President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is a man in a hurry. He is pulling out all the stops to sign an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China before a self-imposed June deadline.
The ECFA propaganda machine moved into top gear this week following last Sunday’s debate with Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), in which Ma has widely been regarded to have performed better.
During a press conference with foreign reporters a couple of days later, Ma’s answers seemed to suggest that absolutely every other government policy is now on hold until an EFCA is signed.
Why the rush?
The official reason is that the ASEAN Plus One (the one referring to China) trade bloc that came on line at the turn of the year is affecting the nation’s competitiveness, so Taiwan needs an ECFA to counter it.
Yet the ASEAN Plus One has already been in effect for nearly five months and Taiwan’s economic outlook gets rosier by the quarter, with sales, export orders and production in some cases setting new records.
Moreover, Tsai — a specialist in economic affairs — said during Sunday’s debate that ASEAN Plus One would have little effect because Taiwan’s main competitors are Japan and South Korea, and they are not yet part of the bloc.
So with the economic rationale for an ECFA on seemingly shaky ground, what other reasons could the Ma government have for its rush to sign the pact?
For answers, we need to look at Ma’s present situation and Taiwan’s election cycle. Midway through his four-year term and extremely unpopular, Ma is casting around for a life preserver after his pre-election promises of economic growth were torpedoed by the global financial crisis.
Yet, as mentioned, the economy is already starting to rebound, and will likely continue to rise as the world emerges from the meltdown’s aftermath.
Ma’s haste results from his desire to link the economic recovery to the signing of an ECFA. Any delay to the ECFA plan and it will be all too obvious the economy’s upward trend has nothing to do with the pact.
He is betting everything on the electorate believing that signing an ECFA was the policy masterstroke that brought economic recovery, and that this will deliver him another four years in the Presidential Office.
Once an ECFA is signed, two years may not be enough time for traditional industries to fully feel the pact’s ill effects, but it will buy Ma enough time to achieve two of his major goals: bringing Taiwan ever closer to China, in line with his party’s charter, while hoodwinking the public into thinking closer ties with Beijing have resulted in economic prosperity for all.
Although Ma and his officials have repeatedly said that an ECFA does not involve politics, the rush to sign it is entirely driven by political considerations.
It is a good plan, and in light of the last week, one that looks increasingly likely to succeed.
Those opposed to Taiwan’s eventual unification with China need to come up with a similarly well-crafted plan, and fast, if they are to deconstruct this myth, foil Ma’s plot and put the brakes on the ECFA juggernaut.
China badly misread Japan. It sought to intimidate Tokyo into silence on Taiwan. Instead, it has achieved the opposite by hardening Japanese resolve. By trying to bludgeon a major power like Japan into accepting its “red lines” — above all on Taiwan — China laid bare the raw coercive logic of compellence now driving its foreign policy toward Asian states. From the Taiwan Strait and the East and South China Seas to the Himalayan frontier, Beijing has increasingly relied on economic warfare, diplomatic intimidation and military pressure to bend neighbors to its will. Confident in its growing power, China appeared to believe
Taiwan-India relations appear to have been put on the back burner this year, including on Taiwan’s side. Geopolitical pressures have compelled both countries to recalibrate their priorities, even as their core security challenges remain unchanged. However, what is striking is the visible decline in the attention India once received from Taiwan. The absence of the annual Diwali celebrations for the Indian community and the lack of a commemoration marking the 30-year anniversary of the representative offices, the India Taipei Association and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center, speak volumes and raise serious questions about whether Taiwan still has a coherent India
Recent media reports have again warned that traditional Chinese medicine pharmacies are disappearing and might vanish altogether within the next 15 years. Yet viewed through the broader lens of social and economic change, the rise and fall — or transformation — of industries is rarely the result of a single factor, nor is it inherently negative. Taiwan itself offers a clear parallel. Once renowned globally for manufacturing, it is now best known for its high-tech industries. Along the way, some businesses successfully transformed, while others disappeared. These shifts, painful as they might be for those directly affected, have not necessarily harmed society
Legislators of the opposition parties, consisting of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), on Friday moved to initiate impeachment proceedings against President William Lai (賴清德). They accused Lai of undermining the nation’s constitutional order and democracy. For anyone who has been paying attention to the actions of the KMT and the TPP in the legislature since they gained a combined majority in February last year, pushing through constitutionally dubious legislation, defunding the Control Yuan and ensuring that the Constitutional Court is unable to operate properly, such an accusation borders the absurd. That they are basing this
RSS