There are a lot of annoying things about Taiwanese politicians, one of which is their habit of claiming to be novices and feigning naivety.
Last weekend, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) went to China to take part in the Shanghai-Taipei City Forum. Of course this was a highly political event, but Ko kept pretending otherwise by claiming that the forum would not touch upon high-level political questions. In fact the forum was a thoroughly political drama.
China’s top leaders wrote a complete script for Ko’s visit to China long before he got there and rumors that it was a “’one China’ script” turned out to be completely accurate. Ko’s claim that his visit was only about commercial and civic exchanges does not stand up to scrutiny. His deception and self-deception fall apart if we trace one by one the steps that China took to further its United Front strategy.
First of all, the scout that Shanghai sent to Taipei to discuss arrangements for the Shanghai-Taipei City Forum was not the mayor or deputy mayor, but a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee and the minister in charge of the United Front policy. This shows that the leaders in Beijing decided long ago what kind of a forum it was going to be.
Second, when Taiwanese go to China, they have to carry what is commonly known as a “Taiwan compatriot permit.” What is a “Taiwan compatriot permit”? It is officially called a “Mainland travel permit for Taiwan residents” and is an embodiment of the “one China” principle.
China is now preparing to issue a new version of the travel permit, replacing the original eight-digit serial number with an 18-digit number, just like Chinese identity cards, thus completely “mainlandizing” so-called “Taiwan residents.”
Step three is China’s “strict vetting” of the list of Taiwanese attending the forum. Taipei City Councilor Chen Chien-ming (陳建銘) of the Taiwan Solidarity Union was very worried that he would not get a travel permit and he complained that Ko was not strong enough to make sure that everyone could go. Eventually China’s “strict vetting” resulted in at least one councilor being denied entry to China. Access to the forum turned out to be a one-way road and it was entirely up to the leaders in Beijing to decide who could and could not attend.
Fourth, the Chinese Public Security Bureau was in charge. Shanghai Mayor Ying Yong (應勇) spoke to the media for just 26 seconds, after which security officers, in an unashamed display of their “Chinese characteristics,” told reporters to leave, shouting “Everyone out.”
Fifth, both sides chanted the same mantra about “one family.”
While Ko said that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have a common destiny and both sides belong to one family, Ying took it a step further by talking about an “inseparable common destiny.”
Such talk subverts “Taiwanese subjectivity” and replaces it with “a common destiny across the Taiwan Strait.” If this not the “one-China principle,” what is it?
The sixth and final step that China took, and its most political and crafty move, was the way in which China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍), who was already in Shanghai, was dangled in front of Ko like a reward. Whether and when they would meet was made a question of China’s grace and favor.
In 2015, when Ko attended the forum in Shanghai for the first time as mayor of Taipei, he only met the mayor of Shanghai, not the secretary of the Shanghai Communist Party Committee or the Taiwan Affairs Office minister.
Ni Yongjie (倪永杰), deputy director of the Shanghai Institute of Taiwan Studies, was forthright in his comments about what happened this time.
He said that the Chinese side’s decision that Zhang should meet Ko the day before Ko went back to Taiwan was intended to create an “unexpected, but positive development” and show China’s approval of Ko’s statements.
The desired result was to avoid going back to the unstable cross-strait relations that existed in the days of former presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), Ni said.
What Ni avoided saying is that China’s chess game involves a Leninist strategy of getting the secondary enemy, Ko, on board so as to attack the main enemy — President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
Every step, from one to six, was part of the Chinese leaders’ plan and Ko followed the steps one by one all the way into the trap that China had set for him. Ko smugly boasted that he had broken the ice in Shanghai, without worrying about China’s delight in getting him to break it.
Let us leave aside the detention of Taiwanese human rights advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲), the possibly prison-induced cancer suffered by Chinese democracy activist and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) threats against Hong Kong’s democracy and Hong Kong democrats’ warning to Taiwan not be fooled by China. As China goes all-out to oppress and isolate Taiwan, how could the sight of Ko laughing and smiling in Shanghai not make Taiwanese angry?
As Aristotle said: “Those who are not angry from causes for which it is proper to be angry, appear to be stupid.”
Taiwanese are not stupid. They are angry about things that they should be angry about. They are not just angry with China, but also with Ko.
Chin Heng-wei is a political commentator.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Reports about Elon Musk planning his own semiconductor fab have sparked anxiety, with some warning that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) could lose key customers to vertical integration. A closer reading suggests a more measured conclusion: Musk is advancing a strategic vision of in-house chip manufacturing, but remains far from replacing the existing foundry ecosystem. For TSMC, the short-term impact is limited; the medium-term challenge lies in supply diversification and pricing pressure, only in the long term could it evolve into a structural threat. The clearest signal is Musk’s announcement that Tesla and SpaceX plan to develop a fab project dubbed “Terafab”
In late January, Taiwan’s first indigenous submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), completed its first submerged dive, reaching a depth of roughly 50m during trials in the waters off Kaohsiung. By March, it had managed a fifth dive, still well short of the deep-water and endurance tests required before the navy could accept the vessel. The original delivery deadline of November last year passed months ago. CSBC Corp, Taiwan, the lead contractor, now targets June and the Ministry of National Defense is levying daily penalties for every day the submarine remains unfinished. The Hai Kun was supposed to be
Most schoolchildren learn that the circumference of the Earth is about 40,000km. They do not learn that the global economy depends on just 160 of those kilometers. Blocking two narrow waterways — the Strait of Hormuz and the Taiwan Strait — could send the economy back in time, if not to the Stone Age that US President Donald Trump has been threatening to bomb Iran back to, then at least to the mid-20th century, before the Rolling Stones first hit the airwaves. Over the past month and a half, Iran has turned the Strait of Hormuz, which is about 39km wide at
The ongoing Middle East crisis has reinforced an uncomfortable truth for Taiwan: In an increasingly interconnected and volatile world, distant wars rarely remain distant. What began as a regional confrontation between the US, Israel and Iran has evolved into a strategic shock wave reverberating far beyond the Persian Gulf. For Taiwan, the consequences are immediate, material and deeply unsettling. From Taipei’s perspective, the conflict has exposed two vulnerabilities — Taiwan’s dependence on imported energy and the risks created when Washington’s military attention is diverted. Together, they offer a preview of the pressures Taiwan might increasingly face in an era of overlapping geopolitical
RSS