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
Jan. 1 marks a decade since China repealed its one-child policy. Just 10 days before, Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), who long oversaw the often-brutal enforcement of China’s family-planning rules, died at the age of 96, having never been held accountable for her actions. Obituaries praised Peng for being “reform-minded,” even though, in practice, she only perpetuated an utterly inhumane policy, whose consequences have barely begun to materialize. It was Vice Premier Chen Muhua (陳慕華) who first proposed the one-child policy in 1979, with the endorsement of China’s then-top leaders, Chen Yun (陳雲) and Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), as a means of avoiding the
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
A recent piece of international news has drawn surprisingly little attention, yet it deserves far closer scrutiny. German industrial heavyweight Siemens Mobility has reportedly outmaneuvered long-entrenched Chinese competitors in Southeast Asian infrastructure to secure a strategic partnership with Vietnam’s largest private conglomerate, Vingroup. The agreement positions Siemens to participate in the construction of a high-speed rail link between Hanoi and Ha Long Bay. German media were blunt in their assessment: This was not merely a commercial win, but has symbolic significance in “reshaping geopolitical influence.” At first glance, this might look like a routine outcome of corporate bidding. However, placed in
China often describes itself as the natural leader of the global south: a power that respects sovereignty, rejects coercion and offers developing countries an alternative to Western pressure. For years, Venezuela was held up — implicitly and sometimes explicitly — as proof that this model worked. Today, Venezuela is exposing the limits of that claim. Beijing’s response to the latest crisis in Venezuela has been striking not only for its content, but for its tone. Chinese officials have abandoned their usual restrained diplomatic phrasing and adopted language that is unusually direct by Beijing’s standards. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the
RSS