Successful negotiations frequently involve concessions on the part of negotiators. If common ground is to be found between parties with conflicting goals, give and take is unavoidable.
Negotiators generally make concessions on matters of lesser importance while being more hard-nosed on core interests — which are usually identified before negotiations begin.
Since the late 1980s, when Taiwan and China began informal negotiations, such considerations have not only defined each side’s core interests, but also the pace of negotiations, sometimes leading to their unraveling. This is why former presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) — and even the Beijing-friendly administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) — insisted on first addressing practical matters of trade, tourism and services before tackling the more contentious aspects of national identity and independence/unification.
Ma’s policies, however, are now engendering a form of dependence, and negotiations have shifted from executive bodies (the Straits Exchange Foundation and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait) and political parties (the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party) to include civil society, with business organizations and interest groups now in the game. In the process, these groups have also been compelled to make concessions, however one-sided they appear.
The problem is that such groups often lack the tools and refinement that allow professional negotiators to make more careful decisions.
One such group that has unwittingly entered cross-strait negotiations is Taiwan’s tourism sector, which has asked the Kaohsiung City Government and the organizers of the Kaohsiung Film Festival not to proceed with the screening of The 10 Conditions of Love, a documentary about exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer. Tour companies fear the Chinese government will act on its threat to cancel tour and hotel reservations.
Initially, Kaohsiung authorities said the film would be presented as scheduled. Then, in an apparent concession, they announced that the film would be shown ahead of schedule and without film festival trappings and services.
For people like Kaohsiung Tourism Association chairman Tseng Fu-hsing (曾福興), even this concession was “regrettable” — he would rather have seen the movie dropped altogether.
What this decision represents, though, is more than the ordinary give and take: When concessions are made on core values — freedom of expression, in this case — flexibility may appear to some, such as the filmmakers who pulled their works from the festival in protest at the schedule change, as capitulation rather than a concession.
Regrettably, the tourism industry is thumbing its nose at basic democratic principles.
Whatever this rag-tag band of tour operators did for a living before the Chinese started arriving, they must have had to work harder. Of more concern, however, is the likelihood that Beijing is counting not only on greed to bend minds, but also entrepreneurial ineptitude and sloth — longstanding characteristics of the nation’s tourism industry.
Such behavior, added to the Kaohsiung City Government’s dilly-dallying on the matter, could send a worrying signal to pro-Taiwan elements.
It is a good time to be in the air-conditioning business. As my colleagues at Bloomberg News write, an additional 1 billion cooling units are expected to be installed by the end of the decade. It is one of the main ways in which humans are adapting to more frequent and intense heatwaves. With a potentially strong El Nino on the horizon — a climate pattern that increases global temperatures — and greenhouse gas emissions still higher than ever, the world is facing another record-breaking summer, and another one, and another and so on. For many, owning an air conditioner has become a
Election seasons expose societal divisions and contrasting visions about the future of Taiwan. They also offer opportunities for leaders to forge unity around practical ideas for strengthening Taiwan’s resilience. Beijing has in the past sought to exacerbate divisions within Taiwan. For Beijing, a divided Taiwan is less likely to pursue permanent separation. It also is more manipulatable than a united Taiwan. A divided polity has lower trust in government institutions and diminished capacity to solve societal challenges. As my co-authors Richard Bush, Bonnie Glaser, and I recently wrote in our book US-Taiwan Relations: Will China’s Challenge Lead to a Crisis?, “Beijing wants
Taiwanese students spend thousands of hours studying English. Yet after three to five class-hours of English as a foreign language every week for more than nine years, most students can barely utter a sentence of English. The government’s “Bilingual Nation 2030” policy would do little to change this. As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies would soon be able to translate in real time, why should students squander so much of their youth and potential on learning a foreign language? AI might save students time, but it should not replace language learning. Instead, the technology could amplify learning, and it might also enhance
Taiwan has never had a president who is not from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) or the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Could next year’s presidential election put a third-party candidate in office? The contenders who have thrown their hats into the ring are Vice President William Lai (賴清德) of the DPP, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) of the KMT and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲). A monthly poll released by my-formosa.com on Monday showed support for Hou nosediving from 26 percent to 18.3 percent, the lowest among the three presidential hopefuls. It was a surprising