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The 'People's Republic of Terror'

I recall learning the expression "evil communist bandits" from my textbooks at a young age, but, to be honest, it is only now that I have slowly come to realize the truth of it. And yet the expression once again has a ring of untruth about it as well because the word "communist" refers to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and should imply a belief in communism. But the CCP stopped believing in communism long ago. So what do they believe in? Some say that at home they stand for "state opportunism" while, overseas, they practice "state terrorism." Actually, they practice "state terrorism" at home as well.

Since its inception, the PRC has never governed Taiwan, yet it claims that Taiwan is part of China and threatens that if Taiwan doesn't accept that claim, it will use military force to swallow it up. Chen Lung-chu (陳隆志), an international law expert, has called this typical "state terrorism." In a modern country, people can use peaceful means to seek a "split" of their nation, as in the case of Quebec, many of whose people wish to secede from Canada to create an independent state. If two countries want to unite, naturally they need to obtain the approval of their people.

A majority of the people of Taiwan do not want to unite with China. Basically, I believe this is because China has a backward economy, a dictatorial political system and lacks freedom and basic human rights. If China were free, democratic and wealthy like the US, why would anybody object to unification? But China doesn't think about improving itself and maintains a constant threat of military force against Taiwan, even to the extent of using missiles to threaten Taiwan on the eve of the nation's first presidential election when the country truly became a democracy. This is classic "state terrorism."

APEC countries issued a statement at this year's meeting in Shanghai opposing terrorism. It included wording that declared "... anti-terrorism is a fight between justice and evil, and a show of strength of civilization against barbarity, rather than a conflict among different ethnic groups, religions or cultures."

But at a press conference on Oct. 18, China's Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan (唐家璇) rudely prevented Taiwan's ministerial representative to the APEC meeting, Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Hsin-yi (林信義), from speaking. Isn't that precisely the kind of barbaric behavior everyone wants to oppose in the war against terrorism?

In addition, at the informal leaders' summit, which symbolizes the spirit of APEC, China deliberately obstructed the attendance of our chosen representative, former vice president Li Yuan-zu (李元簇). This blatantly violated the 1991 Seoul Declaration, which states that APEC member countries should respect "the principle of mutual benefit and a commitment to open dialogue and consensus-building, with equal respect for the views of all participants." I'm afraid that asking a barbaric country like China to join in the fight against terrorism is totally misguided.

Since the establishment of the PRC, one political movement has followed after another -- the three evils, the five evils, the anti-rightist campaign, the rectification campaign and so on and so on. How many people fell in the resulting carnage? The Cultural Revolution was a 10-year catastrophe. In the Tiananmen Incident in 1989, several hundred thousand combat troops and tanks were deployed to crush city residents and students. If this kind of year-in and year-out abuse and slaughter of their own unarmed citizens isn't state terrorism, then what is it?

The crackdown on Falun Gong followers that began two years ago is an even more quintessential demonstration of "state terror-ism." President Jiang Zemin's (江澤民) government has vowed that it will "ruin Falun Gong followers economically, destroy their reputation and exterminate them physically." Their sexual abuse of female followers is even more blood-curdling and evil than the mistreatment of Chinese women by Japanese soldiers during World War II. What other regime would treat its own people that way?

Beijing's response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the US has been equivocal from the start. They can only vaguely condemn "terrorist activity of any kind" and never single out the real terrorists. Rumors abound that China is actually still helping the Afghan regime with military construction projects.

Perhaps in order to counter the US, China has always banded together with all the countries in the world that actively engage in or encourage terrorism, including the former USSR, North Korea, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, Cuba, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and so on. Asking a country of China's ilk to "oppose terrorism" is a joke.

This year during World Press Freedom Day on May 1, the Committee to Protect Journalists, which is headquartered in New York, selected 10 "enemies of the press" from around the world. Jiang was choosen -- for the fifth year in a row -- for seriously manipulating domestic media and limiting freedom of speech. He was surpassed only by Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei and Liberia's Charles Taylor.

The committee said that 22 journalists holding "dissident views" were jailed or sentenced to labor reform in China at the end of last year, more than in any other country. In addition, since Jiang fears the Internet will interfere with Beijing's control over information, he has invested tremendous resources to monitor and control the content of domestic Web sites. A number of newspapers that had insisted on editorial independence were forced to close or reorganize their management. Is this not "state terrorism?"

The strange thing is that many media organizations in Taiwan are infatuated with China and take pains to gloss over its state terrorism. What are they doing?

Chang Ching-hsi is a professor in the department of economics at National Taiwan University.

Translated by Ethan Harkness
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