20050906

Lu highlights new ideas to counter Beijing at UN

BY CHIU YU-TZU

STAFF REPORTER

To fight for international space, Taiwan must make a greater effort to clarify the situation it has been in since 1971, when UN Resolution 2758 was passed to resolve a dispute over China's representation in the UN, Vice President Annette Lu said yesterday.

At a conference held by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission yesterday in Taipei, Lu said that Taiwan should use more effective strategies to fight for UN membership.

She suggested that as many copies as possible of Resolution 2758 be printed and handed out to refute "lies" that the People's Republic of China (PRC) has been telling UN members.

Beijing's message

According to Lu, Beijing is deliberately disseminating false messages to the world, by saying that the resolution concludes that "Taiwan is part of China" and that the "PRC presents Taiwan."

"These two points are lies. UN Resolution 2758 does not say a word about the relationship between Taiwan and China, let alone say that the PRC represents Taiwan," Lu said.

Lu said that the resolution instead simply invalidated Chiang Kai-shek's (蔣介石) regime as representative of China and recognized that the PRC is the only legal representative of China.

"So these are two major lies that China has been telling the whole world. Unfortunately, the central government [when it was] ruled by the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] and some incumbent diplomatic officials have not seen through" this, Lu said.

Lu said it was import to educate the world to let others know that Taiwan is a country that deserves recognition from the international community.

In addition, Lu said that Beijing had claimed that the PRC was one of the countries to ratify the UN Charter on Oct. 24, 1945, the document that established the intergovernmental organization.

Name change

"Ironically, the UN recognizes Beijing's suggestion to alter the original charter by changing [the name] `China' to `PRC.' Isn't it shameful of the UN? Back then, the PRC had not yet been founded," Lu said.

Lu added that the term "China" on the charter stands not for the PRC, which was set up on October 1949, but the Republic of China.

Lu said that it remains necessary to draw a clear line between Taiwan and China because China continues to be hostile toward Taiwan in the international community.

She added that visits to China by opposition leaders, including former KMT chairman Lien Chan and People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong, had brought no benefit to Taiwan.

"It was like dropping two stones into a pond. We did see some ripples. However, their political careers have been in decline since then," Lu said.

DPP legislators back Chen over China's universities

BY KO SHU-LING

STAFF REPORTER , WITH AGENCIES

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers yesterday threw their backing behind President Chen Shui-bian, who has said that he will not recognize China's college credentials during his presidency.

"While China has launched an educational united-front tactic with the aim of luring more Taiwanese students to study in China's colleges and universities, we thought that the president's pledge to reject Chinese college credentials during his term deserves our support," DPP Legislator Chai Trong said.

Chai was referring to Chen's remarks the previous day that Taiwan will not recognize China's academic accreditation during his term.

"So long as I remain in office, Taiwan is unlikely to recognize China's academic accreditation. This is not for my sake, but rather for the sake of Taiwan, for Taiwan's schools and young people," Chen said while attending the closing session of a three-day National Youth Conference on Sunday.

Chai said China is using Taiwanese students educated there to infiltrate the nation's armed forces, political circles, its lawmaking body and the high-tech industry after they return home to Taiwan. These people then take commands from the Chinese government and conduct activities to serve the interests of Beijing.

Ng Chiau-tong, chairman of World United Formosans for Independence and head of the Hand-in-Hand Taiwan Alliance, said that only if more people identify with Taiwan can a brighter future for the nation be ensured.

"However, it is sad to see that our educational system is still using Chinese-centered materials and teaching Chinese how to run Taiwan," he said.

Cheng Cheng-iok, executive director of the Taiwan Southern Society, said that it was sad to see that the nearly 4.6 million Taiwanese students were still studying China's history, geography and culture.

"We are helping China build the bridge for its united-front plot," he said.

Cheng said that the social science test for this year's college examination has 10 questions related to China and only six related to Taiwan, while the geography test contains five questions about China and only three questions about Taiwan.

Meanwhile, Beijing plans to give national colleges, universities, and science research institutes that recruit Taiwanese students an 8,000 yuan (US$988) subsidy, according to the Beijing News.

Chinese authorities detain a Catholic priest, his assistant

AP , SHANGHAI

Amid signs of improving ties between the Vatican and Beijing, police in northern China have detained a priest in the unofficial Catholic church along with his assistant, a church monitoring group reported yesterday.

Priest Pang Yongxing and Ma Yongjiang, a recent seminary graduate, were picked up on Friday afternoon in Qingyuan county, about 100km south of Beijing, the Cardinal Kung Foundation reported.

No other details were available, said the group, based in Stamford, Connecticut.

Pang, 32, earlier was sentenced to three years in a labor camp on charges of violating anti-cult laws and "disturbing the peace of society," the foundation reported.

religious dissidents

China hands out such sentences without trial, using them to jail political and religious dissidents, along with drug abusers, prostitutes and petty criminals.

An officer reached by phone at the Qingyuan public security bureau's political department said he had no information about the reported detentions.

The officer refused to give his name as is typical with Chinese police.

Qingyuan is in Hebei Province, a stronghold of the underground church, which defies the Communist Party's demand that Catholics worship only in state-controlled congregations that reject papal authority.

Chinese Roman Catholics were forced to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951, two years after the officially atheist Communist Party took power. Government churches recognize the pope as a spiritual leader but appoint their own priests and bishops.

Foreign religious scholars say there are as many as 10 million underground Catholics, compared with 4 million in the official church.

underground bishops

The Vatican says more than 50 underground Chinese Catholic bishops or priests have been detained or live under house arrest or police surveillance.

Such detentions continue despite efforts by Rome to ease disagreements with Beijing over appointments of bishops and other issues.

In his first few months in office, new Pope Benedict XVI has made a series of statements reaching out to China. Shortly after his election in April, a new auxiliary bishop of Shanghai was consecrated with the tacit approval of the Vatican.

Since then, the pope has given a special welcome to a group of priests from China's state church who attended his general audience and met with the founder of a Catholic lay organization that has been facilitating diplomatic contacts with China -- including helping to arrange a secret meeting in April between the Vatican and a government delegation.

In recent years, the lines between the official and underground churches have blurred in many parts of China, with priests and faithful traveling between the two.

Yet, China's communist rulers, who brook no challenge to their authority, remain determined to isolate and crush social groups not under their direct control.

China's credibility gap

Ahead of Chinese President Hu Jintao's expected visit to the US, Beijing has issued a white paper entitled Endeavors for Arms Control, Disarmament and Non-Proliferation. The paper points out that the Taiwan question involves China's core interests, and that action by the US to provide help or protection to Taiwan would "erode trust between big powers."

The paper intends to set the tone on the Taiwan question ahead of Hu's visit, and lay to rest the "China threat" theory.

China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued the paper -- nominally to complement commemorations of the 60th anniversary of victory in the Anti-Japanese War -- but in actuality it has been designed as spin for Hu's US visit. The paper addresses and answers questions other nations have asked regarding the expansion and increasing power of China's military, its use of nuclear weapons and its commitment to non-proliferation, among other things. Nevertheless, the content of the paper is contradictory and at odds with China's actions.

The paper stresses that China will never seek hegemony, and that it is following the road of peaceful development. Beijing repeatedly promises not to be the first to use nuclear weapons, vowing to eventually destroy its nuclear weapons to realize the goal of building a non-nuclear world. The paper also says that -- on the premise of ensuring national security and interests -- Beijing has always kept the scale of its armed forces at the minimum level necessary to protect itself, and has repeatedly cut its troop numbers. It also criticizes the development of missile defense systems and Taiwan's inclusion in such a project.

China's military expansion has far exceeded the minimum level necessary to protecting itself, and has made its neighbors uneasy. Beijing believes that its defense budget is not unduly high, even though it has grown at a two-digit rate for 17 consecutive years. Not to mention that the US, Japan, and the EU all suspect that its actual military spending is much greater than that disclosed by Beijing.

During the fourth Shangri-La Dialogue held in Singapore in June, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked: "Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder, why this growing investment?"

In fact, the white paper raises more questions than it answers. The joint Sino-Russian military exercise held last month was a source of considerable interest to Taiwan and China's other Asian neighbors. After all, China reportedly agreed to bear the cost of the exercise, and plans to purchase military equipment from Russia. Although the white paper insists that Beijing would not initiate the use of nuclear weapons, Major General Zhu Chenghu's recent threat that China would consider using nuclear weapons against the US if it intervened militarily in a cross-strait conflict, continues to reverberate. Policies are implemented by people, and the attitude of China's senior military figures undermines the credibility of the peaceful protestations in the white paper.

Taiwan is not a threat to the Chinese Communist Party, but this has not prevented Beijing from targeting over 700 missiles at it. This totally contradicts the white paper's assertion that "China will never seek hegemony or be the first to use nuclear weapons."

Taiwan naturally needs to seek missile defense, as this is a legitimate matter of self-defense. Rather than putting so much effort into obstructing Taiwan's inclusion under a missile defense umbrella, China should simply remove the missiles targeting Taiwan and declare the Taiwan Strait a demilitarized zone. This would be a way of proving that it wants to resolve the cross-strait issue peacefully.

If China seeks a peaceful resolution to the cross-strait issue, all the countries of the world will see that China indeed is not seeking hegemony, and that its rise is indeed peaceful.

Since Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou took the helm of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the party has implemented an agreement reached with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) -- hatched between former KMT chairman Lien Chan and Chinese President Hu Jintao during Lien's visit to Beijing -- as its new policy guidelines for cross-strait issues.

A key point in the CCP-KMT agreement is to join forces to oppose Taiwan's independence, as well as the shared understanding regarding "one China" -- -which is by now a code word for the "unification" of China and Taiwan. There seems to remain a disagreement of sorts between the CCP and the KMT as to the timing of "unification" as well as what exactly it entails.

But this disagreement might mean little if things pan out as Beijing envisions. For instance, Beijing might have been assured that a new KMT administration in Taiwan in 2008 -- if Ma's presidential dream is realized -- would quickly succumb to Beijing's pressure and inducements, given Ma's lack of spine and the KMT's hunger for power.

And, the timing of "unification" wouldn't be so important because Beijing might also be confident that it could help the KMT stay in power indefinitely.

It is virtually certain that Beijing would make the promise of perpetual power the bait that Ma and the KMT would find irresistible. And once Ma acquiesced to this, all the other pieces would fall into place. The KMT administration would function as China's "Taiwan-zone" government, deferring to Beijing in all diplomatic matters, and gradually dismantling Taiwan's deterrence abilities.

In fear of openly offending the US and touching off an internal rebellion, Ma would not formally "unify" Taiwan with China, at least not in the early stage. Instead, he would imperceptibly transform Taiwan into a "zone" of China which he has been implying all along -- in all but name. The starting point for this would be the "three links."

Ma would sever diplomatic ties with most of the countries that formally recognize Taiwan. Refusal to conduct "fool's diplomacy" or "money diplomacy" would be his justification internally.

Then, citing past years of failed efforts, Ma would scrap all undertakings in connection with membership in the UN and the WHO.

Ma would also start to distance Taiwan from the US and Japan. Ma only has to cease budgeting for more arms purchases to put a damper on Taiwan-US relations.

Should he refuse to cooperate with the US militarily, the validity of the Taiwan Relations Act would fizzle.

Ma could further reduce the military budget by using peace as the pretext. He could justify the emaciation of the military based on a "peace accord" he would work out with Beijing.

At some point, but only belatedly, Taiwanese people would realize that their future has already been decided for them without their consent.

It should be stressed that Ma's pre-election intentions and promises -- no matter how sincere they seem -- would have no bearing on either the processes or the outcomes regarding cross-strait interaction. Both Beijing and the KMT hierarchy would make certain that matters -- including Ma's initial nod to set things in motion -- be executed and accomplished in accordance with Beijing's orchestration.

In other words, any KMT candidate, once elected president, would eventually inflict the same fatal damage on Taiwan.

If enough Taiwanese people conclude by election time that this scenario, or something similar to it, is more than marginally probable, Taiwan's 2008 presidential election would turn into a referendum-in-fact on "unification."

Most likely, this contentious subject will be repeatedly discussed in all of Taiwan's future presidential elections unless there is a basic change in the dynamics of cross-strait interaction, such as the unlikely event of the KMT's true Taiwanization -- both in spirit and in deed.

But until then, as long as a substantial majority in Taiwan is against "unification" -- and as long as the Taiwanese people understand keenly that every presidential election could be the last free one -- the KMT will never regain power.

Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's new "Taiwan discourse," which is directed at establishing a link between the history of his party and that of Taiwan, initially held out considerable promise. But in a recent meeting of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Central Standing Committee, Ma made a mawkish statement questioning "if the Taiwanese have treated `our' Sun Yat-sen with respect."

The remark caused me to turn pessimistic about the new discourse, for it suggests that Ma is continuing to make an us-and-them distinction between the KMT and the Taiwanese.

The kind of public discourse that Ma is seeking to establish requires the collective participation of the public, for only by giving it significance and realization can it be established as a social discourse. But the very group that Ma's discourse is aimed at appealing to -- namely those Taiwanese who have rejected the KMT -- are unable to participate in the discourse as it is structured.

The reason is that Taiwanese continue to be regarded as "them" under Ma's formulation, rather than part of "us." Taiwanese remain the object, rather than the subject of the discourse.

While seeking to locate the KMT's link with Taiwan prior to 1945, Ma even spoke of a bottle of whisky that a Taiwanese, who was a victim of the 228 Incident, had received from Sun as a gift. Ma used this to prove that KMT had connections with the local society prior to its arrival in Taiwan in 1945, and that it was therefore not a foreign regime. But this only underlined the fragility of the KMT's historical tie to Taiwanese society.

If the KMT wants to create a truly powerful discourse, it must drop what we call the "KMT's Taiwan discourse," and make Taiwan the subject of the discourse, which would be "Taiwan's KMT discourse." And what would such a discourse be? In a phrase, it would be to accept that "the KMT was once a foreign regime."

The KMT was indeed a foreign regime when it moved to Taiwan between 1945 and 1949. The KMT should acknowledge this. It should respond by saying that this is in the past, and that after the process of localization, it is no longer a foreign regime, nor will it be one in the future. If the KMT's official history had adopted this local perspective, then it could rightly justify saying that the party has blended into Taiwanese society, and the accusation that the KMT is a foreign regime would not have persisted.

Instead, to avoid localizing the party and to negate former president Lee Teng-hui's contribution in extending the KMT's hold on power through localization, Ma has deliberately ignored Lee's historical status. This negates the argument of the KMT's successful localization, and instead insists on the argument that the KMT was at no stage a foreign regime.

But the problem the KMT currently faces is not whether it was a foreign government back in 1945, but why, 50 years later, it is still accused of being a foreign regime. Ma has provided the wrong answer, and is asking the wrong question. By continuing to emphasize the KMT's historical connection with Taiwan, he has put the party on dangerous ground.

The accusation that the KMT is a foreign political force can easily be deflected by a localization discourse, but instead Ma reveals that the KMT is unable to give up the idea of its primacy in its relationship with Taiwan, needlessly leaving itself open to attack by critics.

As soon as Ma starts talking about the KMT's connections with Taiwan, he unites Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweights against him. Premier Frank Hsieh, DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang, Presidential Office Secretary-General Yu Shyi-kun, Vice President Annette Lu and even President Chen Shui-bian can scarce forgo ripping into him. It is hardly surprising that the DPP should be delighted that Ma has made himself such an easy target, for in dealing with this topic, he reveals his own complete failure to understand local sentiment.

But looking at the problem from a wider perspective, this ganging up on Ma is a disturbing situation, for it suggests that Ma's KMT discourse could lead to a worsening of relations between ethnic groups with different political orientations.

We can imagine the political debate that will precede the 2008 presidential elections, which will take place in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. If debate focuses on the KMT's historical role, the place of birth and local associations of each leader, it will split Taiwanese society, and in conjunction with strained relations with Beijing and external pressure, the damage that it could do to Taiwan does not have to spelled out.

Whether Ma is looking after his own interests, those of the KMT or those of the nation, he must understand that his political party discourse should aim at bringing people together.

In other words, Taiwan's political parties should engage in a dialogue that is built on a position of "Taiwan first," seeking consensus rather than closing off from each other by making unilateral declarations intended to appeal to the old guard but which are contrary to the popular will.

To put it even more bluntly, if the two main parties engage in an ideological battle over identity, the KMT will certainly be the loser, and Taiwan's future will be the victim. Ma's discourse is intended to solve the contradictions between the KMT and local society, but instead he is simply giving his enemies a stick to beat him with.

Instead, he should simply accept the localization argument of "Taiwan first" and actively engage the DPP in an effort to achieve rapprochement and cooperation, and build an interparty relationship. As the leader of the main opposition party and a possible presidential candidate, Ma should engage Hsieh in frank and well-intentioned theoretical and policy debate (Hsieh advocates a political philosophy of cooperation and coexistence), and also draw Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) into a push toward interparty cooperation in the legislature. This would be much more constructive than looking for connections in the dust of history, and enable Ma to create a discourse that would be more persuasive than his current one.

Jou Yi-cheng is a director of the international department of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy.