"But my daughter saw a dog on the street one day, and it was led by a poor old man collecting garbage. It was rainy and cold, and that dog was only covered by plastic. Yet that dog seemed to survive well," Wu said.

"Sometimes people are like that. They live better when they are in an harsh environment," she said.

Cabinet forms task force to recover filched assets

MISAPPROPRIATION: For 50 years the KMT stole public assets with impunity; the Cabinet admits that it is relying on the party's honesty to get them back

By Ko Shu-ling

STAFF REPORTER

The Cabinet hopes to reclaim seven cinemas and two buildings improperly acquired by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) by the Lunar New Year as the KMT yesterday agreed to return part of its party assets stolen during its 50-year rule.

The Cabinet will also form a five-person task force to address the issue and work out incentives to encourage political functionaries, including career civil servants and political appointees, involved in the inappropriate acquisition of the KMT's party assets to provide information.

"We won't hold them administratively responsible because they were pressured to cooperate back then," Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung quoted Premier Yu Shyi-kun as saying during a press conference yesterday afternoon.

Yu made the remarks during a closed-door meeting of the Cabinet's National Assets Management Committee which he chaired. High on the agenda was the assets the KMT stole during its half-century in power.

After discussing the matter with the KMT this morning, Minister of Finance Lin Chuan told the press conference that the KMT agreed to return some properties still in fact owned by the party but where the title has either been transferred to a different "owner" or the property has been "sold" to another owner for a notional sum.

"We hope they mean what they say and put their promise into practice," he said.

In addition to the seven cinemas and the two buildings -- the Shih Chien Building and the Shih Chien Hall, Lin, who heads the Cabinet's task force, said that two more disputed pieces of properties will be targeted.

They are the KMT's headquarters building on Chungshan South Road and a lot on Ren-ai Road where the KMT-owned Broadcasting Corporation of China (BCC) used to stand.

"I'm afraid we can only appeal to the KMT's conscience while the bill regarding the disposition of assets improperly obtained by political parties has not yet passed the legislature and we haven't formulated any concrete measure to pre-empt the KMT's efforts to liquidate and launder its assets," Lin said.

Lin also announced that the transportation ministry yesterday had filed a misappropriation lawsuit against BCC.

The ministry in 1952 spent NT$150,000 buying two parcels of land, totaling 10 hectares, in Minhsiung, Chiayi County and an additional NT$2 million on broadcasting equipment for Central Broadcasting System (CBS), originally a subordinate department of BCC, to continue propaganda broadcasting to China.

The land was registered under BCC but has been used by the CBS as a relay station since then. CBS expanded in 1972 and became the responsibility of the Ministry of National Defense in 1980 and then a corporate body in 1996.

Claiming that the land belongs to the company, BCC started requesting CBS either return or rent the two parcels of land in January 1998, but its requests were met with defiance.

Last month the Chiayi District Court ruled in favor of BCC in a lawsuit it had filed against CBS in June last year. CBS has vowed to appeal.

Spying allegations affect business

The alleged arrest of Taiwanese spies in China has caused an uproar in the media in recent days. Pan-blue legislators were very unhappy with Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen yesterday, because she was on her annual vacation and did not show up at the legislature's Interior Affairs Committee to report on the "small three links." They believed she should not try to evade responsibility at such an important time. For this reason they started a signature drive to endorse a resolution condemning Tsai.

People First Party Legislator Tsao Yuan-chang asked how Tsai could fail to show up for questioning without first gaining permission from the Legislative Yuan. This is a sensitive time regarding a possible defensive referendum, when many Taiwanese businesses operating in China are facing danger after being implicated in an espionage case. Tsao said he wanted to condemn Tsai as the most unsuitable Cabinet member and persona non grata at the committee.

Lee Ching-hua, another PFP legislator, showed photos of crying family members of Taiwanese business people. He accused the government of not helping the victims and their families. He also accused Tsai of viewing her vacation as more important than the lives of the Taiwanese business people.

But other legislators such as Eugene Jao and Hsu Jung-shu defended Tsai, saying that it is the partisan brawl that will harm the interests of the Taiwanese business people. MAC Vice Chairman Chen Ming-tung also said that Tsai had not taken any vacation for a year and did not do so until the last week of the year, after receiving a mandatory vacation notice from the Central Personnel Administration. (The Cabinet has make annual vacations mandatory for civil servants and provided incentives in the hope of boosting local tourism.)

At this sensitive time, reports have also surfaced that the Taiwan Affairs Office under China's State Council has summoned the heads of Taiwanese business associations in China to an emergency meeting in Beijing. It has been pointed out that the meeting is scheduled for today at Beijing's official Diaoyutai guest house.

According to what we understand, the heads of Taiwanese business associations in Dongguan, Suzhou, Shenzhen and Shanghai have said they received phone calls from the Taiwan Affairs Office recently, asking them to go to Beijing yesterday. The meeting has come under even more scrutiny because this is the first time the office has summoned Taiwanese business people almost a month before the Lunar New Year, because the matter has come in the wake of the Taiwanese spy reports, and because the office has not clarified what it wants to discuss at the meeting.

Some of the association leaders were low-key, saying the office had asked them to attend a meeting in Beijing. They did not, however, explain the content of the meeting, saying they would not know until they got to Beijing. The Taiwan Affairs Office invites Taiwanese business people to a Lunar New Year party every year, but this year's party seems to have been moved ahead. One Taiwanese businessman who said he would attend believed it would be an attempt to ease the business people's worries.

The two sides have crossed swords in recent days over the espionage allegations. On top of this, Taiwan is holding a presidential election in March. The fact that the Taiwan Affairs Office has chosen to hold a meeting with Taiwanese businesses at this sensitive time has created much room for interpretation by the outside world.

Beijing undermines its neighbors

By Christopher Lingle

Anyone with a modicum of knowledge about international affairs is aware of the inordinate skills of China's diplomats to further the interests of the Middle Kingdom. For their part, officials in Beijing constantly insist that no country has the right to interfere in another's internal affairs.

And nowhere is this maneuvering more pointed and more harmful than in dealings over Taiwan and Tibet. But in order to bring or keep these lambs in the fold, all pretences of gentle diplomacy are dropped. Either they must accept the smothering love of the Motherland or face annihilation.

And so it is that given that the Chinese Communist Party occupies a glass house, it is not surprising that they fear having stones tossed from outside. By their very nature, authoritarian regimes are so brittle and fragile that a lone voice can be enough to bring about their collapse. It may not be enough to squelch internal dissent if views of outsiders openly dispute their domestic or foreign policies.

Most observers will also know that this "non-interference" policy is a one-way street for China. While insisting that others keep their nose of their affairs, Chinese officials often venture opinions on the goings on in other countries.

For example, Beijing frequently interferes with attempted visits by the Dalai Lama and Taiwanese public officials. A few years ago, China's ambassador to Australia, Zhou Wenzhong, issued an ominous declaration relating to dealing with Taiwan. He stated that "whatever means we choose to use is China's internal affair which brooks no foreign interference." All of this serves Chinese long-term objectives by maneuvering other countries into a position that accommodates Beijing's aims.

A recent case in point is found in China's stated opposition to Tokyo's decision to dispatch members of its Self Defense Forces to serve in Iraq. An editorial article in the official newspaper, China Daily, insisted that that the sending of its troops was banned under Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. But you have to give the Chinese credit on this point. After all, it takes an unimaginable dose of chutzpah for a totalitarian regime to insist on the sanctity of the rule of law.

Of course, it is understandable that many of its neighbors bear a grudge against Japanese aggression and worry about a resurgence of nationalist impulses. But conjuring up memories of Japan's wartime atrocities must be understood to be a clever ploy to keep Tokyo off balance in international affairs.

To this end, officials in Beijing (and Seoul) often insist that apologies issued for occupation by Japan were insufficient or lacking in sincerity. Meanwhile, the regular visits by senior Japanese politicians to the burial site of several convicted war criminals of the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo elicit statements of outrage.

Showing an ability to pile outrage upon outrage, Beijing introduced inaccurate and distorted information about Korea's early history to further Chinese political hegemony. In particular, Chinese officials have offered a gross misrepresentation of descriptions of the Koguryo (Goguryeo) empire (37 BC to 668 AD) whose territory included part of a Chinese regional kingdom. This strong warrior state successively defeated invading armies of the Chinese empires.

In the Chinese version, Koguryo was incorporated into a Chinese historical timeline and included a claim that these people were of "han" Chinese descent. Beijing also interfered with an effort by Pyongyang to place Koguryo tombs on UNESCO's World Cultural Heritage list of historic sites.

Ethnic Koreans that had lived in the region previously known as Manchuria for many centuries formed the core of the empire. Eventually, their capital was moved to Pyongyang from Jian in Manchuria in the fourth century.

After Koreans and Manchurian tribes lived together for centuries, they were incorporated into Chinese territory with a treaty by Japan and the Qing dynasty in China in 1909. It is amusing to think that Marxist-Leninists insist that unequal treaties signed by imperial powers have any legitimate force. It was left to Korean learned societies to insist that Beijing place the Korean kingdom of Koguryo in its proper historical perspective.

For its part, Beijing insists that everyone else should exercise the highest standards of historical probity. For example, the media and diplomatic channels have been used to criticize the content of Japanese history textbooks. It is a blatant act of hypocrisy to be inconsistent in stating concerns over the correct retelling of past deeds and misdeeds.

It is likely that the incident is part of a well-orchestrated and purposeful attempt to increase its political influence in Northeast Asia. This probably reflects concern over the large numbers of ethnic Koreans living in the northeastern provinces of Laoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang that were granted considerable autonomy during the early 1950s.

On the face of it, the fudging of a historical moment might seem a small matter. But, it turns out that China has irredentist claims on all its borders and in the waters that touch its shores. As it is, China claims about 80 percent of the entire area of the South China Sea, including the Spratlys and Paracels that lay along a broad plateau stretching from its eastern coastline up to 1,600 kilometers.

But hypocrisy, duplicity and deception are recognized skills of diplomacy. While Beijing is not alone in wielding these tools, its mastery of these dark arts make even the French look like amateurs. Those who would ignore Chinese intent and ability do so at their own peril.

Christopher Lingle is Professor of Economics at Universidad Francisco Marroqu in Guatemala and Global Strategist for eConoLytics.com.