Wed, Aug 17, 2005 page8

• US needs `Taiwan hands'

  • By Sing Young
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  It is refreshing for Nat Bellocchi to honestly point out that "China and the US may want to involve themselves in the next presidential election -- both in terms of developing platforms and the choice of candidates -- much earlier than they have done in the past. They should write their plans in pencil, not ink." ("Identity issue raises its head again," Aug 10, page 8).

  Bellocchi's advice would be best delivered directly to the US government, because China definitely does not need it to jump into the game.

  For years now, China has succeeded in seizing Taiwan's Mainlander-dominated mass media, those Chiang-era monopoly remnants which still dominate the nation's media market. Several major media outlets in Taiwan are now awash in "red cash" and are totally or partially under China's control. These media outlets have created and have been actively marketing the brand of "China, the rising future" with repetitive soundbites of "Taiwan, the fallen desert."

  Such branding efforts have provided Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party (PFP) chairmen with a "red, bright" image to package their trips to China, where they have been officially crowned as China's proxies in Taiwan. Not all Taiwanese fall for it; but many do, especially the younger ones. Now, China is aggressively utilizing its proxies in Taiwan to gradually become the agenda-setter within Taiwan, hoping to eventually become the effective ruler of Taiwan while tolerating a nominally elected ruling machine.

  In the mean time, the US has been letting the Taiwan situation run on auto-pilot. The media's reports of US President Bush referring to President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) as an S.O.B. without any denial from the US, Bush's public accusation that Chen was "willing to unilaterally change the status quo" and the meeting of the US representative in Taiwan, Douglas Paal, with the foul-crying candidates of the KMT and PFP right after last year's presidential election while avoiding contact with the incumbent candidate -- all of these public displays of the US have discredited Chen and the DPP; resulting in swing voters tilting towards the pro-China camp. One of the effects was the DPP not gaining a majority in the legislature in last December's election; thus, the continuing deadlock on the defense budget. And yet, there have been reports recently about the US suspecting that the DPP is behind the deadlock, again without denial from the US.

  As a person who shares most of the US' values, I can't help but wonder what the US wants or whether the US knows what it wants at all.

  Chen and DPP officials definitely deserve their share of the blame for the Taiwanese government's almost disastrous relationship with the US. Their faults are more behavioral in nature than intentional. As a citizen, I have vehemently criticized Chen and the DPP.

  However, as a people, the Taiwanese have never had the chance to be in the governing position until the year 2000. There has been no political culture and sophistication within the Taiwanese tradition to facilitate an effective government. We as a people have been fighting against rulers from outside for the past 400 years or so. The Manchu rulers deemed us "unruly" due to the headaches our ancestors caused with "a minor rebellion every three years and a major one every five years." We have been able to fight the rulers, but we have never had the chance to establish the collective ability and tradition of ruling ourselves. This is an unrecognized but profound factor in today's Taiwanese political landscape -- and a fact the US needs to realize.

  The truth is that the Taiwanese have not learned to speak and act diplomatically and have yet to learn how to communicate in unspoken terms, as is common in many delicate international situations. It is a particularly difficult task for a non-entity to speak up out of a semi-existence. Furthermore, the Taiwanese, in reality a linguistically Sinicized Austronesian people, have only straight words in our not-so-rich and long-suppressed vocabulary, which have to be publicly expressed in translated terms by our leaders in their not-so-perfect Mandarin.

  We will get there. But for now, the US needs to be able to tell the diplomatically "mature" talk of foxes from the clumsy words of a friend. Understanding and patience from the US would allow our clumsy leaders to grow under awkward circumstances.

  The fact that "China hands" have bet their careers on their claimed knowledge of China certainly plays a key role here. Their personal "successes" lie, as most of them show, in detours through China. This is true for "China experts" in both the public and private sectors. Case in point: Keith Bradsher of the New York Times with his March 7 article which described the Taiwanese (Mainlander-dominated) police's announcement of a suspect in the assassination attempt on Chen as "spinning the sort of story once found in dime-store novels." Bradsher sent the dispatch from Hong Kong, only a few hours after the police's disclosure in Taiwan; he never set foot to Taiwan for that article and based his subjective claim entirely on hearsay out of Hong Kong.

  Endorsed by the New York Times, his baseless claim has been used by the pro-China camp inside Taiwan to further justify their absolute opposition to the DPP on any issue, the military budget being but one of them. US policymakers have to take such phenomena into account.

  The US also needs to realize that dropping a "China hand" into Taiwan to act for the US is the same as dropping a Germany expert into Switzerland: It doesn't work. Taiwan has its very own complexities. The same principle applies to country study and intelligence interpretation on Taiwan. Just as Canada cannot be treated as the US, a policy based on "Taiwan is China" has gotten off on the wrong foot from the very start.

  The US needs "Taiwan hands," badly.

  Sing Young
  

  Taoyuan
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