It’s official: Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) will hold a televised debate on the proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) on April 25.
After months of avoidance and foot-dragging, the two leaders will finally bring the issue into the nation’s living rooms and force everybody, regardless of political persuasion, to confront the tough questions that are raised by the proposed pact.
For Ma, this will be an opportunity to explain why the nation so desperately needs the cross-strait deal, as well as to shed much-needed light on the many shadowy corners that have characterized the negotiations so far. In poll after poll, Taiwanese have expressed frustration at not knowing enough about the ECFA deal, and time and again the Ma administration — primarily Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) — has blamed this lack of understanding on poor communication. So here’s your chance, Mr Ma, to resolve your administration’s communication problem.
As for Tsai, the debate will be an occasion to articulate the nation’s apprehensions and to force Ma to confront those fears. For Tsai to emerge as the “winner” in the debate, however, she will also have to present alternatives to an ECFA to show how the DPP would address the challenges posed by regional economic integration. In other words, this will be an opportunity for her to show that rather than simply being “against” something, the DPP actually has constructive ideas.
It is to be hoped, as well, that the participants will be able to put the ECFA talks in context. If it treats them in a vacuum, or purely from an economic point of view, the debate will only accomplish half of what it should. For there is no doubt that while, on the surface, the pact concerns narrow matters of trade (something the Ma administration has emphasized in its attempts to comfort the public), very real political implications lie behind it, including Taiwan’s sovereignty.
One question that Tsai should ask Ma is why his administration is willing to sign an ECFA with a country that, despite allegedly warming ties in the Taiwan Strait, maintains its military threat against Taiwan. Is this an instance of the contradictory policies inherent to large governments, or rather part of China’s well-honed united front strategy? Ma has often said he would make China dismantling the missiles it has aimed at Taiwan a precondition for negotiations; and yet, how many deals have been signed since he first made that comment, while the number — and deadliness — of those missiles keeps increasing?
Nations in a state of war do not sign free-trade agreements with one another. While there is speculation that Ma and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), might sign a “peace” agreement around 2012, without a demonstrated commitment on China’s part to stop threatening Taiwan, there would be nothing peaceful about it.
Why this matters now, in the context of a debate on an ECFA, is that the trade pact, along with everything else the Ma administration has signed with China in the past two years, is being negotiated with a belligerent partner. If both sides are not treated as equals, or if dishonesty is the strategy of one of the parties, an ECFA will not create a more prosperous Taiwan, but will rather be one of a series of acts of capitulation on Ma’s part that would all but obviate any “peace” agreement.
It will be Tsai’s responsibility to raise those questions and put them in their larger context. And it will be Ma’s to put such fears to rest.
The government and local industries breathed a sigh of relief after Shin Kong Life Insurance Co last week said it would relinquish surface rights for two plots in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) to Nvidia Corp. The US chip-design giant’s plan to expand its local presence will be crucial for Taiwan to safeguard its core role in the global artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem and to advance the nation’s AI development. The land in dispute is owned by the Taipei City Government, which in 2021 sold the rights to develop and use the two plots of land, codenamed T17 and T18, to the
US President Donald Trump has announced his eagerness to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un while in South Korea for the APEC summit. That implies a possible revival of US-North Korea talks, frozen since 2019. While some would dismiss such a move as appeasement, renewed US engagement with North Korea could benefit Taiwan’s security interests. The long-standing stalemate between Washington and Pyongyang has allowed Beijing to entrench its dominance in the region, creating a myth that only China can “manage” Kim’s rogue nation. That dynamic has allowed Beijing to present itself as an indispensable power broker: extracting concessions from Washington, Seoul
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs most: a reliable US commitment. Taiwan’s security depends less on US power than on US reliability, but Trump is undermining the latter. Deterrence without credibility is a hollow shield. Trump’s China policy in his second term has oscillated wildly between confrontation and conciliation. One day, he threatens Beijing with “massive” tariffs and calls China America’s “greatest geopolitical
Taiwan’s labor force participation rate among people aged 65 or older was only 9.9 percent for 2023 — far lower than in other advanced countries, Ministry of Labor data showed. The rate is 38.3 percent in South Korea, 25.7 percent in Japan and 31.5 percent in Singapore. On the surface, it might look good that more older adults in Taiwan can retire, but in reality, it reflects policies that make it difficult for elderly people to participate in the labor market. Most workplaces lack age-friendly environments, and few offer retraining programs or flexible job arrangements for employees older than 55. As
RSS