Former presidents Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) and the now forgotten Yen Chia-kan (嚴家淦) ruled Taiwan for 39 years. The pro-localization governments of former presidents Lee Teng-huei (李登輝) and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) were in power for 20 years.
In these 59 years, nobody ever talked about the Finlandization of Taiwan, nor did anyone openly advocate the US abandoning Taiwan and allowing China to annex it to avoid conflict with Beijing.
However, after President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has been in office for a mere three years, both these things have happened. A series of egghead academics in the US have come out with these suggestions, which are very damaging to Taiwan’s survival and national interests.
It is overly polite to talk about the Finlandization of Taiwan. In name, Finland was a neutral country that in practice became a political satellite of the Soviet Union — but at least it was still a country.
When the Chiangs were in power, the Chinese Communist Party called them the running dogs of US imperialism. To put it in a nicer way, they were a political satellite of the US — but at least Washington viewed Taiwan as a country.
Ma includes Taiwan in his definition of China. However, China does not view Taiwan as a country, but rather as an equivalent of Austria and the Sudeten-German areas in Czechoslovakia that Adolf Hitler wanted to annex.
Back then, the UK didn’t have enough military power or the determination to fight the Nazis and wanted peace at all costs. Then-British prime minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement, which accepted the German annexation of the Sudetenland in exchange for “peace.”
The territorial occupation accepted in the Munich Agreement may have been made in the name of peace, but having been given an inch, Hitler took a mile, making war unavoidable.
This is a prime example of a failed attempt at avoiding war. However, these egghead academics in their ivory towers who think they have foresight want the US to abandon Taiwan to avoid conflict with a rising China.
These theories are the result of Ma’s kowtowing toward China, which makes it seem as if the Taiwanese want to return to China just as the Sudeten-Germans wanted to be returned to German rule.
Ma and some other local residents who see themselves as Chinese may want to “return” to China, but the majority of Taiwanese have no intention of being integrated into China. Conceding Taiwan to obtain peace would be against the UN Charter, international treaties, democratic values and US law.
The most effective way to deal with a “rising” China and avoid war would be the strategy the US used against the Soviet Union during the Cold War: increasing military power to maximize deterrent capabilities, relying on high-level negotiations to avoid misunderstandings, forming alliances to maintain the balance of power and using human rights and democracy to spur internal change.
The US is already implementing the first three points and only the fourth point still needs more work.
It will take time to spur internal change in China, but Ma is betraying Taiwanese public opinion in his rush to meet China’s interests and change the “status quo.” With a “genius” like Ma here in Taiwan, it is little wonder that more and more of these egghead scholars are starting to crop up in the US.
James Wang is a media commentator.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS