In recent days, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has had another fight with The Associated Press (AP) over whether he will enter into political talks with China if he is re-elected in 2012. Ma remains adamant that he never made any statement to the effect that he was planning such a move if re-elected and he insisted that it was all a misunderstanding by the AP reporter. Ma even demanded that AP offer an apology. However, regardless of whether AP eventually folds under mounting political pressure, the press release issued by the Presidential Office shows that the AP’s conclusion is based on fact.
The transcript of the interview released by the Presidential Office makes it clear that Ma first told the AP reporter that the question of whether he would engage in political dialogue with China if he were re-elected would be dependent on how the situation develops at that time. When the AP reporter continued with a follow-up question and asked whether political dialogue would take place once the economic issues were resolved, Ma once again said that it would depend on how the situation was developing at that time.
If we take a closer look at these answers, it is clear that Ma never gave an unambiguous “no” in response to the AP’s questions. In international diplomacy, a failure to offer a clear denial frequently implies tacit approval. In addition, the Ma administration is pushing for “mutual non-denial” as a way of dealing with cross-strait relations. It is therefore no wonder the AP came to the conclusion that Ma would not discount the possibility of engaging in political dialogue with China if he is re-elected in 2012.
More importantly, on May 8 last year during an interview with a reporter from Singapore’s The Straits Times, Ma said that he would not discount the possibility of talking about political issues with China if he were to win a second term in office in 2012. During another interview three days later, this time with the Taiwanese TV station China Television Co (CTV), he further explained how he would not discount the possibility of negotiating peace agreements with China if he were re-elected. So from this, we can see that the conclusions reached by the AP’s reporter are exactly the same as what Ma advocates.
Given this situation, the real problem is not whether Ma should be using an English interpreter during his interviews with international media. The real problem lies instead in the policies Ma promotes and how these policies have caused the international community to think that there is a possibility that political talks with China would be opened if Ma is given a second term in office.
Instead of continuously trying to cover up his real views on the issue of political talks with China, Ma should be open and honest about them. Considering that this is something Ma has said on repeated occasions in the past, blaming the AP reporter’s English is not the way he should go about handling this issue.
Lai I-chung is an executive committee member of the Taiwan Thinktank.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS