China's government might want to subscribe to Martha Stewart Living magazine. If it had consulted the self-professed arbiter of good taste and manners, it might have avoided a major faux pas, not to mention an international incident.
Taiwan didn't get the same invitation to this week's meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders everyone else did. Miffed at being on the B-list, it's blowing off Shanghai's coming-out party. The ugly spat is dashing China's hopes of winning praise as charming and gracious host of the APEC meeting.
It's not a good thing, Martha might think. After all, Beijing could have avoided all this. Everyone knows China didn't want Taiwan at its party. But such is life; sometimes you have to invite folks you'd rather not hang out with. The point, as Martha might say, is to put on your best face and do the right thing.
Now China has lost face. It had already snubbed President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) -- the chief party-crasher, in Beijing's eyes -- by barring him from the talks. Next, Beijing blocked Li Yuan-zu (李元簇), a former vice president of Taiwan, by not issuing him a visa.
"We are not attending the APEC summit in Shanghai after China's unreasonable treatment," said Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Hung-mao (
China's actions, Taipei said, belittle Taiwan's international status. They may also backfire on Beijing. Newspaper headlines that might have waxed poetic about Shanghai's beauty and China's economic ascendancy may now instead highlight Beijing's rebuff of an APEC member in good standing. China, Chen said, "has tarnished its own image as a big nation" by excluding Taiwan.
Here you have Beijing putting on an impressive show for the world, trying to present itself as the new, modern China. Part of the PR pitch is that China is opening up to the world, even to the point where information can flow more freely than ever before. Yet Beijing's game-playing with Taiwan has tarnished its moment in the spotlight.
The day before Taiwan formally boycotted the APEC forum, its foreign minister, Tien, accused China of being "barbaric" and a "bully" at a press conference in Taipei.
Asked to respond in Shanghai, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan (唐家璇) said: "Let's not waste more time on this."
Waste time on what? The fact that one APEC member is excluding another from an important forum in which it has every right to participate? Far from being a waste of time, China's treatment of Taiwan should be discussed this week, early and often, by other APEC leaders. That is if they don't wimp out.
At the 1997 APEC forum in Vancouver, then-US secretary of state Madeleine Albright was asked a prescient question: Will the meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders in Shanghai this year be a big moment for relations between China and Taiwan? It was a tense scenario, since representatives of China and Taiwan were sitting on either side of her.
We now have our answer, and it's yes. Trouble is, it's not the yes much of the world hoped for. Taiwan, still a secessionist island in Beijing's mind, is boycotting this weekend's APEC confab. While no one expected outright warmth between Taiwan and China, few thought things would get this bad.
It's not the first APEC snub Beijing has given Taiwan. In June, China annoyed Taiwan Minister of Economic Affairs by addressing him as "Mr." instead of the customary "Minister."
Chinese Foreign Minister Tang also snubbed Taiwanese officials yesterday at a meeting of APEC ministers.
When asked about China's treatment of Taiwan, Tang actually kept a straight face when he said: "This is no place for Taiwan to raise these issues. APEC is an international forum."
Here's a suggestion for Beijing: http://marthastewart.com.
William Pesek Jr. is a columnist for Bloomberg News.
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