Po Sheng system still viable, MND says
　

SAFE AND SOUND? : A `Defense News' report said China may have access to the cryptography techniques that would be used by Taiwan and the US in the event of war

AP, TAIPEI
Wednesday, Feb 20, 2008, Page 3

"The US provides Taiwan with the system's infrastructure, but Taiwan still controls the key integral technology. The damage was within our expectations."－Yu Sy-tue, Ministry of National Defense spokesman

The military's new air defense system was hurt somewhat by an intelligence leak to China, but its key technology was not compromised, a Ministry of National Defense (MND) official said yesterday.

The Po Sheng ("Broad Victory") system -- a sophisticated command, control and communications network that the government is purchasing from US defense contractor Lockheed Martin -- was one of the targets highlighted in an espionage affidavit filed earlier this month against a Pentagon analyst in a US court.

The analyst, Gregg Bergersen, was accused of providing classified information to Kuo Tai-sheng (郭台生), a dual US-Taiwanese national, identified in the affidavit as a Chinese agent.

intact

Speaking to reporters yesterday, ministry spokesman Yu Sy-tue (虞思祖) said the Po Sheng system was still intact because its key communications technology remained in Taiwanese hands.

"The US provides Taiwan with the system's infrastructure, but Taiwan still controls the key integral technology," he said.


"The damage was within our expectations," he said.

A Defense News report said ministry officials were particularly concerned that a program to modernize its C4ISR network might have been compromised.

C4ISR stands for command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, all considered crucial to winning any military confrontation.

The Defense News reported that "Bergersen managed negotiations on the Communications and Information Security Memorandum of Agreement, which allows the United States to release the Type 1 cryptography techniques that would be used for US-Taiwan communications during a war."

It added that "If true, there are concerns that China now has access to the crypto/keying material/algorithms that could allow Beijing to penetrate Taiwan and US networks."

knowledge

Yu acknowledged that Bergersen had knowledge of the Po Sheng system and said he met with Taiwan's defense ministry on that project, and on other issues, which he declined to specify.

He said that Kuo had never been in contact with the ministry.

The Chinese government has called the accusations of espionage in the Po Sheng affair groundless and accused the US of "Cold War thinking."

The Po Sheng system would be a critical element of Taiwan's defense in the event of an attack from China.

Taiwan's desinicization

Wednesday, Feb 20, 2008, Page 8

In a Feb. 8 article in the Yale Daily News titled "Taiwan's desinicization policy pulls at seams of One China," Xiaochen Su criticized the desinicizing policy of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration as unjustified and an obstacle to peace and cooperation for prosperity across the Taiwan Strait.

The author also cited the recent revision of the primary and secondary school textbooks as additional evidence of desinicization, since the new textbooks emphasized Taiwanese over Chinese history.

Finally, the author argued that the lack of communication across the strait is primarily the responsibility of the Taiwanese government, whose policies is preventing many Taiwanese from visiting China.

Fifty-two responses to the article were posted in the following week. The first one criticized the author as biased. Since China has the political upper hand, the writer argued, it is Beijing that should initiate communication and it should do so without imposing preconditions. The great majority of comments also highlighted the flawed reasoning behind the article, which was interpreted as reflecting the People's Republic of China orthodoxy, if not its propaganda. Many commentators were sympathetic to the DPP and the plights of Taiwanese.

In his comment, Taiwan-based Michael Turton wrote that no ethnic Han emperor had ever ruled Taiwan. Only the Qing Dynasty, a Manchu empire of non-Chinese origin, had ever occupied Taiwan and only did so for a short period of time before ceding it to Japan with some relief.

China's claim that Taiwan is "sacred national territory," therefore, is nothing but a post-World War II invention. When dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) unified China in 1927, nobody in his regime believed that Taiwan was part of China.

Turton also observes that the emergence of a local Taiwan identity predated the DPP. Its seeds, rather, were sown under the Japanese occupation.

The succeeding Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime after World War II reinforced colonialism by resorting to its own oppressive practices. Turton correctly points out that the DPP's "desinicization" policies are aimed strictly at KMT policies that attempted to suppress the local identity by introducing a fictional and idealized version of Chinese culture in Taiwan.

Another writer, named Chris, drew our attention to the presence of deep cultural and social differences between Taiwanese and Chinese populations in spite of ethnic similarities. He said that should China maintain its oppressive and belligerent policies in dealing with Taiwan, the Chinese-Taiwanese identity gap would only widen.

Canadian Politico, meanwhile, suggested that the whole issue was about communism versus freedom and liberty, authoritarianism versus democratic representation and judicial interference versus the rule of law.

Ben wrote that Taiwanese democracy was the best model China could emulate because of the close ethnic relationship that exists between the two nations and that democratic transformation of China would promote peace in Asia and in the entire world. To advance democracy, Taiwan must "Westernize" and desinicize, as did Japan and South Korea. It is interesting to note that the mention of Japan in the comment engendered a wild emotional response from pro-Beijing respondents.

The debate concluded with Eddie G from Sweden, who suggested that supporters of China visit Taiwan and experience Taiwanese culture for themselves. The readers were also reminded that in the court of civilized international opinion, the destiny of Taiwan should be decided by the people who truly love and identify themselves with Taiwan. The reason an undemocratic regime continues to exist in China, the writer argued, was the result of the ignorance Chinese have about the dismal human rights record in their country.

Although the desinicization program received the support of the majority of commentators in the publication, it has been maliciously misrepresented by KMT-controlled media in Taiwan. Thus, the public has been misled into believing that Taiwanese are discriminating against the minority Chinese and that desinicization would intensify discrimination.

Facing a reversal of democratization, Taiwanese must wake up at this critical juncture in their history and use their votes to reject the undemocratic KMT on March 22, lest many find themselves joining the ranks of innumerable exiled Tibetans and Chinese dissidents.

Samuel Yang
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

The parties are failing to deal with a dark past
　

By Yang Wei-chung 楊偉中
Wednesday, Feb 20, 2008, Page 8

Professional students and informants were the products of Taiwan's past authoritarian era. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) used to accuse the opposition's young cadres of being professional students for the Chinese Communist Party or the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The KMT also accused the young supporters of the opposition movement of disguising revolution with student status, or carrying out such activities by using schools as bases.

During the student movement in the 1980s, both student leaders and supporters like myself were labeled as professional students by school administrations.

Informants, for their part, were spies placed by the KMT within the opposition camp to "push them in, pull them out." They were feared, worried over and hated by opposition activists. Through this fear of informants, the KMT aroused mutual suspicion among activists in order to create internal conflict.

Such authoritarian products did not completely disappear following Taiwan's superficial democratization. They have, in fact, turned into tools of the pan-blue and plan-green camps to influence elections. The former opposition camp repaid the KMT in kind by labeling presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) a professional student. Even more ridiculously, the former authoritarian rulers have called DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) a KMT informant.

Which begs the question: If being an informant is a sin, then how can the government or a party that created informants justify itself and its activities? If the KMT is basically politically and morally upright, what's wrong with being one of its informants?

The issue of professional students and informants has turned the election campaign into a mud-slinging war. More serious issues, such as the control of government violence and promotion of human rights, have not appeared on the parties' to-do list. Certainly, Ma and Hsieh's pasts should be exposed. But even if they really were professional students or informants, the whole thing is merely a selective exposure of the political darkness that characterized the nation's past. From the public's perspective, none of them should avoid the following questions.

For the KMT: If being an informant should be condemned, why does the party avoid discussing the past crimes committed by the intelligence service? Shouldn't the great number of files in the KMT cabinets be made public? Since the KMT claims to be "establishing links to Taiwan," why doesn't it link itself to historical responsibility as well?

The DPP, on the other hand, has always used "transitional justice" and the KMT's dark history as electoral tools. Yet, in its eight years in office, the party never released the intelligence service's records of public surveillance and human rights abuses. A reform of the intelligence apparatus has yet to be made, and government-sponsored violence continues.

To the Ma and Hsieh camps, we could ask whether they are ready to pledge to work with the rival camp no matter who is elected president, if they are prepared to uncover the human rights abuses during the authoritarian era, review past mistakes and seek reconciliation with society through dialogue.

Today, the perpetrators of past crimes have done nothing more than deflect accusations onto others. Some are enjoying great wealth and high positions in the DPP government

Our leaders have not only taken historical tragedies as cheap tools for power struggle, but have also gone down the same road as the KMT by abusing national power, threatening antagonists with media control or even hinting at the imposition of martial law.

Yang Wei-chung is spokesman for the Third Society Party.