During an e-mail interview with the Central News Agency (CNA) earlier this month, in which the expected benefits of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signed by Taipei and Beijing were discussed, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy was quoted as referring to Taiwan not by its official designation at the trade organization, but rather as “Chinese Taipei.” \nWire searches returned the key two entries — one, the original interview in English, and the other a Chinese translation of that interview. \nIn the English article, titled “ECFA will help Taiwan integrate into global economy: WTO,” CNA quotes Lamy as saying: “Now, the ECFA is an important initiative in this endeavor and we think it could considerably improve cross-strait relations and can be very important for ensuring the competitiveness of domestic industries and further integrate Chinese Taipei into the world economy.” \nMeanwhile, the Chinese version avoided direct mention of the national title [「現在,ECFA在這些努力中是一個重要作為,我們認為可以相當程度地改善兩岸關係,對確保國內產業競爭力及進一步納入世界經濟也是非常重要」]. \nI have since learned from a contact at CNA that throughout the interview, CNA reporters always referred to Taiwan as “Taiwan,” while Lamy invariably referred to it as “Chinese Taipei.” He did not even use Taiwan’s official name as a WTO member, the (admittedly tongue-twisting) Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, or a more convenient shorthand, such as Republic of China. \n The CNA reporters’ insistence on referring to Taiwan by its proper name, and use of the word Taiwan in its headlines, is commendable, especially in light of the pro-KMT management at the top of the news organization. \nThe CNA sources also say that “Chinese Taipei” is the name the WTO usually uses in interviews and documents. The WTO Web site’s list of 153 members uses the designation “Chinese Taipei,” although in alphabetical terms it falls under “T.” \nThe “Chinese Taipei” page, meanwhile, refers to Taiwan as the “Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu (Chinese Taipei) and the WTO,” with most links to articles and documents using “Chinese Taipei.” \nThe “Chinese Taipei” designation is obviously a concession on the part of the WTO to please Beijing, and raises questions about the world body’s ability to properly “review” the ECFA documents that, once translated into English, Taipei and Beijing will be submitting to it. \nBy its mandate, the WTO should be treating Taiwan and China as two distinct, sovereign entities in ensuring that the ECFA respects WTO regulations. \nHowever, the organization’s fuzziness on Taiwan’s name and ostensible willingness to yield to pressure from Beijing highlights the very real possibility that in reviewing the ECFA, the WTO could regard the matter as a domestic one, or at minimum be extremely reluctant to raises issues with some of the clauses. \nEither way, this bodes ill for Taiwanese sovereignty, even if only at the symbolic level. Some Taiwanese media have already speculated that at a more personal level, Lamy regards the deal as a domestic one. \nIf Lamy’s were the guiding policy at the WTO, then the body’s “review” of the ECFA would be meaningless, as the WTO can only intervene in trade matters involving two sovereign states. \nE-mails to Mr. Lamy’s office went unanswered. \nJ. Michael Cole is deputy news editor at the Taipei Times.
Even clumsy communicators occasionally say something worth hearing. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, for example. He has of late been accused of muddling his messages in support of Ukraine and much else. However, if you pay attention, he is actually trying to achieve something huge: a global — rather than “Western” — alliance of democracies against autocracies such as Russia and China. By accepting that mission, he has in effect taken the baton from US President Joe Biden, who hosted a rather underwhelming “summit for democracy” in December. That was before Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine, when rallying the freedom-loving nations
Ideas matter. They especially matter in world affairs. And in communist countries, it is communist ideas, not supreme leaders’ personality traits, that matter most. That is the reality in the People’s Republic of China. All Chinese communist leaders — from Mao Zedong (毛澤東) through Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), from Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) through to Xi Jinping (習近平) — have always held two key ideas to be sacred and self-evident: first, that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is infallible, and second, that the Marxist-Leninist socialist system of governance is superior to every alternative. The ideological consistency by all CCP leaders,
In the past 30 years, globalization has given way to an international division of labor, with developing countries focusing on export manufacturing, while developed countries in Europe and the US concentrate on internationalizing service industries to drive economic growth. The competitive advantages of these countries can readily be seen in the global financial market. For example, Taiwan has attracted a lot of global interest with its technology industry. The US is the home of leading digital service companies, such as Meta Platforms (Facebook), Alphabet (Google) and Microsoft. The country holds a virtual oligopoly of the global market for consumer digital
Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) on Saturday expounded on her concept of replacing “unification” with China with “integration.” Lu does not she think the idea would be welcomed in its current form; rather, she wants to elicit discussion on a third way to break the current unification/independence impasse, especially given heightened concerns over China attacking Taiwan in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She has apparently formulated her ideas around the number “three.” First, she envisions cross-strait relations developing in three stages: having Beijing lay to rest the idea of unification of “one China” (一個中國); next replacing this with