Last year, it was South Korea. Now, it is Japan.
Yes, nation-bashing is now, apparently, a winning campaign strategy. At least for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
And this disturbing trend is showing no signs of abating.
Remarks made on Saturday by KMT presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) that “Taiwan will lose to Japan” if she does not win next year’s election reflect the latest in a set of statements that are likely to cause some head-scratching in both Taipei and Tokyo.
After all, is Japan not Taiwan’s second-largest trading partner? Is Japan not a key influence in Taiwan’s geostrategic position? Did President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) not recently say that Taiwan and Japan enjoy a “special partnership”?
So where is all this negativity coming from?
The answer is simple.
It reflects the KMT’s willingness to place politics above all else — even above the importance of Taiwan-Japan relations. More fundamentally, it shows that the KMT is not above expending what is in the nation’s best interests — having a strong, healthy relationship with Japan — in order to advance its own political agenda.
The implications of this trend feeds into a common criticism that in Taiwan, politics trumps all.
It sends a detrimental message to our important allies that anything and everything can be sacrificed and expended in the course of an election. That is not a message Taiwan can afford to be sending as it seeks to strengthen global relations.
Taiwan’s position in world order is premised on maintaining strong international relations. It is the foundation of what keeps Taiwan free and secure; and it is essential as to diversifying the economy.
This is the foundation of the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) foreign policy direction: That Taiwan should be building better and more engaging partnerships with global partners. It should be looking to find new opportunities to strengthen — not weaken — these relations.
That was the message DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) shared when she visited the US in June. It has also been Taiwan’s consistent message to the international community as well. This is a message that will not change based on the whims of an election campaign.
As for history?
History did not stop the US and Japan from building one of the strongest and most enduring alliances of the 20th century, and it certainly would not stop Taiwan from forging a vital and dynamic partnership with Japan.
Vincent Y. Chao is a deputy director of international affairs for the Democratic Progressive Party.
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
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs