Several Taiwan watchers reacted in anger earlier this month when the Presidential Office said it would turn to the European Parliament for help over the “Taiwan, Province of China” name controversy at the WHO. Why, several asked, would President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration not turn to its oldest ally, the US, for help on the matter and seek succor instead from the Europeans, whose assistance could be expected to bring but the most marginal of results?
It would be easy to assume that Ma’s decision was in fact based on the expectation that the EU would do nothing that risked causing anger in Beijing. By so doing, Ma, who is seeking re-election in January, would meet expectations at home that he do something to redress the slight, while ensuring that the outcome wouldn’t undermine relations with Beijing, which remains the core of his current and future policy.
While there may be some validity to this contention, the context in which the controversy emerged provides alternative explanations. Ma very likely wanted to seek assistance from the US on the matter, but may have been dissuaded by Washington, or US officials in Taiwan, from doing so. The reason is simple: Just as the crisis risked boiling over, General Chen Bingde (陳炳德), chief of general staff for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), was arriving in Washington on a groundbreaking visit to mend military-to-military ties amid fears of China’s “rise.” The last thing Washington wanted at this sensitive juncture was for a name flap at the WHO to interfere with what the Pentagon and other US agencies saw as a very important visit. Given China’s propensity to call off meetings in retaliation for support of any kind for Taiwan, we can assume that any intervention on Washington’s part at the WHO could have derailed the whole visit, which was months in the making and necessitated well-calibrated preparations.
Rather than always assume the worst from the Ma administration, we should pay more attention to the environment in which it operates and the immense challenges it faces in terms of its relationship with the US. History is replete with precedents in which larger political imperatives prevented governments from adopting what otherwise looked like what should have been “rational” and “logical” policies. Britain’s and India’s official silence when the PLA invaded Tibet in the early 1950s is such an example, with both governments forced to take the crisis in Korea, among others, into consideration.
Which brings us to another issue over which the Ma administration has faced heavy criticism: arms sales.
Over the past three years or so, Ma has made several headline-grabbing calls on Washington to release the 66 F-16C/D aircraft requested by Taiwan — so often, in fact, that a number of analysts (this author included) have come to regard the whole exercise as nothing more than cynical signaling for domestic consumption.
As it turns out, however, incompetence, rather than lack of will, appears to have been the main cause for the lack of results.
Information obtained by this author reveals it is unlikely the Ma administration was being disingenuous in its calls for the F-16C/Ds and diesel-electric submarines. Reliable sources say there is every reason to believe that Taipei genuinely wants them and understand clearly the downside should it not secure the commitment from Washington. In fact, in all meetings at the senior level with Taiwanese officials attended by sources consulted for this article, the officials were “singing from the same song sheet.”
That said, the problems in Washington are manifest. The Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) as a lobbying body is reportedly in near disarray, with good officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but no strategy. On arms sales particularly, TECRO officials have not been identifying the right decision making nodes — US Senate and House committees addressing armed services and foreign affairs are at the top of the list — in the system and working them with the right message.
Incompetence notwithstanding, there reportedly are signs of progress. Taiwan is said to have put together three-man teams composed of foreign ministry and Ministry of National Defense officials working together on arms sales and are predominantly used to brief staff on Capitol Hill on specific needs — such as F-16C/Ds — as well as long-term trends.
Lack of progress on the fighter aircraft and submarines is not necessarily the result of cynical politics. Rather, it is more likely a mixture of bureaucratic incompetence on both sides and very difficult US-Taiwan-China circumstances in Washington that have been heading in this direction since 2006. It could be said that by not rattling the cage of the Taiwan Strait, Ma has been a model leader for US President Barack Obama’s administration, and yet Washington has not reciprocated with moves that could be helpful to his re-election campaign.
The reason? It’s all about the context.
J. Michael Cole is deputy news editor at the Taipei Times.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they