As the region commemorates the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II, tensions are flaring anew over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), with the arrest by Japan on Wednesday of 14 Chinese, Macanese and Hong Kong activists after five of them swam ashore to one of the disputed islets to reaffirm China’s sovereignty.
The symbolic feat, accompanied by protests by activists in front of Japan’s representative office in Taipei, has fueled speculation that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, which upholds the Republic of China’s (ROC) sovereignty over the islets, could work with Beijing to corner Tokyo on the issue.
Among others, the Apple Daily yesterday editorialized that Taipei’s stance could be part of a plan to irritate Japan and the US, and thereby “force” Taiwan to cooperate with China, thus undermining Taipei’s alliance with the US, its sole security guarantor, and Japan, which, despite the absence of official diplomatic relations, remains a friendly regional power.
However, such theories collapse on the shores of political reality. The pro-Diaoyutai movement in Taiwan is a peripheral political force, and whether Taiwan has or should have control over the islets is a matter that simply does not keep ordinary Taiwanese up at night. Mobilizing them in the use of force to reaffirm such claims would have even less traction with the public, especially if doing so risked damaging relations with a country that Taiwanese hold in high esteem. The Ma administration is fully aware that adventurism over the dispute, such as cooperating with China, would be frivolous in the extreme.
Furthermore, Taipei cannot ignore the fact that the Diaoyutais are at least tacitly part of the US-Japan security alliance and that Washington would likely stand by its regional ally if antagonism turned to bloodshed.
Given the longstanding ties between the US and Taiwanese military, a relationship that includes arms sales, joint training and assistance at various levels, it is even more unlikely that the Taiwanese armed forces would risk compromising all that to protect small, barren islets in the East China Sea, or suddenly side with a military with which they have no history of cooperation and which, for more than half a century, has been the principal threat to this nation.
Despite warming relations across the Taiwan Strait, it will take far more than the Diaoyutais to convince Taiwanese military officers to abandon more than six decades of friendship with their US counterparts for the sake of illusory nationalistic adventurism. Support for such an extreme volte-face simply does not exist, not within the public, and not within the armed forces. To think otherwise is to swallow Chinese propaganda.
Ma’s announcement of an East Asia peace initiative earlier this month is not a construct meant to ensnare Japan or the US, but rather an effort to give Taiwan (in Ma’s book, the ROC) a seat at the negotiating table. Far too often — and this also applies to its claims in the South China Sea — Taiwan’s voice has been ignored by other claimants. Proposing peace mechanisms, as over the Diaoyutais, or adopting a more muscular stance, as on Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) in the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島), makes it more difficult to ignore Taipei.
The Ma administration has often, and deservedly so, been criticized for adopting a low-key attitude to Taiwan’s international space. However, it’s difficult to ignore the irony when Ma’s critics accuse him of both not doing enough and doing too much over sovereignty claims in the East and South China Sea, especially when his stance on those issues shows a large level of continuity with that of the previous administration.
Ma, like former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) before him, must play a tricky balancing act as he negotiates the troubled waters of Taiwan’s relations with the US, Japan and China, while seeking to set a course of its own — hence the mixed and sometimes contradictory signals and lack of a clear policy. But cooperate with China he won’t. He can’t.
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
It is being said every second day: The ongoing recall campaign in Taiwan — where citizens are trying to collect enough signatures to trigger re-elections for a number of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — is orchestrated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), or even President William Lai (賴清德) himself. The KMT makes the claim, and foreign media and analysts repeat it. However, they never show any proof — because there is not any. It is alarming how easily academics, journalists and experts toss around claims that amount to accusing a democratic government of conspiracy — without a shred of evidence. These
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international