Yao pointed out that the Ministry of Civil Service, under the Examination Yuan, has proposed a draft bill to the Council of the Examination Yuan for review and he also urged department chiefs of the Examination Yuan to make full efforts to back this reform plan and also expound the meaning of the reform to public servants.

Yao also pointed out that Examination Yuan has been devoted to hammering out the improvement of the civil service system and trying to devise a new and updated civil service system that is suitable for Taiwan's society.

"We will not stop reform, even though we cannot see the result of the reform in the short-term. But as long as we hold on there, we will see it eventually," Yao said.

Besides, Yao also noted that ample communication is needed whenever reform is implemented, asking Examination Yuan members to communicate with both subjects that would be part of reform and the mass media.

"Open discussion and transparent policy-making are the best ways to reduce the public's misgivings and misunderstandings," Yao said.

A summing-up forum was held on the last day of the conference to present the opinions and suggestions offered by over 200 governmental officials and experts on three major topics concerning the reform of government systems -- including finding diverse methods for screening civil servants, building up a flexible system of employing civil servants and activating the channels of appointing public officials and improving the civil-service training system and cultivating public officials of high quality.

These three topics were respectively discussed by three ministries under the Examination Yuan including the Ministry of Examination, the Ministry of Civil Service and the Civil Service Protection and Training Commission.

Yao presided over the summing-up forum and the participants of the three groups delivered their ideas and opinions on the three topics one after another.

Suggestions of the topic on finding diverse methods for screening civil servants were reported by Examination Yuan member Tsai Shih-yuan and many group members proposed to increase interviews or oral tests for those who pass the national examination as a second stage of examinations so that competent public servants can be more precisely found.

Devising alternative plans to solve the shortage of public servants in Taiwan's remote districts will be a priority for the Ministry of Examination and requesting examinees to have language certificates will be listed as one of their qualifications of participating in exams.

Building up a database management system that collects all the questions tested in past examinations would be extremely helpful to increase the credibility and efficiency of the national civil service examinations.

But the suggestion about authorizing the operation of the national examinations to private sectors was opposed by some of the Examination Yuan members. Both Minister of Civil Service Chu Wu-hsien and Examination member Hung Te-hsuan argued that the national examinations should be preserved as the patent of the Examination Yuan, as it is proficient in handling the fairness of all kinds of recruitment exams and they doubted whether private companies could maintain the principles of equity and justice that the Examination Yuan have been proud of.

Examination member Bian Yu-yuan presented the final conclusions of the second topic of building up a flexible system of employing civil servants and activating the channels of appointing public officials and a number of group members found that many governmental chiefs have vague ideas about the regulations of employment and consequently some misunderstandings happen.

Therefore, according to Bian, the Ministry of Civil Service should request that administrative chief have a full understanding of the employment statute and also educate their subordinates about related regulations.

Regarding the topic of improving the civil-service training system and cultivating public officials of high quality, seven suggestions were made in the discussion on Monday afternoon, according to the group's leader, Examination Yuan member Liu Hsing-shan.

Some obsolete articles from the Training and Development of Public Servants Law should be corrected or deleted to meet current needs and training and development organizations should be downsized and merged to save needless waste of resources.

Establishing a national civil service institute that focuses on training public servants' analytic ability and organizational thinking was also one of the conclusions, according to Liu.

Besides, strengthening the interaction between governmental departments and enterprises would be considered a way to increase public servants' working efficiency and half the amount of lifetime learning credit should be related to a public servants' job.

But Hung pointed out that coordination other than competition should be the core value for governmental departments and those successful experiences in enterprises might not be transplanted into departments.

"Government organizations are not free markets after all and administrations have responsibility for saving expenditure for taxpayers. In fact, we also have stricter standards and have to be more careful when it comes to using budgets," Hung said.

China detains foreigners on terror charges

CAMPAIGN: Nineteen foreigners have been arrested in Xinjiang this year, with one top~official saying that they had been sent to carry out sabotage

REUTERS, URUMQI, CHINA

China has arrested 19 foreigners on terrorism charges in its restive northwestern region of Xinjiang and told the children of a freed dissident they cannot go abroad, a regional leader said yesterday.

Beijing has waged a relentless campaign against militants from Xinjiang's Uighur minority who have struggled for decades to make the region an independent state called East Turkestan and whom China has labeled foreign backed terrorists.

This year we have arrested 19 people from abroad who were sent to Xinjiang for violent sabotage." Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Wang Lequan told reporters at a news conference in the region's capital, Urumqi.

"When they entered the territory of Xinjiang, we immediately caught them," Wang said without elaborating.

In August, China charged Uighur dissident Rebiya Kadeer, now living in exile in the US, with conspiring to sabotage celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region on Oct. 1. She was also charged with evading taxes, committing fraud and running up heavy debts.

The government had told Kadeer's children they could not leave the country until the family's debts were paid, Wang said.

"We asked them not to leave the country before the present issue is resolved because if they settle outside China, who shall return their evaded taxes?" he said.

China freed businesswoman Kadeer in March, after almost six years in jail for providing state secrets abroad, just ahead of a visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

In May, Washington raised concerns about the safety of Kadeer's friends and family when a rights group said police had detained arid beaten some of her associates and tried to arrest her son.

"We haven't put any limits on their [her childrens'] personal freedom," Wang said.

Many of the Turkic-speaking Uighurs favor greater autonomy from Beijing and complain of inequities under rule by Han Chinese.

It's time to go on the offensive

Since President Chen Shui-bian became president in 2000, the performance of his administration has led to many of its supporters losing heart and suffering from a sense of impotence. Instead of the determination and confidence Chen often displayed when he was Taipei mayor, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration appears to lack a sense of its own self-worth. It appears easy to push around.

What has gone wrong? One problem has been the government's desperate attempt to try to please all of the people all of the time.

A second problem is the administration's inclination to "govern by media." More often than not, it appears as if newspaper opinion pages are what create the government's priorities and guide its agenda-setting and policy-making decisions. Government officials hammer out decisions according to columnists' opinions, while lawmakers pose questions on the legislative floor based on what they read in the tabloids.

Hiding behind the protection of their legislative immunity, many pro-China lawmakers cite yet-to-be-confirmed media reports, fanning erroneous accusations against government officials. The pro-China media then picks up on the lawmakers' pontificating, repeating the allegations and driving the vicious cycle of smearing the government through yet another round.

It is understandable that bureaucrats and government agencies prepare media clippings in order to brief their superiors on what opinion pages have said about their performance and to stay in touch with the latest trends and opinions.

However, given the make-up of the nation's media -- the majority of which for historical reasons leans toward a certain party and shares a common interest with the pan-blue camp -- the administration's eager-ness to be well thought of simply leaves it battered and bruised.

The pro-China media is good at two-handed maneuvers that distort the facts while faking public-opinion pieces in an attempt to influence the government's policies. They have been far too successful.

It's sad that the government has often given into such pressure. This, coupled with its inability to efficiently convey its own messages, create the impression of continuous policy flip-flops.

The recent furor over China Steel Corp chairman Lin Wen-yuan's whopping NT$44 million (US$1.3 million) bonus is a prime example of this problem. While it is one thing to question state-run enterprises' systems for paying bonuses, the pro-China media has been allowed to paint Lin as a greedy man and make it seem as if Lin's bonus was proof that the DPP was stealing money from the taxpayers.

Of course the media outlets that have made such allegations and inferences will proclaim that they are simply exercising freedom of the press and holding the administration accountable in order to safeguard the people's interests. But to whom are they holding the government accountable? Whose interests are they guarding? The people in Taiwan or those in China?

The pan-green camp, however, shares a portion of the blame for allowing the pan-blue media to manipulate stories without being challenged. The lack of unity within the DPP has exacerbated this problem. Political struggles among DPP factions have led some people to "leak" a story or information to the pro-China media in order to attack another faction.

The DPP needs to snap out of its lethargy and get its act together. It needs to take the initiative and map out strategies to deter its "death from a thousand [paper] cuts." Better late than never.

An Indian idea for easing tensions

By M. D. Nalapat

`It is my suggestion that "Deng thought" be extended to cover the principle of "one nation, two states." This formula means that while there would be a single Chinese nation, this would be divided into two states, the PRC and Taiwan, both of which would have equal standing in international law, and the same degree of internal control and superintendence over external relations.'

If there is an example of untrue and ungrateful friends, it is that provided by the late US president Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Although the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supported all the actions of the US while the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) backed none, both Nixon and Kissinger helped to push Taiwan not just out of the UN Security Council, but the UN as well.

Had Washington, London, Paris and Tokyo shown the moral courage at that time to insist on the recognition of Taiwan as an entity separate from that controlled by the CCP, there is no doubt that Beijing would have been practical enough to accept the ground reality of two states, which is the situation across the Taiwan Strait.

The fact is that the KMT never signed a surrender document or a peace treaty with the CCP that conceded that they were defeated. This means that in international law, both the CCP and the KMT were equal in 1949 ,and therefore by extension, the two entities -- the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan -- were also legally equal.

It is because of the moral deficit in Washington, London, Paris and Tokyo that Taipei is repeatedly being humiliated in international forums instead of being regarded as an equal partner. Unlike these four capitals, which reduced their support for Taiwan from 1949 to 1979, India has increased its presence, and today has the same relations with Taipei as the Western states that pushed Taiwan into a corner 30 years ago in their eagerness to please the CCP.

The KMT was a friend of Indian independence. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek backed full freedom for India, even when Winston Churchill was Britain's prime minister and claimed that Indians were racially inferior and unfit for independence. As the KMT went across the Taiwan Strait legally undefeated in 1949 and set up a government there, the legally-elected administration in Taipei headed by President Chen Shui-bian has the same legal rights and authority as his KMT predecessors had.

In the spirit of the creation of reconciliation between the two legally equal entities across the Strait, it is suggested that an extension of the PRC's late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's "one country, two systems" formula be implemented. This is the concept of "one nation, two states," that holds that while both Taiwan and the PRC belong to the same Chinese nation, they are separate and equal states.

It took Europe centuries of bloody conflict as well as the colonization of other peoples before the continent settled down to both internal as well as international co-existence. Asia needs to avoid repeating this history. By 2015, an Asian Union that is modelled on the EU should become a reality. The different powers in Asia should take the use of force off the table while dealing with disputes concerning one another.

For such a situation to come about, good relations between the PRC and the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC) are a necessity. Tension between the two -- not to speak of the worst-case scenario of conflict -- would severely retard prospects in Asia, and may make the "Asian Century" stillborn. This would be a calamity.

Two years ago, at back-to-back conferences in Hong Kong and Taipei, I stressed the need for a peaceful settlement of disputes,especially across the Strait. India has a vital interest in such a resolution, because the region has become a vital trading partner of New Delhi, besides long-standing cultural and historical ties exist.

Hence it would not be out of place for an analyst from India to attempt to contribute a solution to the "Gordian Knot" of Beijing-Taipei relations. The mechanism suggested is an extension of the strategy of one of the greatest minds in history, Deng, who came up with the concept of "one country, two systems" for Hong Kong.

Today, despite complaints from those wishing to see more rapid political development in Hong Kong, it has a degree of autonomy and a character unlike that of any Chinese province.

There have been numerous suggestions that the "one country two systems" principle should be adopted in the cross-strait dispute. However, the reality is that Taiwan is not a province, it is a state.

Hence it is my suggestion that "Deng thought" be extended to cover the principle of "one nation, two states." This formula means that while there would be a single Chinese nation, this would be divided into two states,the PRC and Taiwan, both of which would have equal standing in international law, and the same degree of internal control and superintendence over external relations.

Should an agreement be reached on this basis, then the PRC would recognize the right of Taiwan to have its own system of government, flag, armed forces, external relations, financial freedom and other attributes of a state, such as its own currency and postal service.

The PRC would withdraw its objection to Taiwan joining the UN and to sending diplomatic representatives abroad,while Taipei would -- as part of the agreement -- join with Beijing in guaranteeing non-violence as the principle of relations between the two states, each of whom would agree that they belong to a single Chinese nation.

Such a development would make the formation of an Asian NATO unnecessary. Otherwise, if the present cross-strait tension continues, a security alliance to protect Taiwan from attack will inevitably be created, as neither Japan, the EU or the US can strategically accept the merger of the island with the PRC.

Of course, it would be clear that by accepting "one nation, two states," the Taiwanese do not accept that they are all Han, especially in view of the fact that research shows close ethnic links between Polynesian communities and the bulk of the inhabitants of Taiwan.

Once it is accepted that both states are two sides of the same nation, albeit entirely separate in the exercise of governmental power, then the way would be cleared for an immense expansion of contacts between the two sides. Both can sign an "open skies" agreement that would give the other's carriers landing rights in each other's territory. While business contacts have been transparent, other links have perforce had to be more secretive.This is not to the benefit of either state.

In particular, Taiwan has evolved into one of the strongest economies in the world. The Taiwanese people have fashioned a vigorous democracy that has helped put their nation at the cutting edge of technological innovation. It is a travesty of both justice as well as ground realities to bar Taipei from regional groupings and conferences and the UN.

By the agreement detailed above, Beijing would accept that Taipei is as much of a "state" as it itself is, and would thereafter dismantle the barriers preventing Taiwan from full participation in regional and international forums and debate. In view of the fact that the KMT was not legally defeated in 1949, this is the only legal path to peace between the two entities.

As the example of Iraq has shown, it is not enough to occupy a country unless the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants welcome such an event. Should the PRC invade and occupy Taiwan by force, the bloodshed would dwarf the suffering unleashed on Taiwanese in 1949, when the KMT army made the island its home.

Unless hearts and minds are won over, the mere possession of territory becomes a negative as is being seen in Iraq, where British and US forces are generating hostility within a populace that sees them as alien invaders.

To capture Taiwan in such a manner would be to permanently destroy the goodwill for China and Chinese culture and civilization that is still plentiful in the island. Thus, war is not a winning option for China in Taiwan.

The psychological damage caused by conflict to the goodwill shown by Taiwanese to the PRC is apart from the international costs of such a war. Even in the unlikely event of the US and Japan not joining hands to repel a military attack on Taiwan, the PRC would certainly face economic sanctions and boycotts that would cripple its economy.

Within China, Taiwanese enterprises are high-productivity islands. Should there be a conflict, many such individuals are likely to relocate to the US, Canada and Australia. Very few would choose to remain behind in a China that would soon face the fury of the US and its allies, if not militarily, then certainly politically and economically. Any forced occupation of Taiwan would be a lose-lose situation for both Beijing and Taipei, even should the military operation conclude smoothly and speedily.

The present leadership in China has demonstrated a sophistication in its handling of the external environment that has replicated its success in economic policy. Certainly, it will have information that Taiwan now is very different from that of 1960, the period when the present policy of diplomatic containment and quarantine began. Thanks to the continuation of a stance that has lost its salience, China is beginning to miss out on several opportunities for synergy that close Beijing-Taipei links would bring about.

The pride of the Taiwanese people and their determination to chart their own course rather than get merged into the PRC is palpable to any visitor to Taiwan. The days when a small clique could take decisions on behalf of the future of Taiwan are over.

Just as there is unlikely to be a consensus within Taiwan in favor of risking a conflict by a unilateral declaration of independence, there is unlikely to be popular support within the PRC for a conflict in the absence of such a declaration.

After decades of turmoil and instability, the people living in the PRC would like to preserve the calm that the policies of Deng have gifted to them. They can be expected to welcome unorthodox measures to break the logjam over relations with Taiwan, where for years the immovable object of political integration into the PRC has been confronting the irresistible force created by the desire of the Taiwanese people for freedom to run their own lives.

Within Taiwan as well, except for a handful of visceral anti-China elements who would have no objection to the island being the "meat in the sandwich" between China and the US, the overwhelming majority of the people would welcome a rapprochement with China and cherish the benefits that this would bring.

Just as first former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon have been unlikely peacemakers, history has given the present Taiwanese and the Chinese leadership the opportunity to have a historic reconciliation between the two states that together form the great Chinese nation. The time for implementing the formula of "one nation, two states" in the spirit of reconciliation between two equal entities has arrived.

M. D. Nalapat is a professor of geopolitics at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education in India.