In mid-December last year, China officially approved the amended Regulations on the Political Work of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), including the proposed "three warfares" -- psychological, media and legal warfare -- followed by related exercises for all armed services.
Among the three, the main legal concepts related to warfare, such as "legislation before resorting to war," were particularly mentioned. Beijing also emphasized the necessity to grasp the fundamental goals and principles, and basic warfare styles and methods of legal warfare, while strengthening military officers' education in international laws, the Law of Armed Conflicts, punishment for war crimes and other related laws.
When Chinese Premier Wen Jabao (溫家寶) visited the UK in May, he at one point said that China would take the establishment of a national unification law into serious consideration. On Dec. 17, Hu Kangsheng (胡康生), chairman of the Legislative Affairs Commission under the National People's Congress, gave a briefing on the draft of an anti-secession law. Meanwhile, Beijing launched its international propaganda work on the same day, as China's representative to the UN in Geneva Sha Zukang (沙祖康) held a press conference to announce the purpose of the drawing up of the law. It is thus evident that China's Taiwan policy has already moved into legal and media warfare.
By naming the draft law the "anti-secession law" rather than the "national unification law" as it was previously called, or the "Taiwan basic law," it shows that Beijing is against national separation and Taiwan independence, but is not really in a hurry to unify with the country. The draft excludes both the Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions, and targets independence forces not only in Taiwan, but also in Tibet and Xinjiang.
China's drafting of the proposed law is to establish a legal basis to stop independence and promote unification, while forming a force of restraint on Taiwan, internal forces within China, as well as other countries. Once the law is established, Beijing will inevitably reward those who support unification and punish those who go against it under the law, so as to accomplish its goal of "opposing independence and promoting unification."
As for cross-strait relations, the political and psychological impact of the law is much greater than the legal one. Since it is merely a domestic law, not an international one, it will substantially affect Taiwanese businesspeople operating in China, and the Chinese people themselves. It will also have a psychological effect on the Taiwanese people. By using the law to turn the "Taiwan issue" into an internal and legal issue, China is oppressing human rights in Taiwan. This will harm peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. Unfortunately, Taiwan's blue and green camps had a serious fight over the establishment of the Referendum Law (公投法) earlier this year, and they are fighting each other, not Beijing, over the anti-secession law.
What China really wants is to use the law to deal with Taiwan, so as to resolve the internal problem of lacking a legal basis to do this, and its external problem of being unable to legally restrain both Taiwan and the US. The Chinese government has long wanted to make this law. Taiwan's political direction is not the most crucial factor, and the draft was not proposed simply due to pro-independence moves.
Beijing, however, still claims that it has been forced to make this decision to defend itself. What Beijing fails to examine is why must it have to gradually tighten its Taiwan policy if it is a successful one? The more Beijing tightens its policy, the more Taipei protests. This will lead to greater tension between the two sides, and is not constructive at all.
Ironically, if Beijing refrained from strengthening its forces, would Washington need to get involved in the cross-strait crisis? At the same time Beijing claims peaceful co-existence with all countries, it does not exclude the possibility of using force against its "compatriots." This clearly shows the real face of the hegemony during its so-called "peaceful rise."
Washington, which repeatedly criticized Taiwan over its "defensive referendum," should also criticize China's proposed anti-secession law, so as to maintain the balance between the two sides. Regretfully, the response of the administration of US President George W. Bush to this day remains soft. The US has merely reaffirmed objections to any changes in the Strait. This once again makes clear the danger of the Bush administration cooperating with Beijing to punish Taipei.
Lin Cheng-yi is the director of the Institute of European and American Studies at the Academia Sinica.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
The saga of Sarah Dzafce, the disgraced former Miss Finland, is far more significant than a mere beauty pageant controversy. It serves as a potent and painful contemporary lesson in global cultural ethics and the absolute necessity of racial respect. Her public career was instantly pulverized not by a lapse in judgement, but by a deliberate act of racial hostility, the flames of which swiftly encircled the globe. The offensive action was simple, yet profoundly provocative: a 15-second video in which Dzafce performed the infamous “slanted eyes” gesture — a crude, historically loaded caricature of East Asian features used in Western
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
RSS