President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) “manifestly failed” to improve relations with the US, Japan and other Asian powers as he moved Taiwan closer to China, the US-Taiwan Business Council said yesterday in an analysis of the Nov. 29 election results.
It said the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) had suffered a “historic defeat” at the hands of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and independent candidates.
“Food safety scandals, stagnant wages, high property prices and an overarching view that Taiwan’s economic fortunes are adrift contributed to the KMT’s defeat,” council president Rupert Hammond-Chambers said.
He said these local issues could also be tied to Ma’s focus on improving relations with China.
“The US-Taiwan Business Council has praised President Ma’s policies that seek to normalize cross-strait commercial relations and improve cultural exchanges,” Hammond-Chambers said.
However, the council also agreed with Ma that this policy approach had to be taken hand-in-hand with improved relations with the US, Japan and other Asian powers, he said.
“President Ma has manifestly failed to accomplish this goal, as rhetorical decelerations of strong relations is not the same as identifiable policy wins,” Hammond-Chambers said.
He said the one-sided nature of Ma’s external relations had left an overriding impression that Taiwan’s trajectory with regard to China had prioritized the powerful business and technocratic elite over the general populace.
“Many in Taiwan, particularly young singles and young families, feel that they have been disenfranchised,” Hammond-Chambers said.
He said that Ma would have to move decisively to correct the trajectory of his party and point it in the right direction if the KMT was to win the next presidential election.
“We should expect much maneuvering between now and the start of the Chinese New Year on Feb. 19, including a new premier, a new Cabinet and a new KMT chairman,” Hammond-Chambers said.
He said Beijing had invested more than six years in Ma’s government, “only to see the effectiveness of that decision challenged in these elections.”
“It is essential to recognize that China loomed large over the 2014 elections and that any decisions China makes in 2015 to represent its interests in Taiwan will be placed under a microscope in the debates leading up to the 2016 presidential election,” he said. “We are likely to see a steady uptick in tensions, punctuated by terse Chinese statements in support of its own equities. We are unlikely to see any new cross-strait initiatives, at least through May 2016 when Taiwan’s next president takes office.”
Hammond-Chambers said the US could do much to improve the likelihood of a “good outcome” in Taiwan.
“The US should consider several steps in 2015 to bolster Taiwan’s democratic process and telegraph clearly to Beijing that the US is not a disinterested party when it comes to cross-strait relations,” he said.
He said Washington should launch bilateral investment agreement negotiations immediately; accept Taiwan’s letter of request for new F-16 C/Ds to ensure that Taiwan has the advanced fighters it needs; send the submarine program notification — which has been sitting at the US Department of State since 2008 — to the US Congress; and send several Cabinet-level officials to Taiwan next year.
“The US needs to act now to head off the prospect of a steep spike in cross-strait tensions,” Hammond-Chambers said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods