A Liberian-flagged container ship presently making its way down the Suez Canal is at the center of a controversy over Taiwan-China links and national sovereignty.
The ship, Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp’s YM Cypress is at the center of two court cases, one in Greater Kaohsiung and one in Guangzhou, China, that are proceeding at a much more glacial pace than the vessel itself.
A Taiwanese insurance firm filing a motion in a foreign court as part of efforts to win compensation for an accident claim would not normally be a big deal — except that the claim was filed in a maritime court in Guangzhou, the insurance company’s client is the Coast Guard Administration (CGA), the defendant is a Taiwanese firm and the accident occurred in a shipping lane off the coast of Greater Tainan.
Taiwan Fire & Marine Insurance Co’s decision to seek recourse in a Chinese court for damage done to the CG 126 Tainan by the Cypress in a May 2011 collision appears to put business interests ahead of common sense and national interest, even if the company was just asking the court to seize the assets of the Cypress, which was docked in Guangzhou at the time.
That the Coast Guard Administration would countenance the move beggars belief.
A coast guard spokesman said that the insurers were legally entitled to protect their business interests and there was nothing wrong with that. He said that providing the Guangzhou court with 126 Tainan’s nautical charts, logbook and other data would not affect national security.
However, there is plenty wrong with asking a Chinese court to rule on an incident that took place in the Republic of China’s (ROC) waters, even if you do accept the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) fantasy that the ROC still encompasses the area of the People’s Republic of China.
Perhaps national security would not be threatened, but the ROC’s national sovereignty certainly is by seeking relief from the judicial system of a country that is the biggest threat to the nation’s existence.
The case does not fall under the Agreement on Joint Cross-Strait Crime-Fighting and Mutual Judicial Assistance signed in April 2009. It also does not fall under the remit of the Criminal Code, which treats crimes committed in China as if they occurred in Taiwan because of the way the Constitution is worded.
The coast guard’s reaction provides more fuel to critics of the nation’s armed forces, who have been upset in recent years by the penchant for retired military brass and national security officials to seek common ground with their counterparts in China. A trip in May to Guangdong Province by more than 20 retired generals to meet with People’s Liberation Army retirees and Chinese government officials is one such incident; the May 2010 trip by retired flag officers to Nanjing for the “Cross-Strait Retired Generals Golf Invitational” was another.
The concern is not just what these former military leaders and intelligence officers might say while being wined and dined by their former enemies — tidbits about contingency planning, command-and-control relationships and insights about senior officials — but the impression they make on those currently serving in the armed forces, policymakers and society as a whole.
The actions and comments of such retirees can be read as either a shocking level of Mainlander naivete or callous contempt for Taiwan and the Taiwanese who paid their salaries for decades and now fund their retirements.
However, the disingenuousness of the Coast Guard Administration in dismissing the Chinese court suit as simply a matter of business that is out of its hands is not just worrisome, it is sickening and should be condemned in the strongest terms.
There is nothing business-as-usual about involving Chinese courts in purely Taiwanese affairs.
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