As hard as it is to see a majority of international media stories about events in Taiwan hinging on what China’s opinion and/or reaction is/will be, which almost inevitably is deemed “angry,” it is even worse to see opinion pieces by academics and pundits that treat Beijing’s political discourse as rational.
This has never been more true than with analyses or commentaries about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) political or economic programs and proposals, whether they involve cross-strait relations, Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang, or his Belt and Road Initiative ambitions.
Inevitably, the onus is placed on Taiwan and the Taiwanese to be more open to dialogue with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and to accept Xi’s view of China’s “manifest destiny,” as if the past three decades of events in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China are simply dust motes to be swept under the rug.
Two opinion pieces that appeared in the Washington Post this week bookend this problem: The first, by Zhu Zhiqun (朱誌群), a professor at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, was about Xi’s Jan. 2 speech on Taiwan; the second was by democracy activists and Demosisto members Joshua Wong (黃之鋒) and Jeffrey Ngo (敖卓軒), who discussed China’s latest assault on rights in Hong Kong.
Zhu sought to convince readers of Xi’s reasonableness, claiming that he had made a significant policy adjustment by proposing to involve Taiwanese “in developing a new model for Taiwan” and adding a “level of self-determination for Taiwan into the unification model.” Xi’s proposal that representatives of different Taiwanese parties and others discuss cross-strait relations with Beijing and make political arrangements for Taiwan’s future was “the most intriguing and innovative part of his speech,” as it would kick-start “the unification process by sidestepping the unpopular governing party,” Zhu said.
Taiwan could use its democracy to shape China’s future, as Taiwanese preconditions would put Beijing under pressure to move toward democratization, he wrote, as if the same argument has not been repeatedly made since the late 1980s, despite all evidence to the contrary. It has become a tenet of political science and international relations, much as the myth of the great Chinese market captivated foreign companies and governments for more than 100 years, and is just as fictitious.
What Zhu tries to paint as a new flexibility in China’s “one country, two systems” model is really just an extension of the CCP’s “united front” strategy, which it used before and after Hong Kong’s handover to influence the territory’s residents — and Taiwanese. As Wong and Ngo wrote: “Beijing is not going to be able to resolve its relationship with Hong Kong, Taiwan or any other group in contention until the ruling Communist Party realizes that it must respect the people before demanding respect from them.”
Xi might be willing to pretend to listen to the views of the “average” Taiwanese and pretend that their voices could help shape Beijing’s policies toward Taiwan, but he has shown through his actions toward democracy activists in Hong Kong, Uighurs and Kazakhs in Xinjiang, and Chinese struggling to get the CCP to follow the Chinese Constitution that he will not brook any dissent or alternative viewpoints.
Xi and his predecessors have shown no willingness to countenance even a hint of real democracy: Efforts since the 1990s to make some village elections or local party congresses slightly more open or competitive proved to be little more than shams designed to ameliorate grassroots unrest.
The problem is not, as Zhu seems to think, that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and her government rejected Xi’s proposal without “much deliberation”; it is the continued inability of Xi and the upper echelons of the CCP to understand how the world has changed outside their Zhongnanhai mausoleum.
Chinese strongman Xi Jinping (習近平) hasn’t had a very good spring, either economically or politically. Not that long ago, he seemed to be riding high. The PRC economy had been on a long winning streak of more than six percent annual growth, catapulting the world’s most populous nation into the second-largest power, behind only the United States. Hundreds of millions had been brought out of poverty. Beijing’s military too had emerged as the most powerful in Asia, lagging only behind the US, the long-time leader on the global stage. One can attribute much of the recent downturn to the international economic
An outrageous dismissal of the exemplary Taiwanese fight against COVID-19 has been perpetrated by the EU. There is no excuse. I presume that everyone who reads the Taipei Times knows that the EU has excluded Taiwan from its so-called “safe list,” which permits citizens unhindered travel to and from the countries of the EU. As the EU does not feel that it needs to explain the character of this exclusive list, perhaps we should examine it ourselves in some detail. There are 14 nations on the list that have been chosen as safe countries of origin and safe countries of destination for
EDITORIAL CARTOON
Filmmakers in Taiwan used to struggle when it came to telling a story that could resonate internationally. Things started to change when the 2017 drama series The Teenage Psychic (通靈少女), a collaboration between HBO Asia and Taiwanese Public Television Service (PTS), became a huge hit not just locally, but also internationally. The coming-of-age story was adapted from the 2013 PTS-produced short film The Busy Young Psychic (神算). Entirely filmed in Taiwan, the Mandarin-language series even made it on HBO’s streaming platforms in the US. It is proof that a well-told Taiwanese story can absolutely win the hearts and minds of hard-to-please
RSS