Alfred E. Newman, famous for his “What, me worry?” outlook on life, appears to be popping up all over the place these days in Taipei. Or maybe it’s just because President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is looking as goofy as Mad magazine’s famous mascot that people are confused. Ma seems to have about as much grasp of modern history and politics as Newman, given his remarks this week about the differences between Tibet and Taiwan.
The president derided his rival in January’s presidential election, Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), for criticizing his proposal of an eventual peace agreement with China by using Tibet’s 1951 peace pact as an example of what happens when you sign such a deal with Beijing.
It was a ridiculous example, Ma said, adding that Tsai was only hurting herself with such “self-belittling comments.”
China treated Tibet as a province when it signed the 17-point pact in 1951, but Taiwan, as a sovereign nation, would not be in the same position, Ma said.
Hasn’t the whole problem from the very beginning, even before the Presidential Office was even a gleam in Ma’s eye, been that Beijing considers Taiwan a province — “a renegade province” as the international wire agencies like to say whenever they mention cross-strait affairs?
The whole charade of having the Straits Exchange Foundation talking with China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits stems from Beijing’s refusal to talk to Taipei on a state-to-state basis because of the whole “there is only one China and that is us” that both sides use.
“If the mainland refuses to accept our principles, then we would put the peace agreement on hold ... there is no timetable for such a pact,” Ma said on Thursday, careful to use the term “mainland” instead of China to ensure that no one could possibly think there might be “two” Chinas.
Principles do not count for much when the other side plays by different rules.
Beijing promised autonomy, freedom of religion and preservation of Tibetan culture in the 1951 pact, a deal signed under duress because the People’s Liberation Army troops were right outside Lhasa.
Ma apparently believes that a deal the Tibetans signed at gunpoint cannot possibly be compared with Taiwan signing a peace deal with Beijing with more than 1,500 Chinese missiles pointed this way and an economy that is increasingly dependent on Taiwanese companies’ production lines in China and Chinese trade.
The Sino-Tibetan pact worked so well that the Dalai Lama was forced to flee his country in 1959; the 10th Panchen Lama, between stints in prison, was forced to become a shill for Beijing; the 11th Panchen Lama, recognized by the Dalai Lama, disappeared so Beijing could enthrone its own candidate in 1995; scores of temples were destroyed, thousands of religious artifacts were stolen or melted down; the Tibetan landscape has been raped and denuded of flora and much of its wildlife; and Tibetans were kept from publicly practicing their religion until two decades ago.
The Chinese might have abolished serfdom and brought more roads, electricity and now a railway to Tibet, but the cost in terms of the Tibetan way of life and Tibetan lives has been far too high.
Ma complains that it is unfair and unreasonable for people to distort his efforts to seek sustainable peace, but it is not his critics that are distorting historical reality, it is Ma.
Newman ran for US president in 1956 and periodically thereafter under the slogan “You could do worse ... and always have.” Perhaps Ma should think about using that as his re-election campaign slogan. At least it would have the benefit of being more historically accurate.
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
RSS