The lone figure of exiled Chinese author Ma Jian (馬建) being denied entry into his homeland last week should be enough to remind candidates in January’s presidential election of the need to approach China with the utmost caution.
The London-based Ma, whose application to enter China via Hong Kong on July 23 was turned down without explanation from Chinese officials, had previously returned home on several occasions since leaving in 1986. That he would be denied entry at a time when China is, by most accounts, seemingly in the ascendant, is a testimony to the uncertainty that haunts the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) amid domestic turbulence and an upcoming leadership transition.
Needless to say, a party that had full confidence in its ability to rule would not be preoccupied with the arrival of an author, however critical of the regime, on a mission to buy books in Shenzhen before returning to London.
The decision to ban Ma from entering China was in line with an “increasingly harsh” — Ma’s words — political climate in the country, one in which the CCP feels compelled to crush underfoot people like Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) and artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未), whose only crime is to have espoused the “dangerous” idea of freedom, or to impose a media blackout on reports about last month’s high-speed rail crash.
It is in this context, one of heightened paranoia and repression, that Taiwan under President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is seeking to foster more amicable relations with Beijing. While it is most assuredly not of his making, the unfolding situation in China makes it incumbent upon Ma Ying-jeou to tread carefully in the development of cross-strait relations.
In addition, the tightening of security measures in China is not taking place in a vacuum, as the poison of repression radiates outwards and transforms everything it touches. Only the foolhardy would assume cross-strait relations are impervious to what is happening in China.
The implication is that from cultural exchanges to tourist arrivals, everything will be tainted by “the totalitarian regime’s inability to adapt to modernity and respond to natural yearnings for free expression,” as Ma Jian has said.
Rather than embracing increased liberalism, as Ma Ying-jeou claimed would result from exposure to free and democratic Taiwan, Beijing is seemingly going in the opposite direction. Stronger and wealthier though it may be, China is arguably more repressive today than when Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) entered Zhongnanhai. Years of investment have also resulted in a security apparatus that is far better equipped and efficient than it was a decade ago, enhancing the state’s ability to monitor, control and deny information.
In such an environment, it is highly unlikely that ordinary Chinese, to say nothing of CCP officials, will be in a position to learn from Taiwan’s experience. Or even if they are, there is little if any chance that they would place themselves in a potentially dangerous position by seeking to reproduce it on returning home.
Conversely, Beijing’s threshold of what it deems acceptable behavior on Taiwan’s part is likely to become more exacting, thus increasing the cost of interaction for Taiwanese. As such, unless contact with Beijing is calibrated to reflect the severity of the political situation in China, the immunization of Taiwan against some form of the Chinese flu is unlikely, which bodes ill for our freedoms and liberties. Perhaps even worse, it would provide a tacit seal of approval for a regime that violates the rights of its own people.
There is no need, nor is it desirable, for Taiwan to rush into rapprochement with China. It can afford to wait — and current trends in China make such patience absolutely imperative.
Ideas matter. They especially matter in world affairs. And in communist countries, it is communist ideas, not supreme leaders’ personality traits, that matter most. That is the reality in the People’s Republic of China. All Chinese communist leaders — from Mao Zedong (毛澤東) through Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), from Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) through to Xi Jinping (習近平) — have always held two key ideas to be sacred and self-evident: first, that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is infallible, and second, that the Marxist-Leninist socialist system of governance is superior to every alternative. The ideological consistency by all CCP leaders,
The US on Friday hosted the second Global COVID-19 Summit, with at least 98 countries, including Taiwan, and regional alliances such as the G7, the G20, the African Union and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) attending. Washington is also leading a proposal to revise one of the most important documents in global health security — the International Health Regulations (IHR) — which are to be discussed during the 75th World Health Assembly (WHA) that starts on Sunday. These two actions highlight the US’ strategic move to dominate the global health agenda and return to the core of governance, with the WHA
In the past 30 years, globalization has given way to an international division of labor, with developing countries focusing on export manufacturing, while developed countries in Europe and the US concentrate on internationalizing service industries to drive economic growth. The competitive advantages of these countries can readily be seen in the global financial market. For example, Taiwan has attracted a lot of global interest with its technology industry. The US is the home of leading digital service companies, such as Meta Platforms (Facebook), Alphabet (Google) and Microsoft. The country holds a virtual oligopoly of the global market for consumer digital
Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) on Saturday expounded on her concept of replacing “unification” with China with “integration.” Lu does not she think the idea would be welcomed in its current form; rather, she wants to elicit discussion on a third way to break the current unification/independence impasse, especially given heightened concerns over China attacking Taiwan in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She has apparently formulated her ideas around the number “three.” First, she envisions cross-strait relations developing in three stages: having Beijing lay to rest the idea of unification of “one China” (一個中國); next replacing this with