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EDITORIAL: Engagement is not changing China

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has said several times that he believes Taiwan’s democracy can act as a positive example for China and that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) will only consider unification if and when Beijing embraces universal suffrage.

Ma’s theory is not unique. It is almost identical to that of the US government, which for many years has trumpeted its policy of engagement with Beijing as a way of changing China’s authoritarian system, leading to its eventual democratization.

But were it to be ranked on its effectiveness so far, the US policy would most definitely receive a failing grade.

Thirty years of foreign investment-fueled economic growth has only succeeded in strengthening the position of China’s leaders, making them more belligerent, while democracy seems further away now than at any point since the Cultural Revolution.

The utter failure of the US’ policy was apparent during US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s February visit to Beijing, when she said issues such as human rights couldn’t be allowed to “interfere” with the tackling of economic problems.

Clinton’s reluctance to bring up issues unpalatable to Chinese leaders seems to indicate that instead of changing China, engagement has produced the opposite effect.

With its growing economic clout, China now has the ability to influence those who choose to have closer ties with it — including the world’s sole remaining superpower.

This is a lesson that people in Taiwan are only now beginning to learn.

The latest apparent sign of this phenomenon came earlier this week when Chinese dissident Ji Xiaofeng (紀曉峰) accused Taiwanese intelligence agencies — in behavior reminiscent of their Chinese counterparts — of collecting information on Xinjiang and Tibet independence activists with a view to preventing them from entering Taiwan.

The report was rebutted by the agencies concerned, but it would be foolish to assume that the Ma government is incapable of such behavior given its track record — and political agenda.

The effects of Ma’s policy of snuggling up to China were brought into sharp focus in December by his rejection of a possible visit to Taiwan by the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, something he had welcomed just nine months earlier.

This came just a month after November’s visit by Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), during which police confiscated national flags and used violence against unarmed protesters.

Add to that news that Taiwan is no longer ranked as Asia’s freest press: The US-based Freedom House’s recent annual freedom of the press survey saw Taiwan’s ranking slip 11 spots to 43rd place from last year, which makes it clear which side of the Taiwan Strait is having the bigger effect on the other.

If a country as powerful as the US has, to all intents and purposes, admitted defeat in its attempts to influence China, it does not take a genius to work out what the consequences will be for Taiwan with the Ma administration’s accelerating rapprochement.
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