Let us Conduct a quick survey of changes to the regional situation over the past week or so.
First, US Secretary of State John Kerry made a three-day visit to Asia on Monday to Wednesday last week, taking in Laos — the ASEAN chair this year — Cambodia and China. Before he went, US officials said that, for this trip, Kerry hoped that he would get the ASEAN states to work together to counterbalance China’s military expansion in the South China Sea. Kerry also raised the issue in Beijing during a meeting with Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) on the final day of his trip, urging China to desist from reclaiming land and undertaking construction, such as building airports, in the South China Sea to reduce tensions in the region.
Second, and not 24 hours after Kerry got back on the plane, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) chose to go to Itu Aba Island (太平島, Taiping Island) on Thursday last week. Not only was this manifestly at odds with what the US was trying to do, but Ma also said during a press conference in Taiwan on his return that “Taiwan and China have a lot of shared history and shared lineage, and cannot be separated.”
On that same day, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement saying: “The Spratly Islands [Nansha Islands, 南沙群島] have always been part of China’s territory, and Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait have a responsibility to protect the inheritance of the Chinese race.”
Beijing’s official mouthpiece the Global Times published an editorial on Monday entitled “President Ma welcome on Taiping Island, [president-elect] Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yet to back down,” in which it said: “As the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] administration currently governing Taiwan concedes that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one China, President Ma Ying-jeou’s decision to go [to Taiping Island] to safeguard [the country’s] territorial and maritime rights is a positive act.”
In other words, Ma’s going to Taiping Island, despite the government’s claim that it was a demonstration of national sovereignty, actually plays into China’s hands, allowing Beijing to use Ma as its pawn in countering the US’ strategy of trying to get ASEAN to work with it on the South China Sea situation.
Even worse, this will only reinforce neighboring countries’ misconceptions about Taiwan’s stance on the issue, creating the perception that Taiwan stands with China on the South China Sea issue, and that if they stand up to China, then they will be standing against Taiwan, too.
The upshot of this is that Ma has curtailed Tsai’s room for maneuver on the South China Sea issue when she takes office in a few months’ time. It is worth noting that the rationale behind Ma’s cooperation with Beijing can also be applied to the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台).
China has long based its demand for sovereignty over the Diaoyutais on the idea that Taiwan and China belong to “one China,” because if Beijing can say it possesses Taiwan, then it can also say it owns the Diaoyutais. It just so happens that now the US Pacific Command has confirmed that if China attacks the Diaoyutais, the US military would intervene, and also that the islands in the South China Sea do not belong to China.
It is clear from Ma’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習進平) in Singapore last year to his trip to Taiping Island that he is intent on squeezing every last bit of value out of the final months of his term in office.
With this in mind, the public would be well advised to remain vigilant.
Huang Tzu-wei is a researcher at the Taiwan Thinktank.
Translated by Paul Cooper
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under