The campaign for county, city and legislative elections is raging like wildfire. The political parties and candidates are focusing on economic issues, but few are touching on foreign relations issues -- apart from those with China. But this has not led Beijing to ease up in its attempts to suppress Taiwan.
Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan (唐家琁) has attacked Taiwan three times in recent weeks. The first attack was on Oct 18, when he stopped Taiwan's Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Hsin-yi (林信義) from speaking at a press conference during the APEC ministerial meeting in Shanghai. The second attack was on Nov. 10 at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York, when Tang told reporters that he despised President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
The third also occurred in New York, on Nov. 14, when Tang met with the foreign ministers of a dozen or so African nations. He thanked them for their backing three decades ago for China's entry into the UN. Then he thanked them, as he shed crocodile tears, for supporting China's stance on the Taiwan and human rights issues. The main focus of his speech was Taiwan.
Unfortunately, Taiwan's political parties have been far from unanimous in their response to China. Failing to see their true common enemy, some of the parties are even speaking for Beijing.
The African countries represented at the New York meeting are an example of this. They support China as a result of Beijing's long-term "money diplomacy." China is said to have spent 20 billion yuan (US$2.4 billion) building and repairing the Tanzania-Zambia railroad in the 1960s and 1970s, at a time when China's own populace was impoverished. Taiwan's opposition parties have been lambasting "money diplomacy," but we haven't heard them criticizing Beijing, which started this practice in the first place.
A parade had been planned for Sept. 11 in New York in support of Taiwan's UN bid. It was canceled after the attacks on the World Trade Center. The organizers put a great deal of effort into coordinating with both the ruling and opposition parties in Taiwan. The efforts included the use of two names -- Taiwan and the ROC -- as well as the issue of flags. Despite these efforts, some of the opposition parties still refused to attend the parade.
If a party advocates "one China" and also refuses to participate in an event supporting the ROC's entry into the UN, then what else can "one China" mean to them except the PRC?
Recently China's President Jiang Zemin (
Most people around the world think of "China" and the PRC as being synonymous. The main reason for this is that the PRC holds China's seat at the UN while the ROC languishes outside. If the UN has long rejected the ROC simply because "China" means the PRC, then Taiwan has no choice but to join the international community as "Taiwan."
Some people in Taiwan have emotional ties with the ROC -- and some are even more enthusiastic about the PRC. Lacking any sympathy for Taiwan, they have reacted coldly to the issue of Taiwan's entry into the UN.
When it comes to US-Taiwan relations, these people make distinctions not on the basis of political systems, but on blood ties. As a result, they even reject the ROC's long-standing alliance with the US. They are rejecting the ROC in a practical sense, even as they embrace it in an abstract sense. Even if the ROC does not declare itself the "Republic of Taiwan," the ROC has long been dead in the eyes of these people -- a view that coincides with Beijing's.
Paul Lin is a New York-based political commentator.
Translated by Francis Huang
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