Vice president-elect Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) had not even returned from his meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) over the weekend in Hainan before it was hailed as a watershed event and a clear sign of rapprochement between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. Playing the limelight game to perfection, Hu said he had been moved to think “deep” thoughts about Taiwan and in the same stroke managed, yet again, to portray President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) as the one responsible for the diplomatic freeze of the past eight years.
But as the camera flashes dim down, emotions must settle and cooler heads must now weigh the meaning of the Hu-Siew meeting. First, we must remember that Siew participated at the Boao Forum as a representative of a non-governmental organization (NGO) rather than an official-elect of a democratic and autonomous system. In other words, the media’s characterization of the meeting as involving the highest-ranking officials since this whole sad affair began 59 years ago needs qualification, as Hu’s meeting with People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) and then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) in 2005 could also be painted in the same light.
Symbolically, as Chen rightly pointed out, Siew was seated next to the chief executives of Macau and Hong Kong, which certainly wasn’t the result of accidental name-plate assignment.
What will truly reveal Hu’s intent or the depth of his “deep” thought will be how he treats Siew and other elected Taiwanese officials, including president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), once they assume office and can no longer pretend to meet officials from other countries as heads of NGOs. Only then will we be able to see if the KMT win in the presidential election truly brought about a departure in Sino-Taiwanese relations and in Hu’s stance on Taiwan.
Before then — and the table arrangement seems to indicate that this was the case — it was just too easy for Hu to pretend that he was simply meeting a business official, one of the many beggars who kowtow before the emperor’s throne.
In fact, the significance of the brief meeting was so slight that Chen’s contention that Hu orchestrated the talks to divert attention from events in Tibet was unhelpful cynicism. Ironically, with his comment Chen may have echoed the media and given the meeting more weight than it deserved.
As an official who has yet to begin office, Siew still has more freedom of action than he will have a little more than a month from now. After he and Ma replace the Democratic Progressive Party administration on May 20, they will know again that in a democracy, power comes with responsibilities and that the public will hold them to account — and significantly more than heads of NGOs and non-elected officials.
As a result, their actions and rhetoric will increasingly reflect the aspirations of the public, and what they are bound to say is unlikely to resonate with Beijing.
Conversely, if they fail to do that and fail to fine-tune their behavior to reflect the expectations of those who elected them, their stay in office could be a short one indeed.
Let’s wait and see, then, how welcoming Hu will be if Ma and Siew become the leaders of and for Taiwanese that they promised. Will Hu still have “deep” thoughts then, or will it be “deep” anger?
Taiwan has lost Trump. Or so a former State Department official and lobbyist would have us believe. Writing for online outlet Domino Theory in an article titled “How Taiwan lost Trump,” Christian Whiton provides a litany of reasons that the William Lai (賴清德) and Donald Trump administrations have supposedly fallen out — and it’s all Lai’s fault. Although many of Whiton’s claims are misleading or ill-informed, the article is helpfully, if unintentionally, revealing of a key aspect of the MAGA worldview. Whiton complains of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s “inability to understand and relate to the New Right in America.” Many
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) earlier this month raised its travel alert for China’s Guangdong Province to Level 2 “Alert,” advising travelers to take enhanced precautions amid a chikungunya outbreak in the region. More than 8,000 cases have been reported in the province since June. Chikungunya is caused by the chikungunya virus and transmitted to humans through bites from infected mosquitoes, most commonly Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. These species thrive in warm, humid climates and are also major vectors for dengue, Zika and yellow fever. The disease is characterized by high fever and severe, often incapacitating joint pain.
In nature, there is a group of insects known as parasitoid wasps. Their reproductive process differs entirely from that of ordinary wasps — the female lays her eggs inside or on the bodies of other insects, and, once hatched, the larvae feed on the host’s body. The larvae do not kill the host insect immediately; instead, they carefully avoid vital organs, allowing the host to stay alive until the larvae are fully mature. That living reservoir strategy ensures a stable and fresh source of nutrients for the larvae as they grow. However, the host’s death becomes only a matter of time. The resemblance
Most countries are commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II with condemnations of militarism and imperialism, and commemoration of the global catastrophe wrought by the war. On the other hand, China is to hold a military parade. According to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, Beijing is conducting the military parade in Tiananmen Square on Sept. 3 to “mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.” However, during World War II, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had not yet been established. It