One of the benefits of being a big-spending world power is that much of the world — especially its autocratic and venal parts — is a briber’s market.
Unlike democratic governments, which are subject to at least a semblance of accountability among civic groups and watchdogs, China, the most aggressive of emerging world powers, offers no substantial space for civilian organizations to criticize diplomatic activities.
Instead, for some time, the international media have been focusing on the growing presence of Chinese investment in Asia and Africa in particular, and some analysts and reporters have asked whether the fiscal benefits for local economies and raw material benefits for the Chinese government will not be undone in the longer term as Beijing’s neo-colonial behavior triggers resentment in those locations.
In other regions, however, China is learning that cash doesn’t always deliver the goods. Despite threats of reprisal, in recent weeks Australia and Japan have issued exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer a visa — allowing her to speak freely of Chinese atrocities in Xinjiang.
The failure of Chinese state-controlled Chinalco to take greater control over Australian mining firm Rio Tinto was, in Chinese eyes, just as great a provocation, but with more practical consequences. Some of the firm’s employees are now in custody in China and preparing for a farcical corporate show trial, while the Australian media are finally waking up to the nature of the beast they have admired for so long.
After weeks of rising tensions, it is pleasing to see the Australian government respond to China’s hypocrisy and infantilism with something approaching self-respect. Perhaps Canberra realized that the average Australian has far less tolerance for Chinese insults to Australian values — be they commercial, cultural or moral.
In so doing, Australia helps to teach the Chinese a lesson: There are limits to what you can do or say to self-respecting foreigners; ignoring this forces a choice between moderation and the kind of extremist rhetoric and vengefulness characteristic of China in the late 1960s. Indeed, reporting on the Rio Tinto case and tensions with Australia in general, the Chinese media in the last few weeks have displayed a passion for exactly this kind of mad language.
In Taiwan, the latest — and most spectacular so far — example of gunboat fiscal diplomacy ironically arrives in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot. Non-Partisan Solidarity Union Legislator May Chin (高金素梅) this week personally received a check worth US$2.9 million from the Chinese government, ostensibly to assist Aboriginal communities suffering from the typhoon’s devastating impact on remote areas in Taiwan’s south.
May Chin has been running a China-friendly line of no relevance to Aborigines for some time, along with some other Aboriginal politicians and activists who have connections and a ready audience among unificationists in China. But she also has no shortage of enemies in the Aboriginal community. For the Chinese to donate such a large amount of money to her and a group of fellow travelers instead of genuinely non-partisan groups or the government, therefore, is a corrupt act intended to strengthen one segment of Aboriginal politics at the cost of others and seed pro-China propaganda.
As always, China can’t help itself. But now, in the unfortunate context of Typhoon Morakot, the corrosive influence of Chinese “aid” is taking on a new and more conspicuous form as Beijing openly seeks to manipulate legislative and ethnic politics.
Taiwan aims to elevate its strategic position in supply chains by becoming an artificial intelligence (AI) hub for Nvidia Corp, providing everything from advanced chips and components to servers, in an attempt to edge out its closest rival in the region, South Korea. Taiwan’s importance in the AI ecosystem was clearly reflected in three major announcements Nvidia made during this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei. First, the US company’s number of partners in Taiwan would surge to 122 this year, from 34 last year, according to a slide shown during CEO Jensen Huang’s (黃仁勳) keynote speech on Monday last week.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
When China passed its “Anti-Secession” Law in 2005, much of the democratic world saw it as yet another sign of Beijing’s authoritarianism, its contempt for international law and its aggressive posture toward Taiwan. Rightly so — on the surface. However, this move, often dismissed as a uniquely Chinese form of legal intimidation, echoes a legal and historical precedent rooted not in authoritarian tradition, but in US constitutional history. The Chinese “Anti-Secession” Law, a domestic statute threatening the use of force should Taiwan formally declare independence, is widely interpreted as an emblem of the Chinese Communist Party’s disregard for international norms. Critics
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