After Australia pushed for a WHO probe into the source of COVID-19 at the World Health Assembly in May, China responded by adding an 80.5 percent tariff — consisting of an anti-dumping tax rate of 73.6 percent and a countervailing subsidy margin of 6.9 percent — on Australian barley imports. Beijing also banned four Australian businesses from exporting beef to China, and said that it would ban Chinese tourists from visiting Australia and students from studying there. It also added anti-dumping taxes of 107.1 to 218.1 percent on Australian wine imports.
Beijing’s use of economic threats to bring its trading partners in line during disputes is a perfect example of a country run by digital tyranny dominating a huge market. The Australian government has said that it would bring the issue to the WTO for arbitration, but the question is whether that would solve anything.
The world has so far been unable to deal with the domination of China’s dictatorship, allowing it to wreak havoc on the international trade and politico-economic system. US President Donald Trump — seemingly the only person in the world to have clearly seen the problem with China’s bullying — is stepping down next month and the possibility that his successor could return to the hackneyed multilateral free-trade approach is worrying.
Some people might remember the US government’s 1984 antitrust lawsuit against AT&T, which resulted in the company being broken up into eight companies. This is what governments do to prevent companies from becoming so big that they can control their market, and create a situation in which industry and society no longer fulfill the requirements of a fair, reasonable and just society.
In the 1990s, when Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system had a 90 percent share of the personal computer market, the problem reappeared.
In October, the US government filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, with the US House of Representatives’ Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law detailing in a 450-page report that Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google have monopolies in their respective markets.
Corporate monopolies are bad for consumers and they reduce competition. This is just as true in Taiwan as it is in other countries. In the 19th century and earlier, before the advent of aircraft and large steamships, there were no international or national monopolies in the modern sense due to mountains, oceans and other geographical features. Following the “integration” of the world’s economies, the domination of huge markets became a thorny issue.
Market domination is an issue that must be addressed head on, especially after China — with its market of 1.4 billion people and 9.6 million square kilometers of natural resources — joined the WTO and began smashing its rules, which had been keeping trade peaceful.
China began sucking in global capital like a black hole, while copying countries’ technology and intellectual property rights. It has turned itself into a type of huge “national trust,” or large grouping of business interests with significant market power.
This “China national trust,” a first in economic history, is feared by everyone. It differs from the typical trust, as China not only exerts economic domination, but also displays before the whole world its ambitions and threats.
If the free world does not pull itself together, this China national trust will ride roughshod over the world, forcing it to submit to its digital tyranny.
The world’s democracies must wake up and build an alliance big enough to “break up” this China national trust, creating international laws that can force it to fall in line, similar to how the US has used antitrust legislation to break up local monopolies.
This cannot happen overnight — it might take several years, or more than a decade. Still, the free world has the responsibility to make it happen.
Huang Tien-lin is a former advisory member of the National Security Council.
Translated by Perry Svensson
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been expansionist and contemptuous of international law. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP regime has become more despotic, coercive and punitive. As part of its strategy to annex Taiwan, Beijing has sought to erase the island democracy’s international identity by bribing countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. One by one, China has peeled away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, leaving just 12 countries (mostly small developing states) and the Vatican recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Taiwan’s formal international space has shrunk dramatically. Yet even as Beijing has scored diplomatic successes, its overreach
After 37 US lawmakers wrote to express concern over legislators’ stalling of critical budgets, Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) pledged to make the Executive Yuan’s proposed NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.7 billion) special defense budget a top priority for legislative review. On Tuesday, it was finally listed on the legislator’s plenary agenda for Friday next week. The special defense budget was proposed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration in November last year to enhance the nation’s defense capabilities against external threats from China. However, the legislature, dominated by the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), repeatedly blocked its review. The
In her article in Foreign Affairs, “A Perfect Storm for Taiwan in 2026?,” Yun Sun (孫韻), director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington, said that the US has grown indifferent to Taiwan, contending that, since it has long been the fear of US intervention — and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) inability to prevail against US forces — that has deterred China from using force against Taiwan, this perceived indifference from the US could lead China to conclude that a window of opportunity for a Taiwan invasion has opened this year. Most notably, she observes that
For Taiwan, the ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are a warning signal: When a major power stretches the boundaries of self-defense, smaller states feel the tremors first. Taiwan’s security rests on two pillars: US deterrence and the credibility of international law. The first deters coercion from China. The second legitimizes Taiwan’s place in the international community. One is material. The other is moral. Both are indispensable. Under the UN Charter, force is lawful only in response to an armed attack or with UN Security Council authorization. Even pre-emptive self-defense — long debated — requires a demonstrably imminent
RSS