In front of Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), French President Jacques Chirac recently criticized Taiwan, saying it was committing a grave error by planning a referendum because a referendum could threaten regional stability. Of course this was said and done purely to satisfy China.
Chirac's attitude comes as a shock. He not only supported China in its violation of the spirit of the French Revolution but also blatantly interfered in another nation's domestic politics.
France is a republic with a 200-year history of practicing referendums. Chirac's opposition to another nation's referendum puts his own country to shame.
The real explanation for Chirac's attitude is that he wants to sell weapons to China to boost France's economy. After kissing China's butt, Chirac immediately demanded that the EU lift its arms embargo against China. His demand was rejected and, furthermore, he was rebuked by Graham Watson, head of the Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament, who said this proposal would benefit a communist dictatorship renowned for violating human rights.
EU foreign ministers believe Beijing has a bad human rights record and is adopting a belligerent stance toward Taiwan. If this was not a slap in Chirac's face for his opposition to the referendum, at the very least it embarrassed him.
But this is not the only defeat for Chirac. The US Department of State also voiced its opposition to the idea of France and the EU lifting the weapons embargo against China.
Chirac lost face in his harsh opposition to the US-led war in Iraq, and now he is further berated by Washington. Nevertheless attempting to curry favor with Beijing, he has put himself in this embarrassing situation.
In selling out Taiwan to cozy up to China, Chirac was not supported by the French parliament. When Hu went to Paris' City Hall to deliver a speech, demonstrators gathered outside the venue, and 327 of the total 577 councilors refused to attend the meeting. Some even stood protesting with pieces of white tape over their mouths. This made things ugly for Hu and Chirac.
French media also took aim at Chirac. Major print media, including Le Monde, Liberation and Le Figaro, ran front-page stories criticizing Chirac's leaning toward China and introduced Taiwan and its referendum in great detail.
The French TV channel TF1, which enjoys the highest ratings in the country, reported in its evening news broadcast about Taiwan's past and present -- from female factory workers to Taiwan's rapid economic growth to President Chen Shui-bian (
What carries more weight is that the report quoted opinion polls saying that only 0.5 percent of the Taiwanese people support reunification with China. The French media displayed Taiwan's image in a positive light to repudiate Chirac's pro-China, anti-Taiwan attitude.
China has mustered the force of the whole nation to unite with the world's superpowers to put pressure on Taiwan's proposed referendum.
The pan-blue camp has said that holding a referendum is meaningless. But actually it is very meaningful. A small referendum immediately manifests the predicament facing Taiwan and the threat posed by China's missiles.
Before votes have even been cast on the referendum, the Taiwan issue has already been internationalized. The development of Taiwan's democracy might soon also come into the international spotlight. From a long-term point of view, this does only good and no harm.
Chin Heng-wei is the editor in chief of Contemporary Monthly magazine. Translated by Jackie Lin
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS