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Couragement
on Sep 22, 2004 Wu
under pressure prior to departure PARALYMPICS:
Two days prior to the delegation's departure, the IPC sent a letter outlining
limits to the first lady's activities, ostensibly due to pressure from China By
Huang Tai-lin
President
Chen Shui-bian yesterday revealed that Beijing had worked to obstruct first lady
Wu Shu-jen's trip to Athens before she even arrived in the Greek capital. Chen
made the remarks at a news conference at CKS International Airport, which was
held shortly after the arrival of Wu and accompanying staff and reporters from a
nine-day stay in Athens. Noting
Wu's frail condition, Chen said he had been concerned about the strain the
journey might pose on her from the moment she decided to accompany the Taiwan
Paralympic Team to Athens. Wu,
who is paralyzed from the waist down after being hit by a truck in an
assassination attempt in 1985, had also mentioned prior to the trip that she was
suffering from hemorrhoids. "Little
did we know, it turned out that A-jen's physical status would not be the cause
of our worry," the president said, calling Wu by her nickname, "but
rather the other side of the Strait, which hoped to prevent Wu from attending
the Paralympic Games as head of Team Taiwan." Two
days before Wu and Team Taiwan departed for Athens, Chen said, they received two
letters from the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) stating three
conditions. These included asking Wu to revoke her position as head of Taiwan
Paralympic team, not to host any open social banquets and not to hold news
conferences or receive interviews with international media. In
the end they decided to go ahead with the trip to Athens and work to protect
their rights on the spot, Chen said. "Yet
we still ran into problems when we arrived [in Athens]," said Chen,
referring to the hoopla surrounding Wu's status when the IPC, supposedly due to
pressure from Beijing, announced last Tuesday that it had replaced Wu as head of
the delegation with Linda Chen, and had downgraded Wu's NPC card, the
highest-level official pass for the event, to the less prestigious
"transferable guest" card. After
a protest lodged by the delegation, the IPC and Team Taiwan representatives
reached an understanding that Wu could attend all relevant activities in her
capacity as head of the team and that both sides agreed there would be no
further discussion about the issue -- a solution that saved face for everyone. Expressing
gratitude for effort by staff and that the whole thing had come to a happy
ending, Chen said that "not only did we work to uphold our national dignity
... but we also were able to do all we planned to do." For
instance, Wu got to keep her NPC card, visited the athletes village, hosted a
banquet for foreign dignitaries and held interviews with the international
press. Expressing
gratitude for the Greek government's assistance and the security it provided,
Chen suggested the National Council on Physical Fitness and Sports re-assess its
awards based on the principle of fairness for paralympic athletes who win medals
in the games. Taiwanese
regulations offer far more prize money to Olympic medalists than their
Paralympic counterparts Wu
said she was happy to have led the Taiwan delegation to Athens and that despite
some disturbance, Taiwan had still been able to take part in the games.
TSU
presses for use of `Taiwan' in UN bid UN
MEMBERSHIP: The TSU called on the government to use the name `Taiwan' in the
next bid to enter the UN, but officials said ambiguity is necessary in the
matter By
Debby Wu The
Taiwan Solidarity Union's (TSU) legislative caucus yesterday demanded the
government use "Taiwan" when bidding for UN membership, but Vice
Minister of Foreign Affairs Michael Kau said the government was unlikely to do
so now. The
TSU said that as recent polls showed that most people supported using the name
Taiwan when bidding for membership in international organizations, the
government should change its tactic and bid for a UN seat with the name of
"Taiwan." "According to UN Resolution 2758, the ROC no longer
exists. It will be impossible for Taiwan to obtain its UN membership if we
continue to bid with the name of ROC," TSU caucus whip Huang Chung-yung
said. TSU
caucus whip Chen Chien-ming reiterated the caucus' stand when interpellating
Premier Yu Shyi-kun and Kau during the legislature's sitting yesterday. While
Yu also hinted at his reluctance to retain the name of ROC, Kau said the
government was at this point trying to remain ambiguous about the national name
when bidding for UN membership. "The
main reason we have failed so many times in bidding for UN membership is because
we are bidding with the name ROC. When we use ROC, it seems that we are trying
to fight China for the seat, so it is very difficult to bid for the membership
with the name ROC," Yu said, when questioned by Chen on the reason of
Taiwan's numerous failed bid for UN membership. "The
government is trying to remain in the gray area between the names Taiwan and ROC
when bidding for UN membership, and we have not officially claimed that we will
join the UN with the name the ROC," Kao said. Kao
said that instead the government had stated in its promotional brochure that the
UN Assembly should respond to the issue of the representation of the 23 million
people in Taiwan. To
seek support from fellow legislators, the TSU caucus also asked the legislature
to pass a resolution yesterday in support of bidding for membership in the world
body using the name "Taiwan," but the motion was rejected by pan-blue
legislators, who hold a majority of seats.
Analysts
hope Hu will be different CROSS-STRAIT
RELATIONS: Several former members of the Mainland Affairs Council said Beijing's
leader could do a lot to ease tensions between the two sides By
Joy Su
In
light of Chinese military chief Jiang Zemin's recent resignation, cross-strait
analysts yesterday voiced hopes that Chinese President Hu Jintao's Taiwan policy
would take a more proactive stance toward building cross-strait peace. "While
how hardline one's stance is and existing differences continue to be
difficulties, an `active' attitude in handling cross-strait affairs is the most
crucial element," said former Mainland Affairs Council chairwoman Tsai
Ing-wen. Tsai
and several top cross-strait policy analysts, many of whom have served as
council officials, yesterday grappled with a simple question: What is peace? "The
more you think about it, the more complex it gets," Tsai said. "Peace
is not just self-restraint or the lack of certain actions. Only through positive
action can lasting peace be attained," Tsai said during a forum hosted by
the Foundation on International and Cross-Strait Studies yesterday. "I
often ask myself if Taiwan is at the stage of establishing peace or maintaining
it right now," Tsai said, adding that the current cross-strait situation
has been characterized as a "cold peace," a hybrid state reminiscent
of the Cold War. "How
long this type of peace can last no one dares say. Military factors could cause
changes. Shifts in how people think or in their interests could change the
situation," Tsai said, adding that changes in Chinese ties with the US
could also cut short the "Cold Peace." "This
type of peace is born of deadlock and impasse and as such is dependent on US
interests ... it depends on the accurate interpretation of the intents of each
nation, including China's accurate understanding of the US' stance," said
Yang Kai-huang a political science professor at National Dong Hwa University. "The
question we need to ask is `How do we manage this peace?' Some are content with
this arrangement, but it inherently carries an element of risk, and so there
must be some form of risk management," Tsai said, calling for systemic
solutions to promote cross-strait exchange. Despite
commonly issued claims of a will to uphold peace, Yang questioned whether it was
"too early to be talking about peace-building" given constant
provocations and escalation of conflict between the two nations. He
called for a "temporary freezing of conflict," a sort of
"experimental goodwill," to precede peace-building. In
a similar vein, former council vice chairman Chen Ming-tong, mentioned the
concept proposed by David Lampton of Johns Hopkins University of a "stable
framework" as an intermediary step between the status quo and lasting
peace. "The
call for a stable framework is not new. In China's statement issued on May 17,
before President Chen's [Shui-bian] inauguration, the Taiwan Affairs Office
calls for the establishment of a framework for cross-strait peace and
development. The president also stated the necessity of building a peace and
stability framework in his inauguration speech," Chen Ming-tong said,
pointing to the consensus on the need for a stable framework. Former
council vice chairman Chang King-yuh concurred on the need for a practical
solution, saying that cross-strait work requires more engineers and fewer
philosophers. "If
we identify the `one China' principle as the primary point of contention, then
we need to deal with it, sit down and talk about it," Tsai said, pointing
to the president's inauguration speech as an indication of the government's
willingness to discuss the "one China" principle and a possible future
political relationship between Taiwan and China under certain terms.
What
Soong should debate By
Jerome Keating Once
again we are graced with People First Party Chairman James Soong's desperate
efforts to try to gain the media spotlight and keep open his faltering chances
to run for the presidency in 2008. Now
Soong wants to be able to debate the president regularly on his position, ideas
and attitudes toward China and Taiwan. True,
President Chen Shui-bian has a responsibility to the people to indicate his
agenda, which was done when he put forth his platform for the recent
presidential elections. At that time both Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)
Chairman Lien Chan and Soong had their chances to debate Chen. After
the election is decided, how-ever, the president does not have an obligation to
continue debating with the legislature or any Tom, Dick or Harry who wants to
gain the spotlight. If
Soong is eager for a debate, I suggest another topic. Let him debate his fitness
to be a representative of Taiwanese democracy, whether in the legislature or in
any position, after his notorious record as head of the Government Information
Office (GIO) and his bilking the country out of millions of dollars -- which he
allegedly used to purchase numerous properties in the US and elsewhere. He
can also debate his GIO record with any of the people who suffered imprisonment,
torture or other violations of their rights during the Kaohsiung Incident and
the period following it. At that time it was Soong's job to justify, excuse, and
put a positive spin on the one-party totalitarian state's continued suppression
of the nation's democratic movement. As
for his subsequent profiteering from his political offices and black gold, he
can debate that with any concerned taxpayers. Clear up the past before you ask
us to give you any consideration for the future. Jerome
Keating Taipei
What
I saw in 2004 By
John Napiorkowski In
2004, I saw the same leader defeated a second time in a presidential election,
and then refuse to step down or even have the party decide his fate. In
2004, I saw a man who held the country hostage for weeks holding violent
protests and uttering "democracy is dead." In
2004, I saw a man who will not allow himself be shot in the stomach by a
marksman (from several feet away) using a home-made gun (or even a precision
gun) to prove that the presidential assassination may have been a stunt. In
2004, I saw a referendum which allowed a man and his party to see who was voting
and who was not -- based on this man's "recommendations." In
2004, I saw a man who assigned an "observer" to verify that his own
party members had voted in favor of a piece of legislation which violates the
Constitution and which completely disregards civil liberties and the democratic
process. In
2004, I am about to see a non-partisan criminal justice system politically
breached -- by proportional representation! I
hope the Taiwanese people saw what I saw in 2004. And during the legislative
elections, I hope they vote accordingly. John
Napiorkowski Taipei
The
emperor's new clothes are old By
Sushil Seth
China's
admirers come from all sorts of backgrounds. They include global capitalists as
well as an assorted group of disillusioned left-wingers who find in China an
alternative to US and Western ideology The
first group is mesmerized by China's seemingly limitless cheap labor, enabling
them to shift their labor-intensive production there. They are heartened by the
official commitment to maintain "industrial peace," which means that
the state won't allow labor to organize or strike. Equally tantalizing is the
prospect of a market of 1.3 billion consumers. The
second group comprises people, including some academics, who are disillusioned
with the US and international financial institutions such as the World Bank and
IMF. They are enamored of China's autonomous model. They are so impressed with
its economic growth, achieved without kowtowing to the symbols of global
capitalism, that they attribute it to the country's special genius in carving
out its own unique path. It is an alternative model to the conventional US- dictated
World Bank/IMF prescription of open markets and tight budgetary policies. This
view is much more tolerant, if not supportive, of China's communist system that
has given the country a stable foundation for its continuous growth. One
such proponent of China's alternative/unique model is Joshua Cooper Ramo, the
author of The Beijing Consensus, a study recently published by the
UK-based Foreign Policy Center. Ramo, a former journalist, is a professor at
Tsinghua University. He has managed to put together all the arguments advanced
by communist China's admirers and given it the imprint of scholarship. But that
is only part of the story. China
is a robber-baron economy with massive national resources siphoned off to line
the pockets of party bigwigs and their favored entrepreneurs. He Qing-lian's
book China's Pitfall is a damning indictment of the system. Commenting on
the mainly urban boom of the 1990s, she wrote that this was "a process in
which power-holders and their hangers-on plundered public wealth." Elaborating,
she said, "The primary target of their plunder was state property that had
been accumulated from 40 years of the people's sweat, and their primary means of
plunder was political power." It sounds very much like the Russian
experience. She
also writes that "China is headed toward joint rule by the government and a
mafia" -- another worrying similarity with Russia. And then she asks the
question: "When you have [economic] development that is built on the
premise that people will pursue their interests at the cost of the property and
lives of others, is it really worth it?" Another
Chinese writer, Wang Hui, highlights the inequities of the Chinese version of
capitalist development. He argues in China's New Order: Society, Politics,
and Economy in Transition, that its "values, and activities enter into
all aspects of life, something that destroys all existing social structures and
denigrates the lifestyles of all other [non-Han] social groupings." In
other words, it is creating a rootless society without the values and traditions
that were the essence of Chinese civilization through the ages. According
to Wang, "The creation of today's market society was not the result of a
sequence of spontaneous events but rather of state interference and
violence." The
resultant social and economic picture is, therefore, terribly depressing, a
reality which is reflected in widening urban-rural income disparities, the
migration of the rural population (estimated at anywhere between 100 to 150
million people and growing by 10 million a year) who look for jobs in the cities
and their exploitation and exclusion from social services. Then
there's growing urban unemployment with virtually non-existent social benefits,
and rising urban crime generally pinned on migrants. China's
alternative model is largely an urban exercise to enrich the party elites and
the entrepre-neurial class spawned by it. In the process it has also created an
urban middle class looking for upward mobility, devoid of any worthwhile social
and moral commitments. It is a model which tends to exclude about 900 million
people of rural and regional China. And it it is built on the misery of urban
workers. Writing
on China's migrant labor, Anthony Kuhn quoted a construction worker as saying,
"They [employers] rip off your labor, and they rip off your skin."
They even refuse to pay wages. According
to the official Bei-jing Review, 72.5 percent of the migrant workers are
owed wages by their employers, amounting to more than US$12 billion. To
applaud such a socially rapacious system as an "alternative model of
development" is beyond comprehension. But non-Chinese people are shielded
from these uncomfortable truths. They only get the varnished version of how
modern China is growing into a mighty superpower, a new Middle Kingdom on the
rise. And the testimonials from experts like Joshua Cooper Ramo only tend to
reinforce this internal view. It
is hard to believe that China is undergoing a radical transformation of its
economy without any real involvement of its people or defense of their
interests. The country's unelected ruling oligarchy decides for its 1.3 billion
people what is good for them. As
Zhu Xueqin of Shanghai University wrote, "To talk about reform while
ignoring the political content of Chinese economic structures is to weave a set
of emperor's new clothes." In other words, the economic superstructure is
built on political quicksand. To
argue that the Chinese Communist Party has acquired legitimacy of sorts by its
longevity and the resultant economic growth is not tenable. In that case it
should have no hesitation in seeking popular mandate. On the contrary: it goes
to extraordinary lengths to sniff out even the remotest challenge to its
political monopoly. The Tiananmen Massacre is a well-known example. The
suppression of the Falun Gong movement is another. And the world gets to hear
somehow about the ongoing and heavy-handed suppression of local-level peasant
unrest. At
the same time, the economy is in trouble from serious overcapacity in
manufacturing. In the steel sector, for instance, 81 new steel mills were
reportedly built last year, but only six had sufficient scale to be economic; 75
of them were small-scale and uneconomical. According
to Alan Kohler, an Australian analyst: "It's not just steel. Petrol and
fuel-processing capacity increased 132 percent last year, timber processing by
66 percent, metal products by 67, smelting by 52, chemical production capacity
by 47. This is in just one year." The
worry now is if China's economy will end up making a hard or soft landing. And
we are not even talking about the huge non-performing bank loans. Against
this backdrop, it is foolish to talk of China as an alternative economic and
political model. Sushil
Seth is a freelance writer based in Sydney.
Questionable
motives behind demo Academics
from the Democratic Action Alliance announced that they would stage a street
protest in Taipei this weekend led by 11 members of the Academia Sinica and more
than 100 retired generals to oppose the government's NT$610.8 billion arms
budget. They don't feel its necessary to continue an arms race with Beijing, as
the hawkish former president Jiang Zemin has handed over the chairmanship of the
Central Military Commission on Sunday. They say Taiwan does not need to ensure
cross-strait peace and stability by pleasing the Bush administration with an
enormous government procurement budget. However,
the alliance -- an organization with close ties to the People First Party (PFP)
-- could not present a single representative from the Academia Sinica to answer
questions at a press conference on Monday. The
motive behind the planned demonstration is also questionable -- is it truly an
anti-arms race movement or is it an effort to rebuild the PFP's political
momentum? According to a recent newspaper survey, the PFP's approval rate has
fallen continuously since the March presidential election and is now last among
the four main parties. If
the members of the alliance -- who praise themselves as a symbol of justice --
truly care about cross-strait peace, why don't they urge China to withdraw its
more than 500 ballistic missiles deployed against Taiwan? On Feb. 28, 1 million
people formed a human chain across this nation to protest China's threat. Did
these anti-war activists and retired generals stand up to say "no" to
China then? Apparently
the alliance members have forgotten that several of the items on the arms budget
were first approved by the former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government.
The submarine purchase was approved as part of the Navy's 20-year military
construction plan in 1995, the P-3C maritime patrol aircraft purchase was
approved in 1997 and the Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile system purchase was approved
in 1998. If
such purchases are inappropriate, why didn't these generals oppose the plans
back then? Their motives are questionable now -- unless they want people to
place their faith in Chinese President Hu Jintao -- Jiang's successor on the
military commission. Do they feel that Taiwan no longer needs to improve its
defense capability? It seems naive to rely on Hu for cross-strait peace --
Tibetans remember his time as Beijing's point man in Lhasa as one of bloody
repression. China's
annual arms procurement budget is in the vicinity of US$50 billion to US$70
billion. In the past four years Beijing has been the world's top arms buyer.
China's military expansion is such that even the US and Japan are feeling the
threat and have adjusted their military deployments to counter it. Why should
Taiwan, which has lived under the threat from China for so many years, not
increase its defensive capability to make Beijing think twice before launching
an attack? Confronted
by the tyrannical Chinese regime, Taiwan has little choice but to buy arms to
counterbalance Beijing's threat. Ordinary Taiwanese understand this, so why
can't academics and retired generals? Where is their national consciousness? How
can they make proposals that will weaken this nation and threaten the safety of
their compatriots?
China's
youth remain ignorant of Cultural Revolution The
young do not understand the madness and pain the Cultural Revolution dealt their
parents and grandparents, but they should By
Xinran Last
month a friend asked me how much I really knew about China's past, even the
recent past -- just 20 years ago. Had I read any Chinese books about the
Cultural Revolution, for instance? He found it hard to believe that China could
take an objective look at its Red Period while the generation that lived through
it is still alive. I
told him I had read two books on the subject in Chinese, published in China, two
months ago. One of them was Part One: A Hundred People's Memories of the
Cultural Revolution by Feng Yi-cai; the other was The Past Does Not
Disappear Like Smoke by Zhang Yi-he. As
someone who experienced that moment in history, these two books brought back
such bitter, painful memories that -- even though I was busy promoting a novel
and setting up a new charity, Mothers' Bridge -- I just couldn't sleep. One
of the stories in Part One was that of a woman who had killed her father
with her own hands. She had tried to save him -- an elderly academic -- from the
continual harassment of the Red Guards, but her parents had persuaded her to
kill them both, one after the other. She killed her father, but there was not
time to kill her mother: the Red Guards discovered that the family was trying to
commit suicide. So she hugged her mother and held her as they jumped from a
fourth-floor window. She survived, but her mother died a few days later. She
was charged with murder and spent more than 20 years in jail. Her memories of
her parents were very confused, she told the book's author, and although she ate
three meals and went to sleep and got up every day, she hardly felt alive. I
completely understand these feelings of being dead and alive at the same time,
and of having mixed emotions toward your parents. I was seven and a half when
the Cultural Revolution took place and I, too, behaved as I thought a "good
daughter" should. My father was in prison and I wrote him a sentence in
blood pricked from my finger. It said, "You must repay the blood of the
Chinese people!" I believed what I was told -- that my father's family had
helped the British drink Chinese blood as if it were red wine (my grandfather
worked for the British company GEC for more than 30 years). This letter was
stuck on the wall next to the meal table in his prison cell. I never talked to
my father about this; I knew I could never erase the letter from either of our
memories. In
one chapter of the other book I read, The Past Does Not Disappear Like Smoke,
there is a story about an educated Westernized family during the Cultural
Revolution. A mother and her daughter try to live as if nothing has changed:
they wear beautiful clothes, use the best china, listen to English radio. Soon,
though, to keep the Red Guards from these things, they decide they must destroy
everything. I
know about this; I saw it too -- my skirts, my books, my toys, my beloved doll,
all burned and destroyed at the same time. The
Cultural Revolution was a mad, unbelievable and unforgettably painful moment in
the lives of so many Chinese people. But
I was sad to read, at the end of Feng's book, that when he went to interview
young Chinese men and women about their feelings toward the Cultural Revolution,
most of them had no idea what he was talking about. Some of them even asked why
he would make these things up. Others said that China should have another
revolution so that they could get out of exams; they couldn't believe that their
parents had been so stupid as to sign up with Mao Zedong. Perhaps
I should not have been surprised by this: I have been asked the same questions
by young Chinese ever since my book The Good Women of China was published
two years ago. They, too, find it hard to believe that these things happened
within the lives of the older generation. China
needs people like these two writers, Feng and Zhang, who are prepared to dig for
the truth and to uncover painful facts. We need them so that a younger
generation of Chinese can know how brave their parents were, and how much they
owe them. These
books may not be 100 percent factual but, as Feng says, he has to protect the
people who have told their stories by changing names, places, dates and other
details. These people have suffered too much already to have their lives
overturned again.
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