The passage of Sen. Gardner’s and Rep. Curtis’ TAIPEI Act last month is a good occasion to take a look at Congress’ wherewithal on Asia policy. At a time in American history so deeply characterized by executive power (beginning long before the present administration), it’s easy to forget Congress’ role. Right now, of course, like every legislature in the world, America’s has been consumed with responding to the COVID-19 crisis. But consider where it was before the corona virus arrived. Even with the Senate in one party’s control and the House in the other’s, over the last several years, Congress has gotten deeply engaged in the Indo-Pacific. Readers will be familiar with some of the recent measures singed into law, in addition the TAIPEI Act. In 2018, there were the Taiwan Travel Act and Asia Reassurance Initiative Act. Last year, there was the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, and its less-advertised companion banning the export of munitions to the Hong Kong police. All in all, a little over half-way through the current Congress, more than twice as many bills have been introduced concerning China and Taiwan as compared to five years ago. And that’s just part of the Asia-related activity. Congress has led the way on North Korea policy for two administrations. It is pushing for re-imposition of sanctions on Burma. And it has set the parameters around US relations with the Duterte-led government in the Philippines. Now, skeptics will say this is all perfunctory. Who cares about yet another demand for a strategy document or report? A “Sense of the Congress resolution” or “statement of policy,” they might say, “are not worth the paper they are written on.” And as for sanctions, they are at the discretion of the President, even when Congress makes them “mandatory.” On the first objection, they’ve got
Early last month, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) was elected party chairman, winning with a seven-to-three majority over pro-Beijing former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), a two-time KMT vice chairman. Chiang’s victory has been interpreted as a generational change and the beginning of major party reform. In his inauguration speech on March 9, Chiang did not mention the so-called “1992 consensus.” Analysts believe that his most urgent task is to attract more young people to the party and win voter trust, and that he does not care about Beijing’s reaction. After joining the party chairmanship by-election, Chiang made his pro-US stance clear and said that the KMT would rebuild its representation in the US. As for the cross-strait relationship, the phrases “1992 consensus” and “one China, each with its own interpretation” were all but absent. Chiang says that the Republic of China is a stabilizing force, which the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) media outlets say is getting too close to a “state-to-state” position. This is also why Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has broken with precedent and not sent a congratulatory telegram to Chiang on his election. The US of course welcomed Chiang’s US-friendly stance, and the day after his inauguration the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) issued a congratulatory statement. “The KMT has a long tradition of supporting closer US-Taiwan relations,” it said. “We look forward to jointly pursuing that goal under Chairman Chiang’s leadership, as we promote our many common values and interests.” The US Congress was also pleased to see two healthy political parties in Taiwan, as this is beneficial to deepening Taiwan’s vibrant democracy. Although the KMT’s growing pro-Taiwan stance would challenge and counterbalance the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), it would be good in the long run for the maturity and consolidation of Taiwan’s democracy. In his inauguration speech, Chiang said
Taiwan, like Canada, is a multicultural nation. Its residents migrated mainly from the South Pacific islands and the southern coast of China during the 13th and the 17th to 19th centuries. For nearly 400 years, Taiwan has been subject to the Dutch, Spanish, Kingdom of Tungning, Qing Dynasty, Japanese and Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) regimes. It was not until the first presidential election in 1996 that Taiwanese truly moved toward democracy. Taiwan is an independent nation with solid borders, an effective government and diplomatic relations. It shares the same values of democracy, freedom, rule of law and human rights as Canada. It is the 22nd-largest economy in the world and the 12th-largest trading partner of Canada. Taiwan received the highest ranking in this year’s Health Care Index by Country from the crowd-sourced global database Numbeo, with a score of 86.71, while last year, CEOWORLD Magazine ranked it highest in its Health Care Index. Taiwan also leads in technology, biology, chemistry and engineering sectors. Taiwan is internationally renowned for its reputation on political rights and civil liberties, and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has publicly praised it as a democratic success story, a reliable partner and a force for good. However, as China rises to power, it seeks to impose its so-called “one China” principle on the UN, meaning that Taiwan cannot be recognized as a sovereign country. With China’s “sharp power” influence over the international community, Taiwan also cannot become a WHO observer nation. Since COVID-19 broke out in China in December, more than 1.2 million people worldwide have tested positive for the virus, more than 64,000 have died and more than 180 countries have been affected. Taiwan, predicted to be the second-worst infected area after China, has created a “medical miracle” through the determined efforts of its government and people, and kept the confirmed cases to
EDITORIAL CARTOON
At the start of the 21st century, the following things did not exist: In the US, a large network of purpose-built immigration prisons, some of which are run for profit. In western China, “political education” camps designed to hold hundreds of thousands of people, supported by a high-tech surveillance system. In Syria, a prison complex dedicated to the torture and mass execution of civilians. In northeast India, a detention center capable of holding 3,000 people who may have lived in the country for decades, but are unable to prove they are citizens. In Myanmar, rural encampments where thousands of people are being forced to live on the basis of their ethnicity. On small islands and in deserts at the edges of wealthy regions — Greece’s Aegean islands, the Negev Desert in Israel, the Pacific Ocean near Australia, the southern Mediterranean coastline — various types of large holding centers for would-be migrants. The scale and purpose of these places vary considerably, as do the political regimes that have created them, but they share certain things in common. Most were established as temporary or “emergency” measures, but have outgrown their original stated purpose and become seemingly permanent. Most exist thanks to a mix of legal ambiguity — detention centers operating outside the regular prison system, for instance — and physical isolation. And most, if not all, have at times been described by their critics as concentration camps. We tend to associate the idea of concentration camps with their most extreme instances — the Nazi Holocaust, and the Soviet Gulag system; genocide in Cambodia and Bosnia. However, the disturbing truth is that concentration camps have been widespread throughout recent history, used to intern civilians that a state considers hostile, to control the movement of people in transit and to extract forced labor. The author
The issue of the nation’s name this week became a subject of contention between Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators. KMT Legislator Chen Yu-jen (陳玉珍) on Wednesday said that “the Republic of China [ROC] is a country, Taiwan is not.” She added that “the Republic of China, Taiwan” has the broadest consensus among members of the public as the title of the nation. Executive Yuan spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka said: “Taiwan is a sovereign nation whose constitutional title is the ROC. This is the consensus of the majority of the public and how most people identify the nation.” Regardless of whether the DPP wants to abolish the name “Republic of China” — a sentiment shared by most Taiwanese, according to several polls — the parties need to reach a consensus on a name, as a constitutional amendment to change the nation’s official title is unlikely to be passed in the short term. Clarity and consensus are necessary for Taiwan to avoid problems, some of which have been highlighted over the past two months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Italy on Jan. 30 included China Airlines and EVA Air in its ban on flights to and from China, with Vietnam following suit two days later. This was partly due to the countries’ adherence to Beijing’s “one China” principle, but reportedly there was also confusion due to Taiwan’s official title, as well as the name of its flag carrier. The issue was serious enough to garner the attention of a Taiwanese advocacy group in the US, which launched a petition calling on China Airlines to change its name to “Taiwan Airlines.” While the name Taiwan Airlines would likely face opposition from the KMT — based on its opposition to former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) proposal to rename Chunghwa Post — a cross-party
Having returned to the UK late last year and with a Taiwanese spouse remaining in Taiwan, I have been afforded the chance to compare and contrast the UK and Taiwanese governments’ responses to the COVID-19 crisis. My early conclusions are that Taiwan benefits from a rational, competent government, which quickly recognizes, adapts to and confronts large-scale disasters. It is led by a government that does more than just talk of respecting democracy and human rights, one that is scrutinized and responds to criticism, one that is concerned about public opinion, and one that is used to dealing with emergencies on a regular basis, such as earthquakes and typhoons, not forgetting the ever-present existential threat of Chinese armed forces trained and equipped to invade, annex and brutally occupy the nation at a moment’s notice. When the virus first began to spread, the Taiwanese government immediately recognized the vulnerable position its proximity and business ties to China presented. It did not argue about the economy: It knew that if the disease were to rage uncontrolled across the country, it would severely damage it anyway. The priority, it appears, was containment and preventing spread, and that would allow the most people to keep working, earning, and spending. Hence, early on, flights from China were suspended, all visitors or returning citizens were put in a mandatory and policed 14-day quarantine, and incredibly a system was set up to provide everyone three masks a week using the National Health Insurance (NHI) card from all participating clinics and pharmacies linked to the NHI within a week. As a result, after three months, Taiwan has had fewer than 200 cases and half a dozen deaths. Following WHO rules, like South Korea and Vietnam, Taiwan went to work testing and tracing all cases. That the disease spread out of
The coronavirus crisis highlights the importance of maintaining trust as a decisive factor in winning the battle against the pandemic. Instead of just focusing on understanding the biological aspect of how to defeat the pathogen, social measures should be given equal attention to bring about the often-quoted “flattening of the curve” before effective medicines and vaccines could be produced. The social measures being implemented in most countries consisting of social distancing at the individual level — staying at home, avoiding mass gatherings, protecting vulnerable groups — require personal self-discipline. It is quite timely for the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) to publish guidelines in this respect against a background of a continuing surge in new cases (“Virus Outbreak: Practice social distancing, CECC says,” April 1, page 1). Needless to say, person-to-person trust is the cornerstone of any successful social distancing policy. Speaking about wearing a mask, it is not just in Taiwan and East Asia that people are coming to realize its merit in slowing the spread of the disease, especially when there are asymptomatic carriers posing as a possible source of transmission (“Virus Outbreak: Testing asymptomatic people seen as key addition,” March 31, page 3). The list of Western countries mandating compulsory wearing of masks in public places now include the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic and Austria. Despite the absence of mask wearing habits in these places, the populations have taken up their government’s advice and civic effort in sewing masks in the Czech Republic is particularly impressive. In the Slovak Republic, which has recently had a change of government, agreement with previous and present government measures, including masking, reached a high of 80 percent. It is clear that a high level of trust in the government can translate to effective policy implementation to curtail large-scale spread of the disease. However,
EDITORIAL CARTOON
Just across the River Spree from the quiet of Berlin’s Museum Island during lockdown, German Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier this week sat in self-imposed quarantine in her city center apartment. The galleries at the UNESCO World Heritage Site might boast more World War II bullet holes than visitors in the time of COVID-19, but the calm eludes her. After more than 14 years in office, Merkel, whose self-isolation ended on Friday, has returned to the front line of crisis fighting and is in her element again. At 65, she is more in demand than ever, as Europe’s most powerful leader steers her country through what she describes as the greatest challenge since the war. Polls show a surge in support for her party and broad public approval of her policies. Yet history might judge her less on her custody of the region’s powerhouse economy than on what she does to help its weakest members through a public-health disaster unparalleled in peacetime. The last crisis to undermine the European integration project was financial, as Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus required bailouts between 2010 and 2015 to keep the continent’s single currency intact. This time, people are dying in their thousands and Italy, the euro region’s third-biggest economy, risks going into meltdown. “Obviously it’s a legacy moment,” said Daniel Hamilton, a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a Richard von Weizsaecker fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. “The crisis is really doing a number on European unity,” and Germany above all countries has the greatest stake in maintaining a united Europe, he said. “It’s reached a stage where Germany will have to show that it is part of the solution to restoring faith in the European project.” As the EU’s longest-serving leader, Merkel’s dilemma is whether she goes all-out
Since becoming mayor of Prague more than two years ago, Zdenek Hrib has repeatedly irked China by meeting dissidents, criticizing its treatment of ethnic minorities and promoting ties with Taiwan. Now, the 38-year-old Pirate Party member is a symbol of the skepticism Beijing must overcome as it rushes to aid a Europe ravaged by a pandemic that began on Chinese soil. The Czech Republic was among numerous European countries to receive virus test kits and other medical supplies from China in recent weeks. “This isn’t a humanitarian gift or aid,” Hrib said in a statement on Friday last week. “From China’s perspective, it’s business.” Such sentiments are hardly surprising from Hrib, who flew the Tibetan flag over city hall on March 10 to commemorate the anniversary of the region’s failed 1959 revolt against Chinese Communist Party rule. The defiant move — a throwback to late Czech president Vaclav Havel’s support for the Dalai Lama — came at a sensitive time for Beijing just as COVID-19 was prompting its first lockdowns in Europe. The pandemic has shaken up China’s diplomatic efforts on the continent, which has been a major focus of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) Belt and Road Initiative to recreate ancient trade routes across Asia. In recent weeks, Xi’s government — confident that the coronavirus is under control at home — has sent supplies and disease experts to Europe, where the disease has killed more than 20,000. Many such as the Czech Republic’s China-friendly president, Milos Zeman, have gladly accepted the support. Hrib represents another strain of Czech and European politics that is skeptical of Beijing’s promises and its strategic aims. “I would really like us to be a country that wouldn’t steer away from the tradition of human rights,” Hrib said in an interview last year. “A country that would not turn away from victims of injustice,
In times of crisis, the public looks to government leaders for guidance, reassurance and action, but it is crucial that people can trust them. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted — sometimes brutally — the disparities in leadership ability worldwide, with some nations or territories fortunate to have competent, if not exceptional, officials, while others are burdened with politicians who have dithered or even sought to settle scores with their critics and further quash dissent. The actions of Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s (林鄭月娥) administration this year remain a prime example of failing leadership, from its unwillingness to take early action to restrict travel from China to its “business as usual” approach in arresting critics over alleged actions during last year’s pro-democracy protests. Its inability to serve the best interests of the public it governs has been demonstrated by measures large and small. At a time when the territory is faced, like many places, with a shortage of protective gear for medical personnel — to the point where it is exploring ways to reuse hospital workers’ N95 respirators — as well as the threat of a looming food shortage after authorities in Shenzhen, China, moved to restrict truck deliveries across the border by imposing new health checks on drivers, Lam’s government is preoccupied with keeping its masters in Beijing happy by chipping away at Hong Kongers’ basic rights and freedoms. On Thursday, Hong Kong Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Edward Yau (邱騰華) accused Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) of breaching the “one China” principle after one of its reporters on Saturday last week asked WHO Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward whether the WHO would accept Taiwan as a member. Yau said that RTHK’s action had breached its charter as a public service broadcaster, an accusation that the station has denied. Also on Thursday, the
The “Wuhan pneumonia” outbreak has become a pandemic, but many countries have yet to come to grips with the worsening severity of this medical crisis. Historian Robert Peckham has studied how the ecology of deadly diseases has changed from the late 19th century until today and, in his 2016 book titled Epidemics in Modern Asia highlights the intrinsic link between global connectivity and emerging infections. The frequency of outbreaks — from SARS in 2003 to swine flu in 2009 and today’s COVID-19 — and their rapid rate of transmission owe much to globalization. Better and cheaper transportation and communications technology have empowered international aviation, shipping and railroad networks, contributing to mobility — both people and commodities — and popularizing tourism. Yet, the institutional drivers and mechanisms propelling globalization have made the world “flat” — to borrow from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman — and spread the pandemic in a short period. In reaping the material benefits of globalization, people often overlook the invisible risk of emerging infections, which can spread across continents, affecting people in vulnerable conditions and destabilizing economies worldwide. Many nations have invoked the vocabulary of war to characterize their struggle against the coronavirus, the archenemy of humankind. As the first epicenter of the pandemic, China mobilized all of its medical and bureaucratic resources to confront what President Xi Jinping (習近平) called a “people’s war” against COVID-19, echoing mass health movements and social programs of the Mao Zedong (毛澤東) era. The mighty Chinese Communist Party state relied on its longstanding system of urban and rural neighborhood surveillance to restrict mobility. Local party cadres and police officers set up roadblocks on major roads and at public squares, guarding the entrances to government offices, medical facilities, schools and apartment buildings. These officials continually checked temperatures, disinfected residences and stopped outsiders from entering their territory. This combination
On Sunday, the WHO secretariat issued a statement saying: “The question of Taiwanese membership in WHO is up to WHO member states, not WHO staff.” The statement also mentioned that the WHO has been working closely with Taiwan on the COVID-19 pandemic through the establishment of the Taiwanese International Health Regulations Point of Contact, the Taiwanese Field Epidemiology Training Program and the participation of two Taiwanese public healthcare experts in the Global Research and Innovation Forum, organized by the global body in February. According to the WHO’s constitution, the secretariat indeed has no right to decide the membership of any country, but as the WHO is the leader of global health, it has a responsibility to take a neutral and professional stance toward Tawain to facilitate its full participation in the world body. The statement is encouraging in that the WHO distinguishes between Taiwan and China, as Taiwanese membership has nothing to do with Chinese membership. As UN Resolution 2758 and Resolution WHA25.1 state, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the only legal government of China, but they do not claim that Taiwan should be represented by the PRC under the UN system. Although the WHO secretariat is not entitled to make decisions on Taiwanese membership, it does have a responsibility to provide an opportunity for a fair discussion of this issue. In the the case of East Germany in 1968, West Germany, who was already a WHO member, used the Hallstein Doctrine to ensure that it had the exclusive right to represent the entire German nation. Consequently, when then-WHO director-general Marcolino Gomes Candau received a membership application from East Germany, he took two actions: First, he put the application on the World Health Assembly’s (WHA) agenda for discussion with the WHO constitution and related rules of procedure as a reference for all member states. Second,
Former premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) — who died on Monday at the age of 100 — always gave people the impression of being a “military strongman.” When his son Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) was elected Taipei mayor at the end of 2006, he excitedly told his father, who had served as the chief of the general staff: “Chief, I just took the hill.” Apart from his public image as a military leader, it seems that he was also chief of staff at home. Born in 1919, Hau spent most of his life in the military. Upon graduating from the Republic of China Military Academy, better known as the Whampoa Military Academy, he began his military career as an artillery officer in 1937 and retired as a four-star general. After a military career spanning 53 years, he hung up his uniform and put on his suit, turning from an officer into a civilian. In 1990, he was appointed premier. He had held a commander’s role for many years, and had served as a top military and political aide to then-president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), which is perhaps why he always acted sternly and resolutely. Hau served as commander-in-chief of the army for three-and-a-half years before serving as chief of the general staff for eight years. Serving as a military leader for nearly 12 years gave him great decisionmaking power in the armed forces during the latter part of Chiang’s presidency. Due to differences in their viewpoints on military and political issues, Hau and Chiang’s successor, Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), turned from close friends to mortal enemies, with their factions haunting the internal workings of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). In 1993, Hau tendered his resignation as premier under internal pressure from Lee and external pressure from the opposition camp. With his connections inside the party, he was elected one of the KMT’s
EDITORIAL CARTOON
Gail LeBoeuf makes an unlikely climate justice campaigner. Although the 67-year-old resident of Gramercy, a small town in southern Louisiana by the banks of the Mississippi River, has been fighting against local pollution for the past few years, she spent most of her career working at an area plastics manufacturer. “These plants just kept popping up, one after another, built by these billionaires who decided they just want to make money — so they come into these little river parishes and sweep everyone else aside,” she said. On a marshy roadside, facing a sea of sugarcane fields, she pointed toward the horizon, where the latest polluting plant in this heavily polluted region of the US — known locally as Cancer Alley — is due to be built. Named the Sunshine Project, the planned plastics manufacturing complex, a project of the Taiwan-based Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) through its subsidiary FG LA LLC, has become a focal point in the fight against industrial pollution in Saint James parish and the surrounding region. The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality in January granted the Sunshine Project a final set of permits, allowing construction of the complex’s 14 separate plants to begin. Saint James parish neighbors Saint John the Baptist parish, home to the most toxic air in the US. Local campaigners such as LeBoeuf have been saying for years that the cocktail of new pollutants — including the cancer-causing compounds ethylene oxide, styrene and benzene — creates an intolerable risk to local health. In District 5 of Saint James parish — 26,700 hectares of land — there are eight industrial plants operating, and the new project is to occupy 931 of those hectares. The Sunshine Project would not only be a major contributor to local toxic pollution, but would also be a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. The department has
The world’s news headlines have been horrifying: Vital equipment is in short supply, forcing doctors to make battlefield decisions about who lives and who dies; long lines of sick people wait in vain for a test or a hospital bed; empty businesses, stores, bars and restaurants are bringing local economies the world over to a grinding halt; and there has been a grim accounting of which countries are hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the US surging ahead of China, home to the original outbreak. In Europe, the pandemic has hit especially hard in Italy, which has been on national lockdown since March 9 in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus. As of yesterday, Italy had reported 115,242 confirmed cases of COVID-19. At least 13,915 Italians, mostly in the northern Lombardy region, had so far died of the coronavirus. Milan, the regional capital, is more than a mainstay of Italy’s economy. The once bustling city is inextricably linked to the European project and is a crucial driver of the European economy as a whole. Yet, as the death toll rises and the region sees transmission rates higher than anywhere else on the continent, the EU and its member states have been slow to step up in any meaningful way and show solidarity with their ailing neighbor. Instead, EU member states have closed borders and turned inward. Italy’s plight was made worse by the border closures, which cut off much-needed supplies and medical equipment. Governments have engaged in petty squabbles, appearing more concerned about their own economic advantage. Representatives of some northern European countries have appeared to challenge Italy’s economic decisions, and seem to care more about knowing how Italy plans to pay back debts than they do about the death toll and economic downturn. At a time when the continent, and indeed the
Burger King Taiwan on Wednesday last week posted an update on Facebook advertising a new “Wuhan pneumonia” (武漢肺炎) home delivery meal, catering to customers hankering for a Whopper, but who wished to avoid visiting one of its outlets. “Wuhan pneumonia” is the term commonly used in Taiwan to describe COVID-19. Beijing has been waging an extensive propaganda campaign against the use of the words “Wuhan” or “China” in reference to the novel coronavirus, calling it racist and discriminatory. Meanwhile, Chinese officials have claimed that the coronavirus might have originated in the US. The intention is obvious: to distract attention from the Chinese Communist Party’s cover-up and epic mismanagement of the outbreak. Burger King China on Sunday posted an apology on Sina Weibo (it could not post on Facebook as the social media site is blocked in China). “Burger King Taiwan Region used the phrase ‘Wuhan pneumonia’ in a post on Facebook. Although Burger King China and Burger King Taiwan Region are separate companies, we would like to express our anger at the inappropriate language,” it said. Burger King Taiwan then decided to remove its post and substituted any previous mention of “Wuhan pneumonia” with “novel coronavirus.” Furious Taiwanese immediately plastered the page with a torrent of invective. The BBC on Thursday last week published a report that quoted the mother of a British woman who was quarantined in Taiwan. The mother claimed that her daughter was being kept “in prison-like conditions” in a “filthy” room with no hot water and nowhere to wash her clothes. Taiwanese expressed their anger on social media and it was not long before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was pressed into action. The ministry sent the BBC a lengthy rebuttal, which was added to the report on the BBC News Web site. Several hours later, photographs showing a spotless room and a wide, airy balcony also
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