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.
In September 2013, the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) quietly released an internal document entitled, “Coursebook on the Military Geography of the Taiwan Strait.” This sensitive, “military-use-only” coursebook explains why it is strategically vital that China “reunify” (annex) Taiwan. It then methodically analyzes various locations of interest to People’s Liberation Army (PLA) war planners. The coursebook highlights one future battlefield in particular: Fulong Beach, in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District, which it describes as “3,000 meters long, flat, and straight,” and located at “the head of Taiwan.” A black and white picture of Fulong’s sandy coastline occupies the
Early last month, China’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), officially approved the country’s 14th Five-Year Plan. The strategy was supposed to demonstrate that China has a long-term economic vision that would enable it to thrive, despite its geopolitical contest with the US. However, before the ink on the NPC’s stamp could dry, China had already begun sabotaging the plan’s chances of success. The new plan’s centerpiece is the “dual-circulation” strategy, according to which China would aim to foster growth based on domestic demand and technological self-sufficiency. This would not only reduce China’s reliance on external demand; it would also
Interrupting the assimilation of Xinjiang’s Uighur population would result in an unmanageable national security threat to China. Numerous governments and civil society organizations around the world have accused China of massive human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and labeled Beijing’s inhumane and aggressive social re-engineering efforts in the region as “cultural genocide.” Extensive evidence shows that China’s forceful ethnic assimilation policies in Xinjiang are aimed at replacing Uighur ethnic and religious identity with a so-called scientific communist dogma and Han Chinese culture. The total assimilation of Uighurs into the larger “Chinese family” is also Beijing’s official, central purpose of its ethnic policies
In studies of Taiwan’s demographic changes, the Institute of Sociology at Academia Sinica has found that a mere 36.5 percent of men and 19.6 percent of women think getting married is an important life event. The institute also found that the government spending money or amending laws and regulations in order to encourage families to have children is having no impact on the birthrate. Opinions differ on whether this kind of change is a matter of national security, as Japan faces a similar situation, without having a negative impact on its economic strength. Fewer women are willing to marry and the divorce
RSS