While his Cabinet continues to make mistake after mistake, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) appears to be the proverbial one trick pony and has only one thing on his mind.
Elected on promises that he would send Taiwan’s economy soaring, Ma’s only solution and hope is to keep repeating his mantra, “run to China.”
Life however, is not that simple.
When he was running for the presidency, Ma ignored the plight of the world’s economy and focused only on the fact that Taiwan’s growth did not match China’s inflated numbers. Ma’s simple answer was to blame it all on outgoing president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
Things would be different once he was elected, he said. He would lead Taiwan to the Economic Promised Land and China was his solution.
Now that he is president and the economy is worse, Ma’s answer is: “It’s a global problem, but we still need to go to China.”
CHANGE
As we’ve said, life is not so simple and maybe the one constant, is change. When voters elected Ma, they were calling for change. Ma should have had some sense of that, when, in hopes of progress, he filled his Cabinet with yesterday’s so-called experts.
Unfortunately yesterday’s solutions do not necessarily fit today’s problems. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which has always controlled the legislature, had not held the presidency for the last eight years and in those eight years a lot had happened. Both Taiwan and the world had changed a lot.
The KMT had always touted itself as the party that knew how to handle the economy. It was the reputed “A-Team” as far as Taiwan and the world was concerned. So enter Ma’s specialists of eight years ago.
Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) boasted that now that they were in power, the TAIEX, which had reached 9,309 points when the KMT took office on May 20, would soon be breaking the 20,000-point mark. Not so — at last count the TAIEX was at 7,051 points and heading south.
TOURISTS
Not to worry, there were still the tourists from China to solve the problem and Ma rushed headlong to that “solution.” Taiwan was supposed to get 3,000 tourists a day, but China has only allowed 1,000 tourists a day. And for July 18, so far, there are far fewer advanced sales.
Thus far, the only visible result of Ma’s action of opening Taiwan to Chinese tourists on July 4th is that three of them have jumped ship and one still remains at large. But Ma, the one trick pony, is not discouraged; he keeps insisting the only real solution is “run to China.”
Taiwan has been one of the major investors in China, but focusing on more investment does not appear to be the panacea that Ma had hoped for.
The rest of the world has already begun to discover the many pitfalls of dealing with China, its laws and copyright violations.
Beyond that, China keeps producing tainted products — toys, toothpaste, pet food and so on — and is leading the world in the amount of pollution it produces.
Too bad that Taiwan lies downwind.
Still the one trick pony keeps saying “run to China,” for it is not Taiwan’s reputation that Ma is most concerned about but his own.
Will China be Ma’s savior? It may be too early to tell, but never has a fly been more easily enticed into the spider’s parlor. Ma does not seem to have a Plan B.
Jerome Keating is a Taiwan-based writer.
Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on April 9 said that the first group of Indian workers could arrive as early as this year as part of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in India and the India Taipei Association. Signed in February 2024, the MOU stipulates that Taipei would decide the number of migrant workers and which industries would employ them, while New Delhi would manage recruitment and training. Employment would be governed by the laws of both countries. Months after its signing, the two sides agreed that 1,000 migrant workers from India would
In recent weeks, Taiwan has witnessed a surge of public anxiety over the possible introduction of Indian migrant workers. What began as a policy signal from the Ministry of Labor quickly escalated into a broader controversy. Petitions gathered thousands of signatures within days, political figures issued strong warnings, and social media became saturated with concerns about public safety and social stability. At first glance, this appears to be a straightforward policy question: Should Taiwan introduce Indian migrant workers or not? However, this framing is misleading. The current debate is not fundamentally about India. It is about Taiwan’s labor system, its
Japan’s imminent easing of arms export rules has sparked strong interest from Warsaw to Manila, Reuters reporting found, as US President Donald Trump wavers on security commitments to allies, and the wars in Iran and Ukraine strain US weapons supplies. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s ruling party approved the changes this week as she tries to invigorate the pacifist country’s military industrial base. Her government would formally adopt the new rules as soon as this month, three Japanese government officials told Reuters. Despite largely isolating itself from global arms markets since World War II, Japan spends enough on its own
On March 31, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs released declassified diplomatic records from 1995 that drew wide domestic media attention. One revelation stood out: North Korea had once raised the possibility of diplomatic relations with Taiwan. In a meeting with visiting Chinese officials in May 1995, as then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) prepared for a visit to South Korea, North Korean officials objected to Beijing’s growing ties with Seoul and raised Taiwan directly. According to the newly released records, North Korean officials asked why Pyongyang should refrain from developing relations with Taiwan while China and South Korea were expanding high-level
RSS