After US President George W. Bush's press conference with Chinese President Jiang Zemin (
Clinton's mistake was to tell students at Shanghai University that the US "embraced" a "one China" policy 20 years ago. It was a mistake because, of course, it didn't. What it did do was to acknowledge that for China the "one China" position was its basic stance. It nowhere said that it agreed with that stance or would adopt it itself. Clinton swung US policy behind Beijing's view of cross-strait relations, partly because he thought that achieving some kind of rapprochement with China was just about the only thing his disastrous presidency -- at least as far as foreign policy went -- could achieve.
But that was then, and here we are with George W., a very different kind of president. Much was being made yesterday of the fact that Bush seemed to have a far more moderate tone than this time last year, when he approved the biggest arms sales to Taiwan since the end of his father's presidency in 1992. China's friends in US think tanks will no doubt spin the line that this reflects Bush's strengthening grasp on the realities of the cross-strait relationship -- which is really a coded way of saying that Bush is slowly realizing that respect for Taiwan, what it has achieved and what it stands for, cannot be allowed to get in the way of the "great power" relationship the US must naturally forge with China.
This is not an argument that impresses us. Bush started off his presidency with some strong words -- and actions -- designed to let China know there was a new administration to deal with that was not prepared to kowtow in the manner of its predecessor. He has no need to reiterate this. Having chosen the ground, Bush is now interested to see what China will bring to the picnic. Time will tell. The fact is that nothing can be achieved by the US president in cross-strait relations, except to deter Chinese aggression. He cannot make the people of Taiwan look with anything less than loathing at the Beijing regime, and he surely realizes that Beijing will not come up with anything new in Taiwan policy until the new post-16th Party Congress leadership feels comfortable in office.
Actually, Taiwan was not a major issue on Bush's agenda with China. Far more important was the subject of China's continued arms trade with rogue regimes, especially the help it has given Pakistan and Iran to build weapons of mass destruction. No deal was struck nor, officials said yesterday, would one even be drafted ahead of Bush's return to Washing-ton. Taiwan of course faces a threat from the 300 or so missiles based in Southeast China, which threaten its cities and military strongpoints. But the irony is that it is the weapons and weapons-building technology that China supplies to other nations that might be a bigger threat, at least if China were to offer a deal on proliferation in return for an agreement about arms sales to Taiwan. Not that we think the current US president would be tempted by such a deal. But it is certainly as well that the Taiwan Relations Act is a part of US law.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs