Liu vows caution in pursuing ECFA
　

CHINESE AGGRESSION: KMT Legislator Shuai Hua-ming said it would be wrong to assume that Chinese military deployments across the Strait are only aimed at Taiwan
　

By Flora Wang
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Mar 28, 2009, Page 1

Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) vowed yesterday that the government would be cautious in pursuing an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China, amid US warnings that Beijing has continued building its military deployment against Taiwan.

Liu made the remarks on the legislative floor while fielding questions from Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator William Lai (賴清德), who asked the premier whether the government would rethink its plan to sign an ECFA with China given the Pentagon's latest report showing that China had deployed one-third of its ground troops along its coastline.

The possibility of signing an ECFA with Beijing has been fiercely debated in recent weeks, with critics saying it would make Taiwan too economically dependent on China.

Liu said the government would never relax its defense capability even though the government had been pursuing economic cooperation with China.

“Information like this would only make us more cautious,” he said.

“On the one hand, we would like to develop our economy [by strengthening cross-strait cooperation],” he said. “On the other hand, we also have to have the capability to defend ourselves.”

The Pentagon on Wednesday released its latest annual report to Congress on China's military, suggesting that Beijing had not changed its military dispositions opposite Taiwan and had deployed 440,000 ground troops along its coastline.

“Although Beijing professes a desire for peaceful unification that would allow Taiwan to retain a high degree of autonomy, the PLA's [People's Liberation Army's] deployment of short-range ballistic missiles, enhanced amphibious warfare capabilities and modern, advanced long-range anti-air systems across the strait from Taiwan underscores that Beijing remains unwilling to renounce the use of force,” the report said.

Lai said yesterday that the US report was proof that China remained hostile toward Taiwan despite the government's efforts to pursue cross-strait peace.

Speaking at the legislature's state affairs forum earlier yesterday, DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said that the Pentagon's report showed that “no matter how many times [President] Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) belittles himself, he will never be able to change China nor persuade China to give up taking Taiwan by force.”

But Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Shuai Hua-ming (帥化民), one of the two committee heads of the legislature's Foreign and National Defense Committee, said it would be wrong to assume that Chinese military deployment was solely aimed at Taiwan.

Shuai said Taiwan was not the only perceived enemy of China, adding that the deployment was meant to deter the US from interfering in Asian affairs.

KMT Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方), who is also a member of the committee, said there was no need for people to “make a mountain out of a molehill” because Ma had been doing his best to improve cross-strait relations.
　

Australian minister under pressure to quit over PRC link

AFP, SYDNEY
Saturday, Mar 28, 2009, Page 1

Australian Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon was under pressure to resign yesterday after admitting he had accepted gifts from a wealthy Chinese businesswoman and failed to declare them.

He told a news conference he “deeply regretted” not following regulations and officially declaring two sponsored trips to China paid for by prominent Chinese-Australian Helen Liu.

“I was wrong. That was very untidy of me. It was without justification and I apologize for it,” he said.

Fitzgibbon had initially denied receiving anything other than “small gifts” from Liu, a family friend, after details of his links to the China-born businesswoman were leaked to the media.

But he admitted in a statement issued overnight that “these trips were paid for by Ms Helen Liu either personally or through her associated commercial interests. I failed to disclose those trips.”

The minister said yesterday he had assumed that the trips in 2002 and 2005 to China — when he was an opposition member of parliament — had been declared on a parliamentary register.

The trips were “a cultural exchange” during which he met Chinese political officials, he said.

The leader of the opposition Liberal Party, Malcolm Turnbull, called for Fitzgibbon to be sacked, saying he wanted to know who the minister had seen on his trips to China and what was discussed.

“China has a vested interest in acquiring our natural resources at low prices,” Turnbull told reporters. “The question is how much has Mr Fitzgibbon not told us.”

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who is visiting the US, expressed disappointment over Fitzgibbon's failure to declare the trips but backed his performance as defense minister.

“I'm disappointed that he did not make those declarations back then,” Rudd told reporters. “I expect better of Mr Fitzgibbon in the future.”

But, he added: “Mr Fitzgibbon is doing a good job as minister of defense, there's a big reform program in defense and he's doing a first class job.”

The reform program is believed to be behind the scandal, with disgruntled defense department staff suspected of spying on their boss — who described them as incompetent — and leaking details of his relationship with Liu.

HK unionist warns against ECFA
　

NOT MUCH USE: The unionist presented evidence that Hong Kong’s CEPA with China had only benefited big multinational companies and a minority of individuals

STAFF WRITER, WITH CNA
Saturday, Mar 28, 2009, Page 3

A trade unionist from Hong Kong said in Taipei yesterday that closer economic relations with China would not necessarily boost Taiwan’s economy.

The Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions organizing secretary Vincent Sung (宋治德) said that the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) between China and Hong Kong had not revitalized the local manufacturing industry or generated an increase in wages.

Sung said the CEPA only benefits multinational corporations and a minority of specialists, and that this was something Taiwan should consider before signing an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China.

Sung was invited to participate in a symposium organized by the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) and the Taiwan Labor Front (TLF, 台灣勞工陣線) on the effects of an ECFA between Taiwan and China.

Sung said the Hong Kong government promoted the CEPA by saying that with zero customs fees, Hong Kong’s manufacturing industry would be able to attract local and foreign manufacturers to produce high quality products locally and thus increase employment.

However, Sung said that statistics showed that the export value for mechanical equipment, instruments and components and spare parts industries had dropped by 24.3 percent by December 2006 compared with December 2005, which was evidence that the CEPA had not managed to resuscitate the manufacturing industry.

Sung also said that Hong Kong’s manufacturing industry had been moving north into China since the 1980s and that the remaining manufacturing industry had contracted significantly.

He said most Hong Kong manufacturers did not create their own brands, that Hong Kong products had a low market share in China and that zero customs fees had not attracted manufacturers back to Hong Kong, which made it difficult to improve the situation.

Sung also said that since 2006, only 1,000 positions in China created by the CEPA had gone to people from Hong Kong, which was evidence that the agreement was not of much use for local residents.

With reference to the CEPA tourism plan, Sung said that spending by Chinese tourists in Hong Kong reached HK$9.3 billion (US$1.2 billion) in 2006, an increase of 38 percent over 2004. Although this increase had improved employment opportunities in the hotel and food and beverage industries, salaries in these industries dropped by 0.5 percent between December 2005 and December 2006.

Sung said that the CEPA had opened up the Chinese market to Hong Kong, which intensified competition between Hong Kong and Chinese companies.

To maintain their competitiveness, companies on the mainland increased their pressure on Hong Kong workers, which was evidence that the CEPA was only beneficial to big multinational companies and a minority of individuals, he said.

Sung said he also believed that since the ECFA being discussed in Taiwan still had no concrete content, it was useless to try to assess the effects of such an agreement. However, he felt that Hong Kong’s experience could be a good reference for Taiwan.

Ethnic equality: Ma's tough sell

Saturday, Mar 28, 2009, Page 8

While distasteful and unsettling, the Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英) affair has proven to be useful as a barometer of the rejuvenated Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) approach to ethnic issues.

Kuo’s bizarre blog articles, written under the name Fan Lan-chin (范蘭欽), were the type of concentrated hate speech one normally associates with discussion groups in need of a responsible moderator.

Even more bizarre, however, was the sight of Kuo publicly deceiving his superiors at the Government Information Office over his authorship of the material, then berating them and others as “the enemy” in self-destructive interviews with two Taiwanese cable news stations.

While the reaction in some quarters of the pan-blue-camp has come as something of a relief — note the furious reaction of certain KMT legislators who suggested Kuo receive psychiatric treatment — the point has been well made that the government’s reaction was insipid.

There is no question that due process had to be followed in determining Kuo’s responsibility for the blog articles and that any punishment had to wait for the results of an investigation.

What has disappointed many people, however, was how the government allowed such vicious language to go uncontested for so long — as if hate speech were a birth right and not so objectionable, after all.

When President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) finally commented on the matter on Tuesday, it was too little, too late.

His words of condemnation for Kuo’s articles were welcome and largely appropriate, but he took too long to speak out on an issue of obvious sensitivity.

Unfortunately, Ma’s comments also had a sting in the tail. In placing his party’s achievements in historical context, he lauded the “Taiwanese miracle” before referring to Taiwanese as “descendants of the Yen and Yellow emperors” (炎黃子孫).

Such race-based oratory seems like a throwback to the 1940s and is perfectly common among KMT officials, and this is precisely the problem: The psychology behind Ma’s invocation of blood connections to a mythical imperial golden era is extraordinarily similar to that underlying less tactful officials such as Kuo.

It is this sense of racial superiority that girds both the most abysmal manifestations of prejudice in Kuo and the stubborn, unificationist mission of the president.

Kuo has fallen from grace in a manner both dramatic and embarrassing.

But with the remarkable news that Kuo’s colleague at Taiwan’s mission in Paris allowed Kuo to use his name to pen an article in the Chinese-language United Daily News praising himself, the question now arises as to how many people in the upper reaches of the government continue to share Kuo’s racist attitudes toward ethnic Taiwanese and — worse — how many have been acting on this bigotry.

At some point, Ma and his hardline KMT colleagues, who share Kuo’s oppressive conception of China, will need to convince the majority of Taiwanese — who have no such conception — that their vision of a civilized society forbids the use of racist words and deeds and will not tolerate any expression of ethnic superiority.

With the president’s ethnically flavored gaffes already on the record, it’s going to be a tough sell.

It's my way or the Amway (China)
　

By Johnny Neihu 強尼內湖
Saturday, Mar 28, 2009, Page 8

My loyal readers are probably expecting a stream of snarky remarks about Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英), the self-described “high-class Mainlander” who got his comeuppance this week.

Kuo is the now former Government Information Office (GIO) representative in Toronto who set off a poop storm with his bigoted comments about ethnic Taiwanese.

These included calling us taibazi (台巴子, rednecks) and wokou (倭寇, Jap pirates) and calling Taiwan a “devil island.”

After days of mounting outrage, the GIO finally got its act together and fired him.

I could join the “pile on the bigot” party. But as a “high-class satirist” I’m going to take the high road.

Besides, there’s not much I can add. Kuo’s “look at me” chauvinism and amateurish provocations are funny enough on their own.

And as for the idea that his “freedom of speech” has been violated, that’s an argument beneath contempt.

Any clown knows if you sign up to represent Taiwan (and get a fat salary doing so), you can’t go shooting off your mouth like you’re Johnny Neihu or something.

I normally hate to agree with a Peanut-party member, but Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) had it right: As a government employee abroad, “if you don’t wash for three days, people will think Taiwan stinks.”

The phrase “high-class Mainlander” popped into my head this week while watching a cable TV news interview with a female Chinese tourist — one of the thousands who arrived courtesy of Amway — chomping betel nut for the first time.

Taking time out from some raucous Aboriginal song-and-dance-and-headdress activities with her frenzied colleagues, she talked with her mouth so agape that you could see her little Dragon tonsils wriggling around the mashed-up bits of betel nut. And her sunglasses were so tacky that even the most taike of Yunlin County five-and-dimes would throw them on the “rejects” pile.

Which brings me to another point: What’s with all the Amway (China) trips? I mean, does this US direct-selling giant have a devious plan to unify the two sides of the Strait to gain Asian market share from Herbalife?

And wasn’t Amway banned from doing direct sales in China just a few years ago?

Now, suddenly, they’re taking more cruises than The Love Boat.

A Wall Street Journal story from March 12, 2003, cleared things up. The group entered China in 1995, but quickly ran afoul of authorities over social unrest caused by get-rich-quick schemes that blossomed in the 1990s.

Amway was labeled, Falun Gong-like, as just another “evil cult.”

“That system [Amway’s direct-sales system] came into question in 1998, when Chinese officials cracked down on pyramid schemes and tarred direct-sales companies with the same brush. Though companies like Amway say their model is vastly different — their revenue comes from sales of real products, among other differences — officials saw no distinction. The State Council … banned all forms of such sales in a harshly worded notice that accused some companies of promoting “evil cults, secret societies, and superstitious and lawless activities.”

But then, “Amway went into proactive-communications mode, initiating meetings with central government officials to discuss its plight.”

Apparently they met with the right people — and took them to the right KTVs. Amway had to tweak its sales model a bit, but the Chicoms essentially gave the now guanxi-savvy company the green light to resume business, so that by 2003 it had “bounced back.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a dim view of the organization ever since my Second Auntie Feng from Changhua joined up in the early 1990s.

Every time I had to attend a Neihu family gathering — which in those days was all too often — Auntie Feng would corner me with an hour-long conversion pitch, waxing lyrical about the merits of Amway shampoo and toilet paper and describing the bountiful riches that awaited me if I would just attend their next meeting in a rented conference hall in Banciao (板橋) and start peddling her stuff to my friends, co-workers and random strangers on the street.

When dear old Auntie keeled over from a heart attack some years later (bless her direct-sold soul), she left the family with crippling debt and a dinglou full of unsold Amway merchandise. We couldn’t give the stuff away.

Back to the future: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) wants a berth on the next Amway boat to Taiwan. In fact, he’s all but said he’s willing to bend over and squeal like a pig — if that’s what it takes to come visit our dear “treasure island.”

Chicom-friendly rag the China Post had it from the horse’s mouth. According to the paper, Wen said: “‘Although I’m 67 years old, I would like to visit Taiwan if possible. I would like to go even if I can’t walk and I have to crawl.’”

Now, for a Chicom, Wen actually seems like a nice guy — in a kind of grandfatherly, “you’d never guess I’m an autocrat” kind of way.

Which is why I’d hate to see what would happen if he ventured into southern Taiwan.

Go too deep into Tainan County, and I’m afraid it would turn into something out of Deliverance — with Wen in the luckless Ned Beatty role and the shrieking sound of temple suona (嗩吶) instead of deep Georgia woods banjo-pickin’.

I mean, remember what happened to the last Chicom who made a pit stop in Tainan? He’s not gonna forget that old lady with the crutch anytime soon.

Got something to tell Johnny? Go on, get it off your chest. Write to dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com, but be sure to put “Dear Johnny” in the subject line or he’ll mark your bouquets and brickbats as spam.