On Feb. 27, US Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman gave a major address on US-Northeast Asia relations at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington.
Overall, it was a good speech, emphasizing that the US is committed to engage with Northeast Asia — Japan, Korea and China. She said that the US has a sustained, well-resourced, high-level engagement with the region, and that the rebalance is a “recognition of reality. America’s security and prosperity are inextricably and increasingly linked with the Asia-Pacific.”
However, Taiwan was hardly mentioned: Only once during the speech did she refer to the nation, saying China has complaints about US friendship with the people of Taiwan. When someone in the question-and-answer session asked about that, Sherman said that it “is a good sign” that Taiwan is not talked about as much as it once was.
This might be true, but Sherman, and the US, can do better than that: Taiwan is a vibrant democracy, which is under an existential threat from across the Taiwan Strait by its large and undemocratic neighbor, China. Given these circumstances, it would have been nice if the speech had mentioned Taiwan as a shining example of democracy.
As it was, Sherman did say that “the concept of one China and the Three Communiques has become a standard, that the economic integration between Taiwan and mainland China is quite so — it is the status quo that the political issues are worked out over time.”
There are a number of problems with that statement. First, the “One China, Three Communiques” mantra might have become standard in the repeated recitations of US officials, but it perpetuates an outdated concept dating to the 1970s, which keeps Taiwan dangling in international isolation. For the people in a vibrantly democratic Taiwan, this is becoming less of a tenable position. Taiwanese ask: “Why can’t we be treated like any other country in the international family of nations?”
Second, whether the economic integration between Taiwan and China is the “status quo” is highly debatable: The Sunflower movement and the results of the local elections in November last year show very clearly that the large majority of the people of Taiwan reject the policies of the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), which push Taiwan into a closer economic embrace with China.
It was precisely on this topic that former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, in an interview with Taiwan Business Weekly on June 18 last year, warned Taiwan against economic over-dependence on China, saying that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government’s push for closer cross-strait ties could lead to Taiwan losing its economic and political independence, and leave it vulnerable to an over-reliance on China.
A third point not mentioned by Sherman is Taiwan’s strategic importance: It is located right between the South China Sea and the East China Sea — two areas of major tension where China is aggressively pushing the envelope — and is therefore a key link in the US’ security chain in the region. So, what we would have liked to see in the speech is a bit more vision about Taiwan’s strategic importance and its future.
In her speech, Sherman referred to the “lofty nature of UN ideals” and that it was “the handiwork of clear-eyed realists [who] … saw as their most urgent job the development of institutions that would keep nations from once again ripping each other apart.”
To the people of Taiwan, the most poignant injustice in Western policies is that they are still not treated as an equal member in the international community, and excluded from the institutions Sherman holds so high.
Gerrit van der Wees is editor of Taiwan Communique, a publication based in Washington.
Chinese actor Alan Yu (于朦朧) died after allegedly falling from a building in Beijing on Sept. 11. The actor’s mysterious death was tightly censored on Chinese social media, with discussions and doubts about the incident quickly erased. Even Hong Kong artist Daniel Chan’s (陳曉東) post questioning the truth about the case was automatically deleted, sparking concern among overseas Chinese-speaking communities about the dark culture and severe censorship in China’s entertainment industry. Yu had been under house arrest for days, and forced to drink with the rich and powerful before he died, reports said. He lost his life in this vicious
A recent trio of opinion articles in this newspaper reflects the growing anxiety surrounding Washington’s reported request for Taiwan to shift up to 50 percent of its semiconductor production abroad — a process likely to take 10 years, even under the most serious and coordinated effort. Simon H. Tang (湯先鈍) issued a sharp warning (“US trade threatens silicon shield,” Oct. 4, page 8), calling the move a threat to Taiwan’s “silicon shield,” which he argues deters aggression by making Taiwan indispensable. On the same day, Hsiao Hsi-huei (蕭錫惠) (“Responding to US semiconductor policy shift,” Oct. 4, page 8) focused on
George Santayana wrote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This article will help readers avoid repeating mistakes by examining four examples from the civil war between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces and the Republic of China (ROC) forces that involved two city sieges and two island invasions. The city sieges compared are Changchun (May to October 1948) and Beiping (November 1948 to January 1949, renamed Beijing after its capture), and attempts to invade Kinmen (October 1949) and Hainan (April 1950). Comparing and contrasting these examples, we can learn how Taiwan may prevent a war with
In South Korea, the medical cosmetic industry is fiercely competitive and prices are low, attracting beauty enthusiasts from Taiwan. However, basic medical risks are often overlooked. While sharing a meal with friends recently, I heard one mention that his daughter would be going to South Korea for a cosmetic skincare procedure. I felt a twinge of unease at the time, but seeing as it was just a casual conversation among friends, I simply reminded him to prioritize safety. I never thought that, not long after, I would actually encounter a patient in my clinic with a similar situation. She had
RSS