Analysts focus on unrest in China
　

By Ko Shu-ling
STAFF REPORTER
Thursday, Jan 15, 2009, Page 3

“Heavy-handed suppression can maintain social order for a while, but it does not last long. Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union are two perfect examples”— Ming Chu-cheng, political science professor at National Taiwan University

Whether China’s economic development will lead to democratization hinges on how Beijing tackles its increasing social instability, a local expert on Chinese affairs said at an international forum yesterday.

Ming Chu-cheng (明居正), a political science professor at National Taiwan University, said the real number of incidents of social unrest outnumbered those recorded in official data, adding that the number of incidents were growing between 18 percent and 25 percent a year.

“I suspect China will see a lot of conflict over the next five years,” Ming said. “They could be as dramatic as those that happened in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union. It would be hard to imagine what would happen should large-scale social unrest occur.”

Ming made the remarks during the final day of the International Seminar on China’s 30 Years of Economic Policy Reform. The two-day event was organized by the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research and the Mainland Affairs Council.

Taiwan saw social unrest under the former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration, Ming said, but the authoritarian regime opted to make concessions and democratize.

“Heavy-handed suppression can maintain social order for a while, but it does not last long,” he said. “Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union are two perfect examples.”

It took two years for the Soviet Union to collapse and it took Romania only 10 days, Ming said, adding that public displeasure was the main cause of their downfall.

“The accumulated power of public discontent must not be ignored,” he said. “I firmly believe totalitarianism is doomed to fail. Problems are bound to occur when political rule clashes with human nature, and China is no exception.”

Chen Chih-jou (陳志柔), a sociology researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Academia Sinica, said that his study showed that China’s social disturbances would not lead to its collapse or democratization.

Chen, however, said that the data he relied on for his study were unreliable.

Yuan Zhijia (苑志佳), an economics professor at Rissho University in Tokyo, said that China may follow the development model of Asia’s four economic “tigers”: Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.

In other words, China’s economy will continue to grow under authoritarianism, Yuan said. It remains to be seen, however, whether economic development will lead to democratization, he said. He said that China was likely to develop into a country with a complete market economy in the near future.

Yuan said it was hard to predict what kind of capitalism China’s economy would develop into, as countries have different models because of their unique histories.

The US and the UK have “market capitalism” with the government acting as an “invisible hand” in the free and competitive market. France and Germany have “state-led capitalism” where the market economy and the role of government are equally important. Japan and South Korea have so-called “big business-based capitalism,” in which large business conglomerates play the dominating role.

Sweden’s capitalism is “social democratic capitalism” where there are high welfare, strong human rights and high taxes, Yuan said.

Taiwan does not equal ROC

Activist groups in the US are again pressing Congress to pass a resolution to “cancel” the “one China” policy and make other changes in the executive branch’s attitude toward Taiwan. The Taipei Times always gives such efforts front-page coverage, causing readers to think that the underlying rationale finds full support in the newspaper’s established editorial policy. In the interest of press freedom, I wonder if it would be possible to present a different point of view?

The “one China” policy of the US says that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the sole legitimate government of China. That is all that it says. Why any Taiwanese activist groups make the “cancellation” of such a policy the centerpiece of their lobbying efforts in Washington is therefore baffling. Of course, if one maintains that this policy includes the premise that “Taiwan is part of China,” that would be something worth arguing about. However, the CRS Report for Congress of July 9, 2007, titled China/Taiwan: Evolution of the “One China” Policy, makes clear that the policy includes no such premise and the US government has never recognized PRC sovereignty over Taiwan.

The Rogers v. Sheng case (DC Circuit, 1960), made clear that the US government has never recognized Republic of China (ROC) sovereignty over Taiwan either. The ruling in that case is fully supported by the Taiwan Relations Act, which stopped recognizing the ROC terminology in dealing with Taiwanese affairs, as well as current US Department of State guidelines for the 21st century.

The “one China” policy does not impede Taiwan’s quest for international standing. But solutions to Taiwan’s current “identity problem” can only be effectively formulated when the green camp wakes up to the legal reality that “Taiwan does not equal the ROC.”

As State Department documents from the 1950s make abundantly clear, the ROC is a Chinese government-in-exile currently residing on Taiwanese soil.

In summary, it would make much more sense for US-based Taiwanese activist groups to support the “one China” policy and then to fully re-explain to members of Congress, research organizations, the media and so on what this policy actually involves.

ROGER C.S. LIN
Taipei

A greater threat than missiles awaits us
　

By Mayo Kuo Max Kuo 郭明裕 郭明實
Thursday, Jan 15, 2009, Page 8

A YOUNG WOMAN died of H5N1 avian influenza virus in Beijing on Jan. 5. This should be a wake-up call for President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration as it opens up the direct three links. With the opening of direct cross-strait passenger flights, it only takes four hours for the virus to reach Taiwan. In addition, the National Immigration Agency’s computer system at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport (and three others) crashed for 36 hours earlier this month, leaving national security wide open, thus causing a tremendous threat to public health in Taiwan.

Why is the world so scared of the bird flu virus? Because the 1918 human influenza epidemic — better known as the Spanish Flu — that killed between 20 million and 50 million people worldwide was also the result of a human-to-human spread of a different strain of bird flu. Bird flu is the source of human flu and the most direct example is chicken pox. Guangzhou is the main source of bird flu globally, with the world’s highest density of raised birds. Hong Kong and Taiwan are some of the closest located distribution channels.

The opening of the “small three links” posed a great risk and the opening of the direct three links on Dec. 15 made the risk even greater.

The main immediate cause of the human H5N1 outbreak in 2005 was the transmission of the virus through seasonal migration of wild geese from Qinghai Lake in Qinghai Province, spreading the virus from China and Southeast Asia to Turkey and Central Asia and further to Hungary in eastern Europe. Today, the threat has spread further to Western Europe, the UK and Canada.

The main distant cause, however, was the human H5N1 infection in Guangzhou in 1997 that resulted in the slaughtering of tens of millions of chickens in Hong Kong.

The case of a Hong Kong child infected with H5N1 while visiting relatives in Fujian Province in 1997 and the second wave of infections that swept Southeast and Central Asia in 2005 and 2006 showed that the virus can cause enteritis and encephalitis, but not pneumonia, a finding supported by The New England Journal of Medicine published on Feb. 17. It also showed that the virus tends to infect children and young adults in households raising birds and is accompanied by a death rate of more than 50 percent. The infection rate, however, is not high, and rather than droplet transmission typical in human flu, close contact is required for transmission.

Now that deaths from the virus have been reported in Beijing, Taiwanese businesspeople and tourists must take extra precautions. In the past, Hong Kong was a checkpoint for Taiwanese transferring to China, but with the opening of the direct links, the spread is no longer dependent on wild geese. In addition, it took more than one month for the Council of Agriculture to investigate the sudden death of chickens in Kaohsiung County. This is ridiculously inefficient and the public would probably be better served praying for protection.

The H5N1 virus can invade Taiwan in four hours and it is more powerful than missiles. The misery created by the SARS outbreak in 2003 should be sufficient to focus the mind. If the authorities are not alert to this situation, or if the media continue to ignore the situation intentionally or unintentionally, it is not impossible that deaths will occur in Taiwan. Should this happen, the country’s already ailing economy would suffer yet another blow. The Ma administration’s lopsided promotion of the benefits of the three direct links makes one wonder if the government is prepared for that possibility.

Mayo Kuo is a Taiwan-based pediatrician. His older brother Max Kuo is a US-based pediatrician.