Sat, May 20, 2006 page8

• Taiwan-US ties strong enough to survive spat

  • By Huang Tien-lin 黃天鱗
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  After President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) decided not to transit through the US on his way to and from Latin America on his latest diplomatic tour of the region, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator John Chiang (蔣孝嚴), a former foreign minister, said that if Taiwan-US relations fall into deadlock because of this, the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) may become wastepaper, and Taiwan may lose US support if war were to break out in the Taiwan Strait.

  Are Taiwan-US relations really so fragile that the US would abolish the TRA because of a simple spat over Chen's transit? If they were, the two would have severed relations long ago -- for example, when the public attacked the US embassy in Taiwan after a US military court ruled in 1957 that a US official was not guilty of killing Taiwanese Major Liu Tzu-jan (劉自然). If relations were that fragile, the US-Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty would have been abolished when Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) refused to withdraw from the UN Security Council, as the US suggested, during the battle over Taiwan's UN seat in 1972 -- times when tensions between Taiwan and the US were much worse. But the US did not give up on Chiang after the attacks, nor did it abolish the defense treaty after Taiwan's UN refusal. Obviously, a practical side exists to international relations. But what really affects state-to-state relations are national interests and international forces.

  In 1972, the US suggested that Taiwan re-enter the UN because the number of countries recognizing the People's Republic of China government as the rightful representative of China had increased and the US was therefore unable to stop its entry into the UN. China was politically strong enough to force the US to bend. Therefore, the US made the suggestion to ensure Taiwan's and its own interests. Also, it decided to establish ties with Beijing in 1979 because China's international influence had rapidly expanded after it replaced Taiwan in the UN, forcing Washington to withdraw from Taiwan diplomatically. Since China's military and economic power was still insignificant at that time, the US passed the TRA in April of that year without too much Chinese opposition. Thus, both national interests and international forces are crucial to Taiwan-US relations.

  Unfortunately, the situation later changed, as many Taiwanese businesspeople moved to China in the 1990s, disregarding international sanctions on China following the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. China's economic strength has grown ever since, and its military strength has also expanded. As a result, national interests and international forces have gradually leaned toward China. Taiwan's productive investment in China has exceeded US$280 billion since the Tiananmen incident. Although China is the world's second-largest trading power today, with total trade estimated at US$1.4221 trillion last year, about half of its top 20 exporters are Taiwanese companies. The value of its information hardware production is also the world's second largest. But in 2004, as much as 79 percent of these products were manufactured by Taiwanese companies in China.

  But money can achieve anything. China is not only expanding its economic interests into the US, but also building its dominance in Southeast Asia. The difficulties of Chen's transit were a direct result of China's economic and military expansion.

  Hence, I would like to advise those Taiwanese lawmakers who warn that the US may abolish the TRA that if you are really worried about Taiwan's future, you should stop pushing proposals in the Legislative Yuan that promote cross-strait economic integration and trade.

  Huang Tien-lin is a national policy adviser to the president.

  Translated by Eddy Chang
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