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.
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
When it became clear that the world was entering a new era with a radical change in the US’ global stance in US President Donald Trump’s second term, many in Taiwan were concerned about what this meant for the nation’s defense against China. Instability and disruption are dangerous. Chaos introduces unknowns. There was a sense that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) might have a point with its tendency not to trust the US. The world order is certainly changing, but concerns about the implications for Taiwan of this disruption left many blind to how the same forces might also weaken
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
As the new year dawns, Taiwan faces a range of external uncertainties that could impact the safety and prosperity of its people and reverberate in its politics. Here are a few key questions that could spill over into Taiwan in the year ahead. WILL THE AI BUBBLE POP? The global AI boom supported Taiwan’s significant economic expansion in 2025. Taiwan’s economy grew over 7 percent and set records for exports, imports, and trade surplus. There is a brewing debate among investors about whether the AI boom will carry forward into 2026. Skeptics warn that AI-led global equity markets are overvalued and overleveraged
RSS