The Chinese Communist Party's 16th National Congress is underway in Beijing with important decisions on China's leadership being made over the course of the next five days. However, looking at the content of the report Chinese President Jiang Zemin (
Chinese officials recently launched a rhetorical offensive to push for direct links, sparking expectations that Jiang's report to the congress would break new ground -- that Beijing would show some flexibility. Such expectations have been dashed. Jiang said nothing new about Taiwan. Since he will continue to call the shots for the foreseeable future his report will dictate Beijing's policies toward Taiwan for the next two or three years.
Jiang's policies toward Taiwan have been a failure because he has never been able to understand public opinion in this country. His eight-point policy on Taiwan remains just a piece of paper.
Taiwan is very different from Hong Kong or Macau. The ROC is an independent sovereignty established in 1912. It did not disappear after the PRC's establishment, but instead has continued to enjoy sovereignty over its own territory and population. Therefore any discussions between Taipei and Beijing must be at the level of two independent states, not between a central government and a "renegade province." China wants cross-strait relations to be conducted under the premise of its "one China" principle. It wants Taiwan to give up its self-esteem and status and accept the "one country, two systems" scheme. If the leadership in Beijing was younger, one might be tempted to ask what it had been smoking.
Even talk between a man and a woman about marriage has to be an act of free will. One side can extend a proposition and try to make the other side happy. However, if your potential partner threatens to blow your brains out with a gun if you don't marry them, it is not exactly what one would consider a friendly offer. But this is what China's Taiwan policy is like.
The unification of two countries is a marriage of thousands of families. State leaders need to consider the optimum welfare of all of them. Despite his emphasis on peaceful unification, Jiang has also vowed not to renounce the use of force, warning Taiwan that it cannot delay unification indefinitely. No parent can ever accept such a belligerent marriage proposition, much less a state leader.
A normal relationship between a man and a woman should begin from friendship and then proceed toward marriage, not the other way around. Beijing's Taiwan policy is to force Taipei to recognize "one China" before any negotiation can begin -- which is equivalent to forcing a marriage before the two sides have become friends. This is diametrically opposite to the normal procedure, where people interact on an equal basis before they discuss marriage.
Cross-strait relations reached an impasse more than 10 years ago because Chinese leaders of Jiang's generation were unable to overcome their blind spots. Hopefully the next generation of leaders will see that equality and mutual benefit should be the true nature of cross-strait relations. Hopefully they will remove the unnecessary ballistic missiles deployed against Taiwan and try to win acceptance from the people of Taiwan through a normal relationship.
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
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
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