There has been an angry backlash in China following the US’ deployment of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea. It is to be stationed at a golf course owned by the South Korean Lotte Group.
Many Chinese tourists have chosen to boycott South Korea and some South Korean entertainers and artists have also been caught in the brouhaha. It goes without saying that Beijing is trying to pile pressure on South Korea’s next president.
Former Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs deputy minister Wang Yingfan (王英凡) last week said that while China understands that South Korea needs to bolster its autonomous defense capability, there are many other US-produced anti-ballistic missile systems that could counter the threat from North Korea.
Wang also said that there is an ulterior motive at play: In any future conflict between China and the US, THAAD would give Washington the upper hand.
Beijing’s stance on THAAD is naked self-interest. In fact, this has been the hallmark of Chinese diplomacy: a contemporary version of the Celestial Empire.
China’s behavior toward its neighbors regarding sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea is telling. Despite protests from nations with competing sovereignty claims, Beijing has aggressively pushed ahead with its plan to gain supremacy over the South China Sea by reclaiming land, beefing up military installations and using its navy to display its military strength.
Why is China doing this? As the first country to militarize the region, if the situation destabilizes, it would have an advantage over its rival claimants.
Beijing ignores warnings from other nations when it is in regards to things that it deems beneficial to itself. For eight years, former US president Barack Obama’s administration adopted a passive stance on the South China Sea issue. This allowed Beijing to repeatedly feign innocence while secretly forging ahead with its militarization plan.
China’s behavior toward Japan is no different. Beijing does not talk about Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) Great Leap Forward or the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, yet constantly reminds Japan of the Nanjing Massacre to ensure Japanese remain guilt-stricken.
Japan could choose to stand by and watch as China sails its aircraft carrier through the Pacific Ocean, but this does not seem to be Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s style.
Abe’s government has passed new legislation and amended the interpretation of the Japanese constitution to recognize the right to collective self-defense, while a second Izumo-class helicopter destroyer, the JS Kaga, is now in active service.
The Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association — Japan’s de facto embassy in Taipei — this year changed its name, while Japanese Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Jiro Akama on Saturday last week made an official visit to Taiwan. All of this demonstrates that Abe’s previously passive strategic position has moved toward realignment.
In regards to the US, US President Donald Trump accepted a congratulatory telephone call from President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) after winning the US presidential election last year — a significant break with convention that caught China’s leaders off guard.
Trump has also publicly questioned the “one China” policy, and in a subsequent telephone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — at Xi’s request — Trump agreed to honor “our [the US’] one China policy.” He deliberately declined to say “China’s ‘one China’ principle.”
The Trump administration has also raised the subject of selling Taiwan more and better-quality defensive weaponry, and even invited Taiwan’s representative to the US to attend a multinational summit on Islamic State group terrorism in Washington. This is a vastly different approach from former US president Barack Obama’s administration, and demonstrates that Trump is prepared to take a more vigorous approach toward China.
The Trump administration’s goal is simply to redress the current power imbalance in the Taiwan Strait and the East and South China seas, brought by an overbearing and aggressive China.
Abe and Trump have shown Taiwan that it is important not to let China see a nations’ weaknesses. During his eight years in office, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) prioritized his pro-China policy and collaborated with China in ways that gave it opportunities to infiltrate Taiwan and engage in economic warfare based on its United Front strategy.
These pro-China policies also gave China an advantage when Taiwan and China are in a stalemate: His administration signed the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement and 22 other agreements with China; deregulated tourism and allowed Chinese students to study in Taiwan; allowed China’s spy network to gain a foothold in the military; planted 5,000 spies in the government; and allowed universities to sign “letters of commitment” that courses would not touch upon “sensitive issues” in classes with Chinese students.
These policies have produced the wished-for results after the Tsai administration took office: increasing international pressure on Taiwan; a decline in numbers of Chinese tourists; a negative effect on Taiwanese businesspeople and artists in China; discontinued agricultural cooperation; and lopsided benefits focused on counties and cities led by local pan-blue administrations.
These are the results of the bargaining chips Ma handed to China, giving them the upper hand to attempt to force Tsai to accept “one China” as a prerequisite to restarting talks. Apart form maintaining the “status quo,” Tsai should be proactive and, based on the US-Japan strategy, should go on the attack to create a new situation.
China used to deceive Taiwan into believing that politics and the economy should be kept separate, but now, it says that political issues must be settled before anything else. After tacitly agreeing to Ma’s deception of Taiwanese by talking about “separate interpretations,” China now tells Tsai that she must not stray from the position that the two sides of the strait belong to “one China.”
These are China’s rules and anyone who plays by them loses. Ma is a good example: If a Chinese official visited, all Republic of China symbols vanished and Taiwan’s participation in the international community required Beijing’s approval.
This is why Tsai must not restrict herself by promising that there will be no changes. She must be more aggressive, because it is the only way to maintain the “status quo.” If she continues to play word games such as “cross-strait relations are not diplomatic relations” and “cross-strait relations are cross-strait relations,” because she is still hoping for an invitation to this year’s WHA, she will also lose the game by playing according to China’s rules.
Translated by Edward Jones and Perry Svensson
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