20051004

Taiwan not a province of China, TSU tells Google

SOVEREIGNTY: The Taiwan Solidarity Union called for the public's support in demanding an apology from Google Maps for listing Taiwan as a `province of China'

BY KO SHU-LING

STAFF REPORTER

The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) legislative caucus yesterday called on the public to write to Google to protest its listing of Taiwan as a "province of China" on its Google Maps service.

In addition to sending its own letter of protest to the US search-engine giant, the caucus asked the government to lodge a formal protest and request Google to clearly define Taiwan as "an independent state."

This screen grab shows Google Maps' listing for Taiwan which raised the ire of the Taiwan Solidarity Union.

TSU caucus whip David Huang said that Google Maps' definition of Taiwan as part of China was not only far-fetched but also unacceptable to the nation's people.

"Taiwan is an independent, sovereign state. Taiwan is not part of China," Huang said.

"Taiwan has never been ruled by China, nor has the Chinese government deployed any government functionaries or armed forces here," he said.

According to Google's Web site, Google Maps provides users with data such as business locations, contact information and driving directions.

By listing Taiwan as a province of China, Google Maps is clearly succumbing to pressure from China to distort the international community's perception of the cross-strait situation, Huang said.

"It seriously sabotages the nation's sovereignty. The people of Taiwan should not allow China to spread such misleading information to the international community," Huang said.

TSU Legislator Tseng Tsan-teng said that the search engine's listing of Taiwan as a part of China has no basis in reality whatsoever.

"The public should condemn Google for belittling the nation's sovereignty. We simply cannot remain idle, because the nation's sovereignty is bound to be eroded inch by inch if we fail to take heed of China's petty political maneuverings in cases like this," Tseng said.

TSU Legislator Huang Chung-yung said Google was providing false information and demanded a public apology from the search engine.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesman Michael Lu said yesterday that the ministry has sent a telegram to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US, instructing the office to address a letter to Google to make a correction.

David Wang, deputy director-general of the ministry's Department of Information and Cultural Affairs, said this was not the first time international Web sites or media outlets have included Taiwan as part of China's territory.

"Our stance on the matter is clear: It is something for which we have zero tolerance, and there should also be zero ambiguity about the nation's sovereignty," he said.

"Swift action must be taken to take care of the matter and set the facts straight," Wang said.

Tony Ong, deputy director of the Government Information Office's International Information Department, said that many international media outlets deny Taiwan's sovereign status in order to gain access to China's media market, in which media operations are tightly controlled by the state.

"I encourage the public to inform government agencies of similar occurrences," he said.

Those interested in lodging an online complaint with Google can go to http://www.google.com/support/maps/bin/request.py.

The Republic of China's (ROC) Double Ten National Day is coming up next Monday. Taiwan's consulates around the world are preparing to celebrate this big event.

However, to many Taiwanese expatriates, this event has become a symbol of the nation's political divisions.

To many Taiwanese, Double Ten marks only the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)'s overthrow of the Qing dynasty, in which Taiwanese played no part. This event celebrates the birth of the ROC, which eventually brought much pain and terror to the Taiwanese through the KMT's rule by martial law.

In 2000, Taiwanese were finally able to vote out that corrupt, fascist party. Unfortunately, the government is still predominantly operated under the old system and bureaucracies imposed by the KMT. There was no cleansing of the KMT's guilt at all, which has encouraged that party to brazenly defy the people's interests and continue to wreak havoc in Taiwanese politics.

Taiwan has tried 13 times to reinstate its membership in the UN, but each attempt has failed. The real culprit is not China's obstruction. It is Taiwan's own fault that it insists on using the official national name, the ROC, to rejoin the UN. The UN has long ruled, based on Resolution 2758, that the People's Republic of China inherited the rights and UN seat of the ROC.

Obviously, continuing to promote the ROC internationally is not helpful to Taiwan's pursuit of UN membership.

With this in mind, it is not so difficult for many Taiwanese to hold their own opinion regarding Monday's "double trouble" event.

The Republic of China's (ROC) Double Ten National Day is coming up next Monday. Taiwan's consulates around the world are preparing to celebrate this big event.

However, to many Taiwanese expatriates, this event has become a symbol of the nation's political divisions.

Obviously, continuing to promote the ROC internationally is not helpful to Taiwan's pursuit of UN membership.

With this in mind, it is not so difficult for many Taiwanese to hold their own opinion regarding Monday's "double trouble" event.

The main trouble with Vladimir Putin's Russia in the eyes of its Western critics is that its friends and like-minded thinkers are no longer in the loop

`The Yeltsin regime was not so much democratic as anarchic and oligarchic. Today there is less anarchy and less oligarchy.'

Public consciousness always uses stereotypes. But it is always far worse when stereotypes take over the consciousness of a society's elites. Such is the case regarding Russia nowadays.

Liberal Western and domestic circles commonly characterize Russian President Vladimir Putin's government as increasingly authoritarian and ineffective. Inasmuch as illiberal -- and especially personal -- regimes are considered the least stable, the logical conclusion is that the "color revolution" scenario that we observed in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan is likely to repeat itself in Russia.

Of course, anything is possible in today's Russia. But I think that there is more wishful thinking than hardheaded logic among those calling for a "color revolution."

Consider, for example, that no one has ever developed a precise way to measure whether and to what extent a government is effective. If the criterion of effectiveness is the ability to achieve all of a society's goals, we will probably never find such a thing. The US, with a government that can hardly be described as weak, bungled the war in Iraq and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Compared to these failures, Putin's achievements in Chechnya look like the height of success.

Similarly, the EU's leadership is criticized for its inability to secure economic growth rates of more than 1 or 2 percent; by this standard, any government of a country with 7 percent growth -- such as Putin's Russia -- should be called super-effective. Indeed, today's administration is far more effective than former president Boris Yeltsin's government during the 1990s. Back then, most of the country was not governed at all, half of the economy's productive capacity vanished, the Kremlin could not get a single reform law through the Communist Duma, and only lazy people were not talking about the country's disintegration.

To be sure, contemporary Russia can hardly be called an exemplary democracy, and not all trends are encouraging. But to think that we are moving from Yeltsin's "democracy" to Putin's "autocracy" is simply silly. It is difficult today to imagine tanks firing on a legally elected parliament or privatization of state assets -- as well as delegation of the actual running of the country -- to the head of state's family and business cronies.

Similarly, it was not Putin who enacted a Constitution with an enormously powerful presidential government and a weak system of checks and balances, nor did he start the slaughter in Chechnya. The Yeltsin regime was not so much democratic as anarchic and oligarchic. Today there is less anarchy and less oligarchy.

The situation in Russia is far from identical to that which prevailed in, say, Ukraine at the time of last year's "orange" revolution." We Russians have no Victor Yushchenko, who from the start was the undisputed leader of the right-wing opposition. Nor do we have a Leonid Kuchma, an ineffective, weak-willed president who was widely hated. With an approval rating that hovers around 70 percent, no one can accuse Putin of being unpopular -- or, for that matter, of a willingness to surrender to the opposition or to people in the street.

In any case, it is not liberals who can get people into the streets in Russia; it is the Communists and nationalists. Their red and brown revolution would certainly be colorful, but not exactly the sunny outcome liberals profess to desire.

Liberals should face up to grim reality: Russia already had an "orange" revolution, in 1991, and the results were not particularly impressive. In fact, perhaps Ukraine, too, is beginning to suffer its own form of revolutionary hangover. As Yushchenko's recent sacking of his entire government shows, color revolutions have yet to prove that they are effective.

Alexis de Toqueville claimed that unfulfilled hopes lie at the basis of every revolution, that every revolution is engendered by disillusion caused by exaggerated expectations. The high point of disillusion with Russia's top leaders passed in 1999, when the level of trust in Yeltsin sunk to around 3 percent.

In reality, the main trouble with the current Putin government in the eyes of its Western critics is that its friends and like-minded thinkers are no longer in the loop. That can happen with anyone, but it is still no reason for revolution, which is always better wished on someone else than on yourself.

Yet despite all this, I have no doubt that an attempt will be made to bring down Russia's government by means outside the voting booth when the next presidential election is due in 2008.

Vyacheslav Nikonov, one of Russia's leading political scientists, is president of the Politika Foundation, Moscow.