Ever since the government proposed the signing of an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) between Taiwan and China, every ECFA-related opinion poll has showed that public doubts over the issue have increased while support has continued to slide. It’s only natural the government finds this worrying and therefore offers more explanations on the issue, while the Chinese government has rushed to give up some of its benefits as a favor to Taiwan. The more explanations Taipei offers and the more Beijing agrees, the stronger the doubt among the public.
Why? Because the government’s approach to the ECFA talks includes many unreasonable conditions that appear very strange no matter how they are interpreted. One must never enter into trade talks saying that an agreement must be signed at any price and even setting a deadline for it. Doing so means giving up every bargaining chip one has. Somehow, the government remains oblivious to this.
In any trade negotiations, the parties involved evaluate the short and long-term impact on domestic industry and labor. This means the government must make concessions and compromises with its negotiating partner, while also informing and lobbying the domestic audience. This is why negotiations are often full of twists and turns and sometimes fail. In the ECFA talks, however, Beijing has continuously made concessions and constantly joins the Taiwanese government in assuring the public that Chinese labor and agricultural products will not be allowed into Taiwan, disregarding its own interests. This is unprecedented in the history of negotiation.
However, this is not strange at all, since China’s aim is to create “one China.” The ECFA talks nominally maintain a “one China” framework while in practice bringing Taiwan into China’s economic sphere as well as co-opting the public. This is key to China’s strategy of promoting unification through economic means and using business to bypass politics in order to infiltrate Taiwan and win the minds and hearts of Taiwanese. Its strategic and tactical goals are both clear and well-integrated and President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) plays along. Given this situation, it is clear that Beijing’s offer to forgo some of its benefits as a favor is simply bait to win over the public.
Ma constantly stresses the advantages of an ECFA and cooperates with Beijing to sell it to the public. The Ma administration has effectively stopped acting as a government, functioning instead as Beijing’s business representative in Taiwan. This alone erodes Ma’s credibility. Thus, instead of negotiating with China, the government is busy convincing the public to accept an ECFA. Beijing does not really plan to negotiate with Taipei either. It only wishes to further integrate Taiwan’s economic interests and tie its economic future tightly to China. What Beijing needs to figure out, then, is how many gifts it needs to offer to help Ma sign an ECFA and win the 2012 presidential election to ensure its strategies prevail.
This is the tragedy for Taiwanese. Beijing is the stronger power, while Taipei is like a businessman who only cares about the short-term interests of certain local industries and Taiwanese businesses investing in China. As it proudly brags about the Chinese gifts it brings, the Ma administration has given up on a national strategy for Taiwan. Today, the government is selling out Taiwan’s sovereignty and liberal democracy, and neglecting the widening income gap and rising unemployment rate. What is the Taiwanese public to do?
The choice is for us to make.
Lee Wen-chung is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
“History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes” (attributed to Mark Twain). The USSR was the international bully during the Cold War as it sought to make the world safe for Soviet-style Communism. China is now the global bully as it applies economic power and invests in Mao’s (毛澤東) magic weapons (the People’s Liberation Army [PLA], the United Front Work Department, and the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]) to achieve world domination. Freedom-loving countries must respond to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), especially in the Indo-Pacific (IP), as resolutely as they did against the USSR. In 1954, the US and its allies
Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Shen You-chung (沈有忠) on Thursday last week urged democratic nations to boycott China’s military parade on Wednesday next week. The parade, a grand display of Beijing’s military hardware, is meant to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. While China has invited world leaders to attend, many have declined. A Kyodo News report on Sunday said that Japan has asked European and Asian leaders who have yet to respond to the invitation to refrain from attending. Tokyo is seeking to prevent Beijing from spreading its distorted interpretation of wartime history, the report
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in China yesterday, where he is to attend a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin today. As this coincides with the 50 percent US tariff levied on Indian products, some Western news media have suggested that Modi is moving away from the US, and into the arms of China and Russia. Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation fellow Sana Hashmi in a Taipei Times article published yesterday titled “Myths around Modi’s China visit” said that those analyses have misrepresented India’s strategic calculations, and attempted to view
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) stood in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa on Thursday last week, flanked by Chinese flags, synchronized schoolchildren and armed Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops, he was not just celebrating the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the “Tibet Autonomous Region,” he was making a calculated declaration: Tibet is China. It always has been. Case closed. Except it has not. The case remains wide open — not just in the hearts of Tibetans, but in history records. For decades, Beijing has insisted that Tibet has “always been part of China.” It is a phrase
RSS