No more
bargaining chips for Ma
By Lin Cho-Shui 林濁水
Friday, Sep 19, 2008, Page 8
Judging from the US’ refusal to sell Taiwan F-16 C/D fighters, President Ma
Ying-jeou (馬英九) has caused US diplomacy a lot of trouble.
Ma has ruined relations between the US and Taiwan. This has made China very
happy, although it has not rewarded Ma for his efforts. Under former president
Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), the direct links issue was something that Beijing would
constantly bring up for possible discussion. Now that the second round of
cross-strait negotiations is nearing, Taiwan is busy making suggestions on what
issues the negotiations should cover but it’s still not clear what Beijing wants
to discuss or if it wants to discuss anything at all.
Even worse, Beijing has said it was rude of Ma to expect China to deliver on his
election promises that the first chartered cross-strait flight to Taiwan should
take place on July 4 and that Chinese tourists should be allowed to come to
Taiwan. China now evidently views Ma as a troublemaker — much the same way the
US does.
Ma must be greatly surprised by the current state of affairs. Although Chinese
authorities tried to give the impression of remaining neutral during the
presidential campaign, Taiwan affairs offices throughout China and some
Taiwanese business association officials collaborated to encourage Taiwanese
businesspeople in China to vote for Ma. They didn’t even try to hide their
support for Ma.
But now that Ma has been elected, China has shown little interest in meeting
Taiwan’s demands for trade exchanges. The reason is simple: After Ma’s election,
Taiwan has lost all the bargaining power it had with Beijing.
China is an old expert at using power politics in diplomacy. It knows that
Taiwan has three main advantages in its favor when dealing with Beijing. First,
the US views Taiwan as its friend. Second, there are independence advocates who
strongly oppose unification with China. And third, Taiwan’s strength comes from
an independent economy.
These three advantages have greatly weakened since Ma became president. Ma’s
unclear stance on sovereignty and his insistence that cross-strait relations
take precedence over diplomatic relations have weakened US support for Taiwan.
Washington’s refusal to sell the F-16 C/Ds to Taiwan is a clear reflection of
this.
Although there are still many independence advocates in Taiwan, the Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP) is no longer in power and senior members of the Chinese
Nationalist Party (KMT) are tripping over each other to please Beijing without
concern for the consequences. Worst of all, the Ma administration has given up
on Taiwan independently developing its economy and wants to rely on China to
revive the economy.
Since these three advantages have been weakened, Beijing sees this as the
perfect time to further encroach on Taiwan’s diplomatic space and feel that it
no longer has to be polite in its dealings with Taipei.
Businesspeople are well aware that you need to raise your price and terms at the
start of negotiations. Ma, however, has done the opposite.
Believing that cross-strait relations should take precedence over foreign
diplomacy and that Taiwan needs to negotiate its diplomatic space with China,
the Ma administration has promoted a diplomatic truce and stopped research and
development of medium-range missiles. By undercutting his own position even
before the issues have been discussed and saying Taiwan needs to discuss its
diplomatic options with China, Ma has opened the door wide for China to
interfere with Taiwan’s sovereignty.
Voluntarily putting Taiwan’s sovereignty under pressure is nothing short of
admitting that sovereignty over Taiwan belongs to China.
Taiwan recently lowered its requirements for joining the UN, stating that it
would not apply for membership in the world body, but only for “meaningful
participation” in UN agencies. All such attempts were blocked by China. Beijing
had solid reason for doing so since Taiwan had said it needed to discuss its
diplomatic options with China. The Ma administration then turned around and said
it would submit an application to join the UN without discussing it with
Beijing.
The administration is saying one thing and doing another, making Beijing feel
that its blocking of Taiwan’s application is justified.
With Ma giving away all his leverage, Beijing has rapidly come to see Ma as
someone it can suppress rather than co-opt as a valuable ally. This is not
strange at all: China’s united front strategy builds on Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東)
united front principles, which state that the secondary enemy should be co-opted
in the fight against the primary enemy and that today’s ally could become
tomorrow’s enemy.
Although Beijing tolerated Ma when it was busy with the Olympic Games, it was
unable to hide its dissatisfaction. Today, the Chinese economy is suffering from
a host of problems, real estate prices are dropping, the stock market has fallen
deeper than any other equity markets, exports are on the slide, the trade
surplus is shrinking, “hot money” is flowing out and many companies have gone
out of business. It appears that China can hardly fend for itself.
Despite this, Ma seems intent on tying Taiwan’s economic development to China.
It is only natural then for Beijing to treat Ma coldly and view Taiwan as a
troublemaker. If the Ma government fails to adjust its humiliating cross-strait
and diplomatic strategies, Taiwan will only fall deeper into trouble.
Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic
Progressive Party legislator.
Milk scare
becomes another power play
By Lin Shih-Chia 林世嘉
Friday, Sep 19, 2008, Page 8
A large portion of the shipment of melamine-contaminated milk powder recently
imported into Taiwan has already been used to make bread, beverages and other
products, making it very difficult for authorities to trace it. This has
provoked a lot of anger among Taiwanese, as have China’s efforts to use the
opportunity to belittle Taiwan’s sovereignty.
What’s even more worrying is that the milk powder incident may be only the tip
of the iceberg. Consumers’ Foundation data showed Chinese products accounted for
307 cases, or 66.1 percent, of all cases of unsafe products detected in Taiwan
between January and July, making China the No. 1 supplier of unsafe goods to
Taiwan.
Considering the way Chinese businesses have been dumping products all over the
world, it is hard to imagine that Taiwan was the only export destination for
this tainted milk powder. Given the lack of transparency of information in China
and Beijing’s attitude of putting national prestige and face-saving ahead of
everything else, there is more than a slight possibility that the tainted milk
powder has been exported to other countries.
Although the Chinese government received complaints about the milk as early as
March and learned of its link to cases of kidney stones in infants in June, it
was not until after the closing of the Olympic Games that the problem was made
public and the defective milk powder recalled.
Compare this with 2005, when a batch of infant formula contaminated with
helicobacter pylori was detected in France. Taiwan immediately received an alert
from the International Food Safety Authorities Network (INFOSAN) — a WHO agency
that handles global interchange on food safety information. INFOSAN clearly
stipulates that all countries must report any occurrence of
melamine-contaminated food. China, however, regards the current incident as a
domestic matter and has not issued any international alert so far.
Until September 2006, Taiwan was in continuous direct contact with INFOSAN
Director Joergen Schlundt. Then the WTO signed a memorandum of understanding
with China stipulating that all WHO communications with Taiwan should be sent
via China.
Since then, of the 232 health alerts issued by the WHO, China has passed on only
16 to Taiwan, often with a delay of several days and after the news had already
appeared in the media.
In January, one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies complained to the WHO about
China’s delay in passing on to Taiwan an alert about contaminated baby corn from
Thailand. The Chinese delegate arrogantly claimed that “China is a big country
with a big population, so hitches in issuing alerts are bound to happen from
time to time. We will be more careful about it in future.”
On the occasion of the current milk powder scandal, China is throwing its weight
around even more by insisting on passing its warning via the semi-official
Taiwan Affairs Office and Mainland Affairs Council instead of through official
channels, with the clear purpose of downgrading the affair to a domestic issue.
China’s attitude is not just short-sighted — it seriously disrupts the global
food safety warning system. Taiwanese health authorities should make work of the
issue. Even though Taiwan is not a member of the WHO, it can highlight the
contrasting attitudes of Taiwan and China with regard to international public
health matters and counter China’s efforts to belittle Taiwan by reporting this
affair to INFOSAN and other countries, speaking from the position of a sovereign
state, and share its experience in dealing with such incidents.
Lin Shih-chia is the executive director
of the Foundation of Medical Professionals Alliance in Taiwan.