Barely five months have elapsed since the Japanese government reached a settlement with the Taiwanese owner of a fishing vessel that sank in an incident near the disputed Diaoyutai islands (釣魚台) last June.
At the time of the incident, a mere 20 days after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) entered office, the KMT and pan-blue media blew the matter out of proportion, sparking nationalistic fervor and spewing venom at Taiwan’s former colonial master.
Through this outburst, with KMT legislators waxing self-righteously about the need to defend Taiwanese fishermen and uphold the government’s claim to the Diaoyutai, damage was done to relations with one of Taiwan’s staunchest allies. Despite Ma’s claim that he would seek to improve relations with the US and Japan after years of “trouble-rousing” diplomacy under the administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), the row sent a signal of strategic realignment in the Taiwan Strait, with Taipei leaning ever closer to Beijing.
As cross-strait talks continue and Taiwan jumps on the caravan to economic — if not political — integration with China, the KMT is once again fueling anti-Japanese sentiment, this time by attacking Masaki Saito, the head of the Japanese Interchange Association, over comments he made during a forum at National Chung Cheng University on Friday to the effect that Taiwan’s status is “still unresolved.”
Despite Saito’s subsequent apology, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrew Hsia (夏立言) and KMT Legislator John Chiang (蔣孝嚴) — the same John Chiang whose campaign headquarters printed a calendar in simplified Chinese that marked the People’s Republic of China National Day as a holiday — maintain that not enough was done to repair the envoy’s “serious gaffe.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs picked up the rhetoric yesterday, saying that Saito’s comment was “inaccurate” and “damaging to our government,” views that, according to Ma’s spokesman, the president shared.
Once again, the Ma administration is trying to pick a fight with Tokyo over a small incident. This time, the irritant is trivial. But just as with the Diaoyutai incident, when it comes to Japan, apologies are never enough when the KMT casts itself as the epitome of patriotism. Regardless of whether Saito’s remarks were his opinion — which he said they were — or that of the Japanese government (which it isn’t), there was nothing “damaging” in what was said.
The US government’s “acknowledgement” of Beijing’s “one China” policy is just as much an admission of Taiwan’s unresolved status as Saito’s comments, as is the position of the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross and many multilateral institutions that Taiwan cannot officially join, or must join under a different name.
It’s fine for the WHO and other bodies to insult Taiwan and refer to it as “Chinese Taipei,” but when it comes to Japan, one faux pas leads to a diplomatic row. It’s fine for Beijing to deny Taiwan’s existence or threaten it with an “Anti-Secession” Law (where was Chiang when millions of Taiwanese protested this “law” in 2005?), but when a Japanese uses the wrong words, we castigate him and poison our relations with Tokyo.
It’s getting clearer by the day: Despite Ma’s rhetoric, the deeds of his government are betraying a clear shift in Beijing’s favor and, in the process, the calculated alienation of Tokyo.
Ideas matter. They especially matter in world affairs. And in communist countries, it is communist ideas, not supreme leaders’ personality traits, that matter most. That is the reality in the People’s Republic of China. All Chinese communist leaders — from Mao Zedong (毛澤東) through Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), from Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) through to Xi Jinping (習近平) — have always held two key ideas to be sacred and self-evident: first, that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is infallible, and second, that the Marxist-Leninist socialist system of governance is superior to every alternative. The ideological consistency by all CCP leaders,
The US on Friday hosted the second Global COVID-19 Summit, with at least 98 countries, including Taiwan, and regional alliances such as the G7, the G20, the African Union and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) attending. Washington is also leading a proposal to revise one of the most important documents in global health security — the International Health Regulations (IHR) — which are to be discussed during the 75th World Health Assembly (WHA) that starts on Sunday. These two actions highlight the US’ strategic move to dominate the global health agenda and return to the core of governance, with the WHA
Just as the cause of the Kursk submarine disaster remains shrouded in mystery — the nuclear-powered Russian submarine suffered an explosion during a naval exercise on Aug. 12, 2000, and sank, killing all 118 crew onboard — it is unlikely that we will ever get to the bottom of the sequence of events last month that led to the sinking of the Moskva guided missile cruiser, the flagship of the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet. Ukraine claims it struck the vessel with two missiles, while Russia says ammunition onboard the ship exploded and the ship tipped over while being towed
The war in Ukraine continues, and lines are slowly being drawn in the sand. Nations have begun imposing sanctions; few can ignore the reality of Russia’s aggression and atrocities, especially as it edges to the possibility of making a full declaration of war. For Taiwan, this resurrects a different reality, the tangled web of its own complex past and how as a colony of Japan, it became involved with Russia, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Some role reversals are immediately evident. Taiwan is now an independent nation and the CCP rules China. The CCP indirectly
RSS