The administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is facing its first real crisis since taking office in May last year. Criticism of its mishandling of the disaster created by Typhoon Morakot is coming from every quarter, both from the pan-green camp and traditionally blue villages hit by the catastrophe. The international media, which made Ma its darling, is joining the fray, with CNN International holding a public vote on the question: “Should Taiwan’s leader stand down over delays in aiding typhoon victims?”
In a further sign of media bungling, the Government Information Office (GIO) retracted a request that the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents’ Club instruct correspondents who signed up for a press conference with Ma today to submit their questions to the GIO prior to the media event — which the club adamantly refuses to do.
Amid all the domestic finger-pointing and rising dissatisfaction, another political storm that threatens to buffet Ma is silently brewing across the Taiwan Strait. For the majority of Taiwanese who favor independence and the many who favor the “status quo” over annexation by China, this development might come as a surprise — but as they say, you stand where you sit.
Incredible as it may sound, a growing number of Chinese academics are arguing that Ma is shifting on the “one China” policy he is alleged to be adhering to.
In an op-ed published in the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online last Tuesday, Jian Junbo (簡軍波), an assistant professor at Fudan University in Shanghai and visiting scholar at Aalborg University in Denmark, wrote that Ma was an “opportunist” who “lack[s] foresight and strategy, with hesitation and self-contradiction manifest in his Mainland policy.”
Jian said that Ma and his aides “have been saying that Beijing should recognize the realities across the Taiwan Strait — that there is the People’s Republic of China [PRC] on the mainland and the [Republic of China] in Taiwan.”
Later, he writes that when we carefully examine his remarks on cross-strait relations, Ma sounds more like former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) — who pushed for state-to-state relations across the Taiwan Strait — than someone who adheres to the so-called “one China” principle. Jian concludes that if Ma is really interested in the public’s best interests, he must realize that world leaders cannot allow themselves to be swayed by public opinion. In other words, Ma should be dictatorial, just like the leadership in Beijing. The op-ed closes with a veiled threat, stating that if Ma makes the mistake of allowing the 23 million Taiwanese to decide their own fate, China’s 1.3 billion people also have a right to decide the future of the Taiwan Strait.
Such articles reflect a growing impatience in elite circles in China as Ma, however much power he wields over the executive and the legislative branches, maneuvers between his policy objectives and the friction that is inherent to a democratic system. His handling of the Morakot disaster will likely make it far more difficult for him to push his China policies, especially at a time when the public trust that allowed him to forge ahead with little opposition has evaporated. As such, Ma may be forced to tread more carefully — and slowly — on his cross-strait policies, which is certain to result in further accusations across the Taiwan Strait that he is wavering, an “opportunist” who cares more about his re-election than achieving unification.
As China’s economy was meant to drive global economic growth this year, its dramatic slowdown is sounding alarm bells across the world, with economists and experts criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for his unwillingness or inability to respond to the nation’s myriad mounting crises. The Wall Street Journal reported that investors have been calling on Beijing to take bolder steps to boost output — especially by promoting consumer spending — but Xi has deep-rooted philosophical objections to Western-style consumption-driven growth, seeing it as wasteful and at odds with his goal of making China a world-leading industrial and technological powerhouse, and
For Xi Jinping (習近平) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the military conquest of Taiwan is an absolute requirement for the CCP’s much more fantastic ambition: control over our solar system. Controlling Taiwan will allow the CCP to dominate the First Island Chain and to better neutralize the Philippines, decreasing the threat to the most important People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Strategic Support Force (SSF) space base, the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island. Satellite and manned space launches from the Jiuquan and Xichang Satellite Launch Centers regularly pass close to Taiwan, which is also a very serious threat to the PLA,
During a news conference in Vietnam on Sept. 10, a reporter asked US President Joe Biden about the possibility of China invading Taiwan. Biden replied that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is too busy handling major domestic economic problems to launch an invasion of Taiwan. On Wednesday last week, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office published a document outlining 21 measures to make the Chinese-controlled Fujian Province into a demonstration zone for relations with Taiwan. The planned measures would expand favorable treatment for Taiwanese people and companies, and seek to attract people from Taiwan to buy property and seek employment in Fujian.
More than 100 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) vessels and aircraft were detected making incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on Sunday and Monday, the Ministry of National Defense reported on Monday. The ministry responded to the incursions by calling on China to “immediately stop such destructive unilateral actions,” saying that Beijing’s actions could “easily lead to a sharp escalation in tensions and worsen regional security.” Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said that the unusually high number of incursions over such a short time was likely Beijing’s response to efforts
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