Chen Chien-jen's performance upsets KMT

VETERAN DIPLOMAT: Taiwan's top representative to the US brushes off criticism he has sided with the DPP and says he is only furthering national interests

By Lin Chieh-yu

STAFF REPORTER

The success of President Chen's stopover in New York last week should be attributed to the nation's top representative to the US, Chen Chien-jen, many overseas pro-independence groups said, adding that no one in the DPP or the government can do a better job than the veteran diplomat.

"Chen has long and stable connections with the two parties [the Republicans and Democrats] and the US Congress and government," said Joyce Chang, executive director of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA).

"From the later period of Lee Teng-hui's administration and after the rotation of political parties, Chen has been the first window for the US government to access Taiwan," she said.

"He has developed connections in Washington for more than 30 years," Chang said.

Many government heavyweights have known Chen since they were junior [officials]," she said.

"His connections in Washington are irreplaceable," she said.

Chen, a former member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), has won the support of the DPP and the trust of the US government, and pro-independence overseas Taiwanese like him. However, his solid diplomatic performance has resulted in criticism from his KMT comrades.

In the past month, Chen was under a lot of pressure as both KMT Chairman Lien Chan and President Chen Shui-bian visited the US.

It was a big challenge for Chen Chien-jen, who serves as representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US, to receive the president and Lien.

Chen Chien-jen chose to keep a low profile when Lien visited the US, which irritated Lien's aides.

Lien's wife, Fang Yu, even refused to accept flowers from Chen Chien-jen's wife, Yolanda Ho, arguing that Chen Chien-jen had pledged loyalty to Chen Shui-bian and betrayed Lien.

After seeing Chen Shui-bian make his breakthrough trip in New York, they questioned Chen Chien-jen's loyalty to the KMT and ignored his efforts to promote a better relationship between Taiwan and the US.

"The KMT and DPP still have their old framework of authority," said Tsai Ming-hsien, a former DPP lawmaker who is now Taiwan's deputy representative in the US.

"To them, party members are subordinates, not national assets," Tsai said.

A senior official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said two events forced the US to re-establish its communication mechanism with Taiwan: former president Lee Teng-hui's "special state-to-state" remark in 1999 and the DPP's taking power in 2000.

Chen Chien-jen, who has over 30 years of experience in the diplomatic field and once served as deputy representative to the US, has formed deep relationships with both the Republican and Democratic parties.

"Therefore, President Chen expected Chen Chien-jen to assist the DPP government in maintaining the Taiwan-US relationship," the official said. "In addition, Chen Chien-jen, who has promised to devote his life to diplomatic work, would not reject the president's sincerity."

"Before the DPP won power and formally took office, both diplomatic allies and non-diplomatic allies were nervous," said Joseph Wu, deputy secretary-general of the Presidential Office.

"Chen Chien-jen, who was foreign minister at the time, invited ambassadors and representatives from both diplomatic allies and non-diplomatic allies to briefings in order to stabilize foreign relations for the new ruling party," Wu said.

"After President Chen presented the `five noes' in his inaugural speech, the US felt more reassured about Chen's appointment as representative to the US," Wu said.

"In the US, for example, high-level officials at the assistant secretary level seek Chen to discuss directly and better understand issues," Wu said, "Chen is the first person the US seeks whenever it has doubts or areas that need clarification."

During Chen Shui-bian's stopover in New York from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2, Chen Chien-jen mobilized more than 10 US senators to meet with the president, giving Chen Shui-bian more publicity.

Chen Chien-jen's spirit of "working to seek diplomatic breakthroughs" has won the president's appreciation and he has praised the envoy on many occasions.

Asked whether he has chosen to support the government, Chen Chien-jen only sighed and was not willing to answer.

The veteran envoy said he worked for Taiwan-US relations and national interests.

As for elections, "Apparently the only way for me to handle it is to shut up and bear it," he said.

Blue-camp lethargy helps the DPP

By Emile Sheng

As the election campaign heats up, we can see the predicaments facing the blue and green camps in terms of strategy and implementation.

For the blue camp, the lack of a quick response mechanism and the poor ability to manipulate issues are merely superficial problems. Its most serious and fundamental problem is the lack of a consistent attitude and discourse on core issues. Simply put, does the blue camp have consistent and clear views on core campaign issues -- be they on the cross-strait front or the economic front? Once they hammer out these viewpoints, other problems can be readily solved. Otherwise, the blue camp will fall into a predicament in which it can only react to its opponent's moves as they come, being always passive and slow to respond.

This has already happened over three issues: the "one-country on each side" dictum, referendums and the creation of a new constitution. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was the first to present these issues. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP) have always opposed the DPP's stance in a formulaic response, and then revised their positions after discovering a poorer-than-expected response from the public.

If the KMT and PFP do not have a complete set of views on these issues, then they will be unable to break out of this cycle even if they have a better rapid-response force. One concrete manifestation of this is the disparate statements often made by KMT-PFP representatives in media comments.

Though in a passive position on these issues, the KMT and PFP still have room to develop their platforms and are not necessarily at a disadvantage. For example, regarding "one country on each side," the KMT and PFP could have quickly defined it as a description of the status quo, with the People's Republic of China on one side and the Republic of China on the other. They could have claimed that there was no conflicting point between the two camps -- if there was one, that would mean that the DPP's "other side" is the Republic of Taiwan.

On the referendum issue, the KMT and PFP should have supported the spirit and conduct of referendums while stating that referendums should not obstruct economic development, that there should be complementary accountability measures and that referendums should be held after legislation.

As for creating a new constitution, they could have countered the green camp's plan by proposing constitutional amendments. They could also present a complete version of constitutional amendments to prove their sincerity and ability to carry out reforms. There is also a consistent pattern to these approaches -- seeking differences amid similarities. They must agree with their opponent's views on the general direction of localization and reforms, while using differences beneficial to themselves as a keynote in their debate. Only then will they not be painted as anti-reform; only then will they have an opportunity to pull the campaign back to economic issues.

Being in a relatively disadvantageous position, the DPP has raised many major issues to try to strike at the existing structure. On the surface, such an aggressive approach may create an appearance of leading the debate, but at the same time it also carries a relatively higher risk of making mistakes. The fact that the DPP has been able to take this approach has very much to do with the KMT-PFP camp's passive responses. For example, the DPP made a major mistake in its campaign when it used a spurious cut-and-paste approach in a TV commercial to insinuate that Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou was "abandoning Taiwan and toadying up to China." But the KMT-PFP camp let go of this opportunity. Compare this to the DPP's vehement response to the PFP Legislator Kao Ming-chien incident [in which Kao was accused of collaborating with Beijing to create an impression that China was helping Taiwan during the SARS crisis]. No wonder the D PP has so much room to make mistakes and try out different tactics one after another.

In a one-to-one campaign battle, however, it is highly questionable whether the green camp's tactic of raising ideological issues will win the election battle. After consolidating its basic voter base, the green camp must return to the middle way at a certain point. Only then can it possibly win the election. A key factor influencing this election campaign lies in whether the DPP will be able to smoothly return to the middle after moving to such extremes.

Another question is the accuracy of President Chen Shui-bian's political information. According to newspaper reports, Chen quoted a DPP public opinion poll showing 62 percent of voters believe they are Taiwanese and 51.8 percent support Taiwan independence. This is understandable as a comment aimed at boosting morale during the campaign, but if the campaign keynotes are based on such potentially erroneous results, that would create a major crisis in the DPP's campaign. If there are mistakes in the strategy, more nimble tactics, better campaign skills and a stronger ability to set campaign issues will expose one's Achilles' heel.

At this stage of the campaign, the important point is what role it will play in the development of democracy in Taiwan, no matter whose tactics are superior and no matter which side wins. Do we have to invoke agitated, confrontational debates on national identity and the future of the Constitution during every election cycle and then spend four years after the election to heal the wounds and build consensus? Campaign strategies have been reported extensively in horse-race-style discussions, but there has been no room for proposing and debating policies. Changes in the support rates have become important points to keep track of, but no one has been concerned about exactly which issues are of immediate concern to the electorate.

As campaign emotions run high, we should pause and think about whether this election will be one for choosing a country or a constitution, or for choosing to change Taiwan's political culture.

Emile Sheng is an associate professor of political science at Soochow University.

Foreigner bites chat show

On the Oct. 23 edition of chat show Nine o'Clock Malatang entitled ABC, Dog Bites Pig: Foreigners in Taiwan ("dog bites pig" derives from a Taiwanese children's rhyme), host Lo Pi-ling was joined by CTI reporter Igor Zaitsev, ICRT program director Dennis Nye and reporters Chiang Chung-po and Chen Kao-chao. About half of the hour-long show was spent describing the "horrible" behavior of foreigners in Taiwan.

References were constantly made to tired news stories about foreigners who "cheat" Taiwanese women, who have problems with alcohol and violence and who lacked qualifications to teach English. Nye talked about his foreign male friends who go to pubs with him and chase girls. From his comments about them, one might assume that Nye doesn't choose his friends very carefully.

Speaking of "chasing girls," I have friends from Canada, Wales, the US and Australia who, like myself, are married to Taiwanese women. Most of us -- even those of us with postgraduate degrees -- had it pretty tough gaining initial acceptance from our parents-in-law. Host Lo rhetorically asked during the show, "Why can't Taiwanese mothers and their sons-in-law get along?" It's the media, stupid!

During the program, the host and some of the guests mentioned the stock stories of "truck drivers" and "homeless people" teaching English in Taiwan so many times I thought there was an echo in the room.

The law requires that foreign teachers provide a copy of their diploma, verified by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, along with the original, in order to gain lawful employment. If there's a problem about unqualified teachers, it should be directed to the schools hiring them and not be used as an excuse to malign foreigners.

"Why," the host asked, "do Taiwanese need foreign English teachers? Aren't local teachers good enough?" Apparently not. The show required a few English words in the subtitles, and around half of them were misspelt. One of my Mandarin textbooks, published by National Taiwan Normal University, contains glaring English mistakes every few pages.

When Taiwanese complain about the qualifications of English teachers, I wonder what standard it is against which they measure foreigners' teaching and English-speaking abilities. I've worked with many good Taiwanese English teachers, but I've also worked with far too many whose English was way below par. These sub-par teachers cause many of the mistakes which later become my job to eradicate. No matter how wonderful their students might perceive them to be, they shouldn't be teaching English.

Toward the end of the program, the host pointed out that what they had discussed was merely a "small cross-section" of the foreign population and that viewers shouldn't get a bad impression about all foreigners. However, she and her guests had already pushed Humpty Dumpty off the wall and driven back and forth across his remains several times. Nothing she could say could reverse the impression she had spoon-fed viewers.

In the interest of fairness, I would suggest that one of these shows do a comparative analysis of Taiwan's foreigners and the local population and see what it reveals about education levels, divorce rates and criminal records.

This kind of unfair reporting happens all the time, and these xenophobic TV programs do their best to paint foreigners with the broadest brush possible, coloring the good, the bad and the average all with the same shade of "bad." It seems to be saying that foreigners are unwelcome in Taiwan. What are they trying to achieve?

A recent public service announcement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) encouraging Taiwanese to learn better English says, "There are many kinds of foreign relations." The point is that if Taiwanese can communicate better with foreigners, more foreigners will come to Taiwan and have better experiences here. If the people making shows like Nine o'Clock Malatang can't learn anything from me, perhaps they can get some wisdom from MOFA.

Andrew Hokanson

Taichung City