From what we have seen recently, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) appears to be even more treacherous and slippery than former chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and former — and failed — presidential candidate Lien Chan (連戰).
Both are prize contenders in political calculation, entirely lacking in sincerity.
In 2002, on a visit to Washington, Lien said: “We are all Chinese, period.” He said period. Period means period. Full stop. End of discussion. No “ifs,” no “buts,” no qualification of any kind.
Had he been a little more astute, he could have said something like, “from my father’s line, I am Taiwanese, but from my mother’s, and from my birthplace, I am Chinese.”
It would have been no word of a lie, either. His father, Lien Chen-tung (連震東), rose through the ranks of the KMT under former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) to become interior minister. He was of Taiwanese origin, although he never saw himself as Taiwanese, saying instead that he was Chinese.
In so doing, he dragged us all down.
While Ma gives the impression of being up front, there is generally more going on than meets the eye.
He is a member of the extreme right-wing Anti--Communist Patriotic Alliance, but for “anti-communist” read “anti-independence.” He identifies with Taiwan so that he can take on the pro-independence faction.
When he was campaigning to become Taipei mayor, he bit the bullet and claimed he was a “new Taiwanese,” but he did not like being called Taiwanese after he was elected.
During the presidential election campaign of 2008, Ma, mindful of the concerns of voters who identified with Taiwan, parried the question of who he was at that time, saying only that he would be Taiwanese even after he was cremated.
Rhetoric like this is just too much, referring to the situation after death to con people out of their votes, and afterwards to work to make everyone in the country “Chinese.”
Well, it looks like conning season is once more upon us, with Ma nicely cloaked in three different guises — identity, lineage and nationality — each one aimed at a specific audience.
For you, sir, I am Taiwanese. For you, madam, I will be a descendant of the Chinese race. And for you? Why, I am Chinese, of course.
Actually, Ma has more masks to produce than these three.
To overseas Taiwanese living in the US, he can say he is the father of an American and that he has a green card, which he never applied to invalidate.
Born in Hong Kong, he can also say he is a British colonial subject and that his very name bears witness to the fact. “Ying” (英) is the Chinese character used for Britain.
If you are going to claim you are Taiwanese, Chinese, American, Aboriginal, ethnic Han or ethnic Manchurian, you have to be sincere and natural about it. It should be a matter of pride to say so and only then does it really mean anything.
National leaders are not cut from the same cloth as the type of person who would just regurgitate cooked up stories straight out of party-state textbooks exclusively for the political capital it affords.
That type of person is more suited to traveling from town to town flogging dodgy miracle cures from the back of a caravan. We are bearing witness to Ma and the medicine show.
James Wang is a political commentator.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry