President-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is eager to bolster relations with key economic partner and possible security ally Japan, but those efforts could be hampered by his longtime backing for positions hostile to Japanese interests.
While China and the US remain at the center of strategic calculations, Japan is also an important player in the region because of its close security relations with the US. Some Japanese officials favor aiding Taiwan in the event of an attack by China — still a residual possibility even with China-friendly Ma replacing President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) on May 20.
Since his election on March 22, Ma has tried to curry favor in Tokyo, describing the country’s security cooperation with the US as an important contribution to overall Asian peace and stability.
Still, many in Japan doubt Ma’s sincerity, recalling his long-standing support for Taiwanese claims of sovereignty over a disputed group of islands in the East China Sea, and his criticism of former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni shrine.
The Diaoyutai (Senkaku in Japanese) were seized by Japan in 1895 when it colonized Taiwan.
Tokyo continues to exert control, though both Taiwan and China claim sovereignty.
Ma led a 1971 student protest against Japan’s position, and reaffirmed Taiwan’s claim of sovereignty during a high profile visit to Japan last year.
After Ma’s election victory, the right wing Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun said that if Ma were to work with China to undermine the Japanese claim, “then relations between Taiwan and Japan could sink to their lowest ebb” — a clear indication of his public relations difficulties with Japan.
Another sticky issue for Ma is his frequent criticism of Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni, which honors some 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including executed war criminals.
Many Japanese support the visits and regard Ma’s criticisms — and those from Beijing — as both unwarranted and disrespectful.
The tendency among some Japanese to lump Ma together with China is no accident, and reflects much more than Ma’s campaign promises to try to turn the corner on Chen’s policies and improve relations with Beijing.
In Taiwan, Ma is known as a Mainlander. Many in this group share the anti-Japanese sentiments of large numbers of Chinese, because of Japan’s brutal behavior in China during World War II.
By contrast, the Taiwanese — about 70 percent of the population — have a generally favorable view of Japan, despite Japan’s colonial occupation of Taiwan.
Many in this group revere Japanese culture, and are profoundly grateful for Japan’s contributions to Taiwanese infrastructure and economic development during the colonial period. Chen and his predecessor Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) both belong to this group, as does Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), whom Ma defeated in the March 22 elections.
Both Lee and Hsieh were educated in Japan and speak the language well. Lee’s brother fought with Japanese forces in World War II and gave his life for the Japanese cause.
Japan specialist Li Ming-juinn (李明峻) of the Taiwanese Society of International Law said Ma would have to be careful not to alienate Japan in order to accommodate China, because such a move could hurt its ties with the US, its most important foreign partner.
“Good relations with Japan can come in handy when Taiwan runs into problems with the US on issues such as arms sales to the island,” Li said. “Japan can help Taiwan with direct communications with the US.”
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater