Much has been said and written about the Nov. 27 elections for the mayors and councils of the five special municipalities. While on the surface things stayed the same, the outcome signifies a comeback for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and a leveling of the playing field for the 2012 presidential race.
In other words, Taiwan’s democracy is here to stay.
This is the good news. The bad news is that all too often the news media and analysts immediately try to interpret the election outcome in terms of how it would affect ties with China.
I would argue that we need to do a better job of looking at Taiwan in its own right. Of course, we have to keep the big picture in mind and see how changes in one location affect perceptions in another, but our perceptions of what is happening in and around Taiwan are too often colored by what we think the Chinese reaction might be — before anyone from China has made any statement.
A case in point is the Christian Science Monitor, which had an otherwise sound article headlined: “Gains of Taiwan’s anti-unification DPP could rattle relations with China.”
News editors and headline writers need to get away from the knee-jerk reaction that a political shift in Taiwan would “increase tension” or “raise the ire” of the leaders in Beijing. The problem with such writing is that it creates the impression that the political shift is the cause of the tension.
As we all know, Chinese leaders use “tension” and “ire” as instruments to gain advantage over the other side, whether it is Japan which experiences China’s ire over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), or the US, which was at the receiving end of China’s ire over arms sales to Taiwan and US President Barack Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama.
So we need to look at Taiwan in its own right and understand where the people are coming from and where they want to go with their future.
Former deputy US assistant secretary Randy Schriver succinctly summarized it in a recent seminar at the Heritage Foundation, when he said that the US should do a better job of understanding the motivations and core interests of the DPP and be careful not to repeat the mistakes the US made in the past.
During the past 20 years, Taiwanese have accomplished a momentous transition to democracy. We in the US know well that democracy brings with it expectations of a better life, not just personally, but as a country and a nation.
For Taiwanese this means that there should be progress in terms of their participation and presence in the international community. This means an end to the political isolation imposed on the nation and its people.
The US needs to keep these aspirations in mind when crafting new policies toward democratic Taiwan. While our “one China” policy has contributed to stability in the Taiwan Strait, at the same time it has perpetuated Taiwan’s international isolation. The US needs to be much more creative in helping to find a way forward for Taiwan to find its rightful place in the international community as a free and democratic nation.
Nat Bellocchi is a former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan and a special adviser to the Liberty Times Group. The views expressed in this article are his own.
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers