The Jasmine Revolution in North Africa and the Middle East has spread from Tunisia and Egypt to Libya. Former presidents Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt both resigned, after having been in power for 24 years and 30 years respectively. The turn has now come to Libya: Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi is fighting for his life in a last-ditch struggle as he is deserted by followers and condemned by the international community after 42 years in power.
This wave of popular revolution in the Islamic world at the beginning of the 21st century is sweeping the authoritarian regimes left from the past century into the trash can of history. Sending these savage and dictatorial living fossils into the museums is a necessary step in the progress of civilization.
When people look back at history, they often see an ironic turn of events. When the government of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) relocated to Taiwan in 1949, the US released a white paper in which it claimed that “the dust had settled” and that it was about to abandon Chiang’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime. However, the US was forced to make a U-turn when the Korean War broke out in 1950.
At the time, the US worried that communist expansion would cause a “domino effect” and the whole world in the end would become communist. So it intervened in the Korean War by force and built a global strategy to contain communism. With its excellent strategic position, Taiwan was able to serve as a so-called unsinkable US aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean.
The US therefore altered its policy of no interference and began providing massive economic and military aid to Taiwan, sending the 7th Fleet to safeguard the nation. It was only at that time that Taiwan became truly secure.
Later, during the Cold War era, young military officers from the Third World were sent to the US for training, becoming the Western world’s troops in the fight against the expansion of communism. For example, Qaddafi once received training in Taiwan at the then-Political Warfare College.
After these young officers returned to their own countries, some of them started building alliances with one another as their political power grew.
Eventually, they defeated the old forces through military coups and became the new leaders of their countries. They all upheld the banner of nationalism after they came to power, and most of the public placed their hopes on them. However, after tasting power, they quickly deteriorated, becoming dictators themselves as they continued to exploit the public as slaves.
Ironically, the Third World was in fact a key battlefield for Chiang and China in their fight for the UN seat. In the past, Taiwan was able to provide agricultural teams and economic aid, while China was only able to export ideology and revolution.
Taiwan thus enjoyed a large number of Latin American and African allies, and Africa was its main diplomatic base.
Today, the situation has completely changed. In the face of China’s diplomatic moves, Taiwan’s defense line has been penetrated repeatedly. In particular, Africa has long fallen into China’s hands.
And more importantly, China’s expansion into Africa has already gone beyond Beijing’s use of the region to gain the upper hand in cross-strait confrontation; China now views African expansion as strategic deployments against US and European forces.
With the great national strength accumulated over 30 years of economic reform, China has replaced empty revolutionary slogans with massive economic aid, as well as buyouts and purchases of oil, natural gas, metals, uranium mines, wood and fishery products.
Today, the Chinese political and economic force has made great inroads in Africa, and Chinese enterprises, workers and characters can been seen everywhere.
Africa is rich in energy and minerals, resources that are indispensable to China’s economic development. Since the economy is poor in many African countries ruled by dictators, their only treasure consists of such natural resources. China is also an authoritarian country that does not care about human rights or democracy. Both the seller and the buyer are authoritarian countries, the former having the resources and the latter the money.
What a perfect match. To obtain more oil, China has ignored international criticism, providing economic aid to places such as Sudan and Rwanda, both involved in genocide. Indeed, Chinese economic aid is often crucial to the perpetuation of authoritarian African regimes.
The Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) is studying how China goes about attracting Third World countries, because we have found that the “united-front” tactics it is using on Taiwan work along very similar lines.
China has temporarily covered its true face by putting aside military threats and making itself out to be a philanthropist.
In particular, the inability of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his government to boost Taiwan’s economy and their resulting adoption of pro-China policies have no doubt given China an opportunity to initiate its economic “united front” work against Taiwan.
Its most important move is the trap set by the Economic Cooperative Framework Agreement. On the one hand, it uses the Chinese market as bait to attract Taiwanese businesspeople to move to China. On the other hand, it paves the way for the dumping of cheap and low-quality Chinese goods in Taiwan. In addition, China has sent a large number of tourists and buyers to Taiwan, claiming they will help boost the nation’s economy.
During his recent visit to Taiwan, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) even boasted of how China would resolve Taiwan’s unemployment problem. The purpose of the normalization of Chinese purchases of Taiwanese agricultural products is obviously a ploy to move into southern Taiwan with the help of economic means, gradually penetrating the pan-green camp’s support base.
China is an authoritarian regime where the state controls all the resources. It is therefore able to ignore economic laws to serve its political purposes. The methods used for Chinese deployments in Africa might be different from its “united front” efforts against Taiwan, but the two share the same purpose and nature.
Africa’s most valuable assets are its energy and mineral resources, and Taiwan’s most valuable asset are the minds its people.
To be able to buy people’s minds, China is sparing no cost as it intensifies its economic attack. However, once it achieves its goal and wins over the Taiwanese public, the nation will be of no further value to China and it will be left at the mercy of Beijing’s manipulations.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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