China’s options unacceptable
In 1984, the Sino-British Joint Declaration determined that Hong Kong would be returned to China in 1997 under a so-called “one country, two systems” arrangement. The Chinese government was so excited about the feasibility of this system being applied to Taiwan that it sponsored the “Future of Taiwan” conference in China in 1985. I was invited to participate as a nonresident Taiwanese academic — being blacklisted by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government in Taiwan at that time. After pretty heated discussions, the general conclusion drawn among Taiwanese academics was that the Chinese constitution’s guarantee of Hong Kong’s democratic system for 50 years would be meaningless, since each successive strongman in China could and would enforce his own interpretation of “guarantee.”
The New York Times has revealed that when the British tried to initiate democratic elections in Hong Kong before 1997, China threatened invasion. This year, Chinese ruled that the candidates for Hong Kong’s chief executive have to be approved by Beijing, which triggered ongoing student demonstrations. This clearly shows that our conclusion at the 1985 conference was correct.
After the conference, the Chinese suggested an “autonomous region” arrangement as another alternative for Taiwan. The participants were flown to Xinjiang to observe how the autonomous region system works. At a huge banquet in Urumqi, the key speaker was then-Xinjiang Chinese Communist Party first secretary Wang Enmao (王恩茂), who was Han Chinese, and the Uighur governor of Xinjiang did not open his mouth once the entire evening. It was obvious to us who was in control and that this type of “autonomy” cannot be accepted for Taiwan’s future either.
In recent years, the uprisings in Tibet and Xinjiang, the massive Han Chinese immigration into these regions and the Uighurs’ emigration all support our conclusion from almost 30 years ago that Taiwan can accept neither “one country, two systems” nor “autonomous region” status.
Liang-Shing Fan, professor emeritus of economics
Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado
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
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this