When President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) came to office in May 2008, he announced that one of his top priorities would be to “repair” ties with the US and enhance relations with Japan, while fostering closer relations with Beijing.
Since then, this triangular strategy has turned into an odd geometrical shape in which the angles are not symmetrical.
No sooner had Ma entered the Presidential Office than his Cabinet was engaging in a largely avoidable war of words with Tokyo over the Diaoyutai Islands. In the ensuing months, the government would threaten to expel Japan’s envoy and finally got its wish after the latter resigned after stating the obvious about Taiwan’s “unresolved” status at an academic forum.
As for the US, with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enjoying a comfortable majority in the legislature and Washington initially willing to show support for Ma’s bid to lower tensions in the Taiwan Strait, relations got off to a good start, which culminated in the approval of a long-delayed US arms sale to Taiwan. However, Taipei’s mishandling of the lifting of a ban on US beef and signs that the Ma administration was drifting uncomfortably into the Chinese sphere of influence have since cooled enthusiasm for Ma in some US diplomatic circles.
While Taipei’s relations with Tokyo and Washington have waxed and waned, ties with Beijing remain consistently, if not preternaturally, positive — even if the latter failed to reciprocate Ma’s goodwill by drawing down its military. A number of agreements have been inked, with a proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) that suits Beijing’s strategy of unification — yet inspires great apprehension among many Taiwanese — on the brink of being signed.
Agreements aside, the manner in which Taipei has treated visiting dignitaries from the three countries is indicative of where the focus of the Ma administration lies. While the likes of Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) and Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng (韓正) have been treated to banquets and security reminiscent of that seen in China, Japanese and US officials have been forced into a low profile that, at times, has bordered on the ignoble.
Taipei 101 was lit up like a Christmas tree to mark Han’s visit; in contrast, a visit a week earlier by US Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart was so low-key that the Taiwan-friendly Diaz-Balart would not even grant interviews and for a while his presence in the country could not be confirmed by US officials.
Former Japanese prime minister Taro Aso was also in Taiwan last week and met briefly with Ma, former KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) at Taipei Guest House, a hotel and Wang’s official residence, respectively. Amid allegations by the opposition that Ma had “denigrated” the nation by meeting Aso as a “private citizen” rather than president, Aso remained diplomatic and said the low profile was at his own request. That is a possibility, but after almost two years of visits by foreign diplomats, there is no denying that only Chinese officials and semi-officials have been treated like royalty, which speaks volumes of the government’s frame of mind.
If the Ma administration saw relations with China, Japan and the US as equally important, we would not have seen such unequal treatment on so many occasions. In Ma’s strategy, China is primus inter pares, which raises serious questions about his claim that the cross-strait negotiations that will determine the future of this nation are between equals.
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
US President Joe Biden’s first news conference last month offered reassuring and concerning insights regarding his administration’s approach to China. Biden did not mention the contentious meeting in Alaska where US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan confronted China’s top two foreign policy officials. The Americans implicitly affirmed the administration of former US president Donald Trump’s direct pushback against communist China’s repressive domestic governance and aggressive international behavior. Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) and Chinese Central Foreign Affairs Commission Director Yang Jiechi (楊潔篪) had explicitly demanded a return to the policies of
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
RSS