20050813

Republic minded

Pro-independence activist Peter Wang, left, yesterday visits Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Chairman Shu Chin-chiang to invite the party to work together to build a Republic of Taiwan.

Allies launch new UN bid

By Mac William Bishop

STAFF REPORTER

Taiwan began its 13th bid to become a member of the UN yesterday, as the nation's allies launched a two-pronged diplomatic effort aimed at gaining recognition by the world body.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen told a gathering of reporters that the ministry was adopting a new strategy of "presenting two proposals" to the UN in order to gain representation in the organization for the people of Taiwan.

According to a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 11 of Taiwan's 26 diplomatic allies submitted a proposal entitled "The question of the representation of the 23 million people of Taiwan in the United Nations" to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan at noon on Thursday.

The statement said the proposal was called "the participation proposal."

At the same time, 13 of the allies sent a separate proposal, entitled "A proactive role for the United Nations in maintaining peace in the Taiwan Strait," to Annan's office, the statement said. That proposal was referred to as "the peace proposal."

Chen lauded the allies that had submitted the proposals, saying that their support was "based on the universal values of democracy, human rights, mutual prosperity and justice."

Taiwan, which as the Republic of China was one of the founding members of the UN in 1945, officially withdrew from the organization on Oct. 25, 1971.

In the early 1990s, the country began campaigning to rejoin the world body, but has thus far been met with stiff opposition from China, which opposes Taiwan's participation in any international organization as a sovereign state.

The ministry statement said that "Taiwan's efforts to participate in the UN are not intended to challenge the rights of or seat of any UN member states."

In unusually direct language, it said that Beijing's efforts to prevent Taiwan from joining the UN "will not help improve cross-strait relations, and will undermine peace in the [Taiwan] Strait."

"It is hoped that the Beijing authorities will face the fact that both sides have been ruled separately by different governments for more than half a century, and that Beijing will renounce its unwise enactment of the `Anti-Secession' Law, which sets the conditions for the use of force against Taiwan, and cease its barbaric attempts to constrain and repress Taiwan in the international community," the ministry said.

It was not immediately clear if the two-pronged approach adopted by the ministry would meet with any greater success than Taiwan's previous attempts to join the UN, all of which were defeated by powerful opposition from China's allies in the General Assembly.

China is a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

China denies redress via court system for evictees

NO COMEBACK: Forced demolitions have become the norm in China's redevelopment boom, and the state now want to stop legal challenges by the evicted

REUTERS. BEIJING

China, where land disputes and forcible demolition have become a major flashpoint for protests, has ordered courts to stop hearing cases brought directly by disgruntled evictees, state media reported yesterday.

Entire neighborhoods have been torn down in booming cities to make way for office towers and apartments, with what state media have called ”barbarian demolitions” sparking petitions and protests.

"People’s courts will not hear compensation or resettlement disputes if agreements cannot be reached between demolishers and property owners or occupants," the Communist Party mouthpiece, the <<People's Daffy>> said, quoting a judicial interpretation by the Supreme Court.

A woman walks past a demolished home plastered with petitions and banners protesting against demolition in Beijing. In a recent report, commissioned by the United Nations’ Commission on Human Rights, a fledgling Chinese non-governmental rights organization documented 12 cases of allegedly illegal land confiscations in China that have led to the beating, jailing and even murder of those seeking legal recourse.

"People feel a lot of discontent over demolitions and many had placed their hopes in the courts," Lin told Reuters. "It's easy to imagine that courts are overburdened."

Parliament amended the constitution in 2004 to protect private property and the draft of China's first real property law, made public to solicit opinion, stresses its inviolability.

But the draft law is also vague on compensation and Lin said she was disappointed.

"Some articles tin the draft might give more legitimacy to forceful demolitions and the clew interpretation will possibly further complicate the issue already embedded in deep contradictions. It might escalate [social] tensions."

Ye Guozhu, an activist against evictions, was sentenced to fours years in prison last December for planning to stage what would have been one of the biggest demonstrations in Beijing since the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro democracy protests which were crushed by the army with heavy loss of life.

Popular protests against land seizures are also becoming increasingly common in rural areas as the country's breakneck development encroaches further into the countryside.

Land disputes, corruption, abuse of power and a widening gap between the rich and the poor were among the reasons leading to the number of protests shooting up to 74,000 last year from just 10,000 in 1994, Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang has been quoted as saying.

The number of people involved in those demonstrations jumped to 3.76 million in 2004 from 730,000 a decade earlier.

A US aircraft carrier battle group, a contingent of Marines and dozens of Air Force fighters have conducted their largest inter-service exercises of the year off Okinawa.

The maneuvers, which began Aug. 7, involved more than 100 military planes -- including B-2 stealth bombers from the island of Guam -- and the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier and its battle group.

Fighters launched from the deck of this carrier in intervals of less than two minutes roared through the skies on Thursday seeking out imaginary enemies and targets, often pitting Navy or Air Force jets against each other.

"This is the highest-level joint exercise we can have outside the United States," said battle group commander Rear Admiral Doug McLain. "We're operating the entire spectrum of warfare."

Officials refused to comment on the political impact of the maneuvers, called JASEX, which come on the heels of statements from the Pentagon indicating an increased concern over the modernization of China's military, and amid talks aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

The maneuvers were, however, intended to underscore the US military's role in the region, according to a Kitty Hawk press release.

"JASEX demonstrates the U.S. commitment to the stability of the western Pacific," Captain Ed McNamee, the Kitty Hawk's commanding officer, said in a statement.

McLain stressed that the exercises, scheduled to continue through tomorrow, were mainly designed to improve cooperation and interoperability between the different branches of the US military.

Though stretched thin by assignments in the Middle East, the US military presence in this region remains very high-profile.

The Kitty Hawk is the only aircraft carrier in the Navy that is permanently based outside of the US. Its home port is Yokosuka, Japan. Its battle group is also the Navy's largest.

The maneuvers are being held over a wide area of the seas between Okinawa and Guam.

In an interview with a Chinese-language newspaper last weekend, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), speaking in his capacity as the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) chairman-elect, said that until China reversed its verdict on Tiananmen, it would be impossible for Taiwan to begin negotiations about reunification. Ma's remarks are an interesting example of why so many people think him a great hope for democracy -- and why he is in fact a chip off the old KMT block, with its traditional contempt for the views of the electorate it aims to serve.

The misguided will see Ma's remarks as standing up to China in a way that outgoing KMT Chairman, Lien Chan, never would and never has. For Lien, all that ever mattered was his ambition to be president. When he found the Taiwanese wouldn't give him the job, he hoped China might make him Taiwan's Janos Kadar. Ma, on the other hand, seems principled enough to be more averse to selling out Taiwan than his predecessor. And he is also realistic enough to know that China's political system is anathema to Taiwanese. Of course it is not just Tiananmen that bothers them, but Ma has highlighted that a reversal on Tiananmen would herald such a re-drawing of the relationship of the state to its people in China as to change the current system beyond recognition.

So far, so good. Ma is prepared to tell uncomfortable truths to the Chinese and stand up for Taiwan's liberal democratic values.

But the problem here is what he means by "beginning discussions of reunification." Because it is by no means certain that a majority in Taiwan want this to happen. Mainland Affairs Council polls show barely 13 percent of people on Taiwan want reunification either now or ever. Compare that with the 19 percent of hardcore independence supporters, or the 37 percent of don't knows -- the "status quo now, decision" later brigade -- and it's clear that assuming unification negotiations are things that could start, were China to meet some criteria, seems to be assuming rather a lot. Actually, it is riding roughshod over the wishes and views of the 87 percent of Taiwanese who are more ambivalent about unification than Ma.

It should be remembered that the goal of unification -- which one could have been thrown into jail for questioning a generation ago -- was imposed on the Taiwanese by the KMT without their consultation or approval via any democratic means. No Taiwanese has ever been able to vote on whether they supported unification with China, and the assumption that they do is simply an insult. That Ma, KMT blueblood that he is, cannot begin to understand how deeply offensive his attitude is, reeking of traditional Chinese paternalism with its distrust of the views of the hoi polloi, and the thuggishness and selfishness intrinsic to the KMT, shows how thin is the veneer of Ma's democratic values. It is the same old contempt as ever.

For the record, here is the most basic demand for unification talks. Before they begin there must be a referendum on whether they should begin. It is that simple. Taiwanese have to show that they are interested in unification before there is any point in starting talks.

Why? For the obvious reason that the talks will probably not be allowed to fail, though they might be dragged out quite a long time. So to start to talk about unification is really to commit yourself to it taking place -- sometime -- and without sanction via a referendum, no government could say it had a mandate to enter into such negotiations. Any government which did try to force this on the people deserves to be faced with an insurrection.

If Ma were a democrat, he would know you cannot negotiate without a mandate. But at heart he is a Chinese Nationalist and a fat lot they have ever cared for such niceties.

The main theme running through East Asian history in recent years has shifted away from economic issues and a war on terror, and is now focused on geopolitical conflict. The contest between the major powers -- which is becoming increasingly tense -- looks more and more like a "Cold War" between the US and China.

The contemporary focus in both East Asia and the world has changed. Apart from Taiwan, no one still believes in the empty cliche that the economy is everything. Over the past four years, the war on terror has receded from being clearly in focus to background buzz, and the anti-terror alliance between the US, Russia, China and other countries has practically disintegrated.

It has been replaced by a geopolitical contest between major powers, particularly the US and China. This is clearly indicated by recent incidents, including China National Offshore Oil Corp's (CNOOC) failure to take over the US oil company Unocal, Uzbekistan's decision to drive the US military off its territory, and the six-party talks about nuclear disarmament on the Korean Peninsula.

In the end, CNOOC had to back down from its attempt to acquire Unocal. This acquisition, which would have been the largest ever by a Chinese company had it succeeded, put the US on the alert against China, and it also revealed how contradictory the two countries' energy strategies are.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is aware that their greatest weakness lies in a lack of energy resources. Beijing is now seeking to increase its energy assets and secure diverse energy sources in Central Asia, Siberia and its nearby marine territories. It is also strengthening its navy to change the current situation in which the US controls the sea lanes through which China's crude oil is transported. Energy and the wish to gain regional hegemony is leading China to make a concrete attempt to become the dominant power in East Asia and the Western Pacific.

Concerns over energy security are making Beijing authorities eager to drive out US forces from Central Asia as a way of breaking through the US' "containment." On July 5, the Astana, Kazakhstan summit of the China and Russia-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) resulted in a joint communique citing the gradual stabilization of the situation in Afghanistan as a reason for demanding that the US present a timetable for withdrawing its forces from Central Asia.

On July 30, the Uzbek government sent a diplomatic note to the US government giving it 180 days to remove US troops and military equipment from the K2 base in Uzbekistan, possibly as a result of strong US criticism against the government following the May massacre by the Uzbek military of hundreds of residents of the city of Andijan. This is a rare setback for the US, and behind this decision by the Tashkent authorities was strong support from Russia and, most of all, China.

The US government is familiar with the Chinese communists' method of attack and their strategic ambitions. The Pentagon's latest annual report on China's military strength, which was issued on July 19, for the first time points out that China's active expansion of its military arsenal is not only aimed at Taiwan, but rather at "Taiwan and beyond."

The report says that, "Some Chinese military analysts have expressed the view that control of Taiwan would enable the PLA Navy to move its maritime defensive perimeter further seaward and improve Beijing's ability to influence regional sea lines of communication."

The changes in the Sino-US relationship clearly also affect the situation on the Korean Peninsula. The recently held fourth round of the six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue was the longest of the rounds. Although Russia (with China's blessing) used new ways of throwing US plans into disarray, the whole process shows that Washington has changed its policy and now is willing to keep negotiations going and reach a solution in order to deprive China of its "North Korean card." This places the US in a more advantageous position in its competition with China.

All signs point to China and the US now entering into a new version of the Cold War. The two are still important trading partners, but they are also becoming involved in a geopolitical struggle centering around their opposing energy strategies. This struggle is now heating up.

Chang Hsi-mo is an assistant professor at the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies at National Sun Yat-sen University.