China has no intention of following game rules devised by nations fighting back their distaste for China to continue doing business there, that is, separating political issues from business interests. Recent events including the European Union's (EU) parroting of the "one China" principle at the China-EU Summit, China's blacklisting of Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB), and the ban against Matsushita Communication Industrial Co in the Chinese mobile phone market indicate China is taking its "hostage-taking" diplomacy to a new height by taking foreign businesses hostage to accomplish its political ends.
Why must the EU reiterate its acceptance of the "one China" principle before the PRC Prime Minister Zhu Rongji (
What made the EU willing to read what is clearly a poorly written script by China? Certainly, China's promise during the summit that EU insurance firms will enjoy the same treatment as US firms in China, among other guarantees of bilateral business cooperation, was a strong influence in bending the will of the EU.
On the other hand, CSFB, the multinational investment bank, incurred the wrath of China for inviting Taiwan's finance minister Yen Ching-chang (顏慶章) to speak at a conference in Hong Kong, and co-sponsoring a European tour for Taiwan officials to promote the country's companies. For its imprudence, the CSFB was removed from the list of underwriters for a multibillion dollar stock offering planned by the China Unicom Group.
The sad thing is China's bully-boy tactics are working.
Two other US investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, have scrapped similar promotional tours for Taiwan in the US.
The list of casualties goes on. Japan's Matsushita Communication is temporarily banned from China's market because mobile phones manufactured by the company displayed the name "ROC (Republic of China)" in front of Taiwan's international code for dialling Taiwan phone numbers.
It is appalling to see China getting its way each time by choking foreign businesses. Without any doubt, China is adopting a new policy of taking foreign business interests hostage for its political agenda.Today, China's agenda is isolating Taiwan. Tomorrow, it may use the same tactic to accomplish other political ends.
It is important that other nations sit up and take notice of this, that they resist the tendency to think that China's actions are just a result of the intractable cross-strait dispute and no real concern or worry of theirs. For what has happened is that China, on the verge of entering an organization which set international rules for trade relationships between countries, has shown that it has no intention whatever of abiding by those rules. The message is clear: China will target your trade to achieve its political objectives and it simply has no intention of honoring its international commitments. As a result, China's entry into the WTO will be an enormous challenge for that organization. How is it going to enforce its will on a persistent scofflaw? Much has been made of the challenge China faces in living up to its WTO commitments, far too little has been said about what happens if it doesn't even try.
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) is expected to be summoned by the Taipei City Police Department after a rally in Taipei on Saturday last week resulted in injuries to eight police officers. The Ministry of the Interior on Sunday said that police had collected evidence of obstruction of public officials and coercion by an estimated 1,000 “disorderly” demonstrators. The rally — led by Huang to mark one year since a raid by Taipei prosecutors on then-TPP chairman and former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) — might have contravened the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法), as the organizers had
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
RSS