic system forces the West to reshape its own policies and principles. However, that is, apparently, what the US administration fears. Speaking in New Delhi last week, US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau warned that “we will not make the same mistakes with India that we did with China 20 years ago.” Although he claimed the recently agreed framework
RSS