On June 28 last year, the Australian parliament passed the National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill 2018, receiving broad bipartisan support. Although the Australian government did not specify Chinese espionage and interference at the time, it was generally accepted that concerns over Chinese Communist Party-directed espionage and the buying of political influence were major drivers behind the amendment.
Australia, at least, is taking the issue of Chinese political interference and espionage seriously.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative caucus are attempting to push through an anti-infiltration bill targeting individuals or groups acting under the direction of “infiltration sources” to aid and abet foreign actors. The bill’s content and the DPP’s insistence on pushing it through its third reading on Tuesday next week are proving contentious.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), chairman of the Taiwan People’s Party, has said that he agrees with the bill in principle, but would need to see details ironed out.
People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong, who is also the PFP’s presidential candidate, has said that the definition of terms and the scope of the draft are too loosely defined, and might place Taiwanese businesspeople and students in China in legal jeopardy. He also wants the bill’s contents to be subject to stricter legislative review and not to be rushed through before the Jan. 11 presidential and legislative elections just because the DPP has a legislative majority based on an “old mandate.”
Hon Hai Precision Industry founder Terry Gou (郭台銘), politically aligned with Ko and Soong, yesterday backtracked from staging an occupation of the Legislative Yuan akin to the “Sunflower movement” if the DPP continued with its plan to rush the third reading, but still demanded more transparency in the process.
The DPP caucus has said that the passage of the bill is crucial for national security, adding that other nations, such as Australia, have enacted similar legislation. It also said that the bill does not target businesspeople or students, only people that carry out the bidding of foreign powers to interfere in Taiwan’s political process.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), campaigning for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Wei-chou (林為洲) and the KMT’s presidential candidate, Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), on Wednesday also questioned the scope and clarity of definitions in the bill.
These positions are all reasonable.
However, Ma added that this kind of law does not exist anywhere else in the entire universe, and that it amounted to a return to the political suppression of the Martial Law era and the White Terror overseen by the KMT.
In this he went too far. His comments were an insult to the intelligence of the electorate and to the victims of the White Terror and their families. He was not contributing to the debate over the necessity of the law, nor the appropriateness of the process. Instead, he was once again rolling out the tired trope of a fictitious “green terror” that the pan-blue camp has long been trying to push.
Ma wants to portray the government as a corrupt regime; the DPP understands that if it loses the presidential election, or even its legislative majority, the bill stands little chance of being passed in the form it wants; and Soong is positioning himself as the more rational choice between two extremes. All players understand how their stance on this bill will hone the electorate’s view on each party’s relationship with China.
Taiwan needs this legislation. Politicians and political parties need to get their act together and work for the good of the nation. There is no reason why, through rational debate, there cannot be broad support for it.
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
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
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.
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
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