Dalai Lama:
Tibet is a 'hell on Earth'
Beijing speaks: Chinese
foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu accused the Tibetan spiritual leader and
Nobel Peace Prize winner of telling lies and spreading rumors
AFP, DHARAMSALA, INDIA
Wednesday, Mar 11, 2009, Page 1
Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama accused China of having brought
“hell on Earth” to his homeland in a speech yesterday on the sensitive 50th
anniversary of a failed uprising.
As Chinese authorities deployed a massive security force across the Tibetan
plateau to prevent protests, he demanded “legitimate and meaningful autonomy”
for the region in a speech at his exile base in northern India.
Residents of Tibet's capital, Lhasa, reported no protests yesterday morning, but
— as in other Tibetan areas of China — it appeared to be partly because armed
soldiers and police were patrolling the streets in a show of force.
The Dalai Lama said China had brought “untold suffering and destruction” to the
Himalayan region in a wave of repressive campaigns since the uprising on March
10, 1959, that forced him to flee.
“These thrust Tibetans into such depths of suffering and hardship that they
literally experienced hell on Earth,” he said, adding they caused the deaths of
“hundreds of thousands” of his people.
“Even today Tibetans in Tibet live in constant fear,” he said. “Their religion,
culture, language, identity are near extinction. The Tibetan people are regarded
like criminals, deserving to be put to death.”
The anniversary of the failed uprising is being marked by vigils and protests in
Dharamsala, as well as in places as far afield as Washington and Canberra.
In Beijing, the Dalai Lama's comments were dismissed as “lies.”
“I will not respond to the Dalai Lama's lies,” Chinese foreign ministry
spokesman Ma Zhaoxu (馬朝旭) told reporters.
“The Dalai Lama clique is confusing right and wrong. They are spreading rumors.
The democratic reforms [under Chinese rule] are the widest and most profound
reforms in Tibetan history,” Ma said.
China has ruled Tibet since 1951 after sending in troops to “liberate” the
region the previous year.
However, the 73-year-old Dalai Lama still retains enormous support among the
roughly 6 million devoutly Buddhist Tibetans who live in China, despite
Beijing’s efforts to demonize him.
In his speech, the Dalai Lama voiced frustration that repeated rounds of talks
between the Tibetan government-in-exile and Chinese officials have yielded no
progress.
“And quite apart from the current process of Sino-Tibetan dialogue having
achieved no concrete result, there has been brutal crackdown on the Tibetan
protests that shook the whole of Tibet since March last year,” he said in his
speech, broadcast via the Internet to exiles and supporters worldwide.
The Dalai Lama — who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 — resisted pressure to
radicalize his campaign against China, sticking by his “middle way” policy of
non-violence.
“We Tibetans are looking for legitimate and meaningful autonomy, an arrangement
that would enable Tibetans to live within the framework of the People’s Republic
of China,” he said. “I have no doubt that the justice of Tibet’s cause will
prevail.”
Peaceful protests led by Buddhist monks in Lhasa on last year's anniversary
erupted four days later into anti-Chinese rioting that swept into other parts of
western China with Tibetan populations.
Tibetan exiles say more than 200 people died when Chinese security forces
clamped down following the unrest.
PRC tells
US to put an end to ‘illegal’ naval activities
VERBAL BLAST: A US defense
department spokesman said China’s ships had been reckless, unprofessional and
had violated international law
AFP, BEIJING
Wednesday, Mar 11, 2009, Page 1
China yesterday demanded the US cease what it called illegal activities in the
South China Sea, as it rejected Pentagon assertions that Chinese vessels
harassed a US Navy ship there.
Foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu (馬朝旭) said US complaints that five Chinese
ships had harassed a US Navy ship in the South China Sea were “totally
inaccurate.”
“The US Navy ship Impeccable broke international law and Chinese laws and
regulations,” Ma told reporters in a news briefing.
“China has made solemn representations to the United States requesting that the
US immediately stop these activities and take effective measures to avoid
similar activities in the future,” he said.
The US said it had formally protested to Chinese authorities over Sunday’s
incident in the South China Sea, about 120km south of China’s Hainan Island in
international waters.
The dispute added a new dimension to fragile military relations between the
world powers, which had enjoyed a brief period of slight optimism after they
held defense talks last month.
The Pentagon said the incident saw Chinese boats move directly in front of the
Impeccable, forcing it to take emergency action to avoid a collision, and then
dropped pieces of wood into its path.
“This was a reckless, dangerous maneuver that was unprofessional” and violated
international law, Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters on
Monday.
Ma rejected that account, saying it was “absolutely unacceptable to China.”
The Impeccable is a surveillance vessel designed to support anti-submarine
warfare.
Ma said it violated the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea but declined to
answer when repeatedly asked to specify exactly which part of the convention was
broken.
The Chinese vessels included a navy intelligence ship, a government fisheries
patrol vessel, a state oceanographic patrol boat and two small trawlers, the
Pentagon said.
Whitman said one of the Chinese ships came within 7.5m of the Impeccable and
that the Chinese crew tried to snag the cables that tow the ship’s underwater
sonars.
Stopping Ma
When Georgetown University professor Robert Sutter repeatedly urged the US
government to re-evaluate US-Taiwan relations, people in some quarters brushed
aside as an isolated voice his assertion of the possibility of Washington’s
abandonment of Taiwan.
It was more likely that he was one of the few who cared enough to warn against
the dire consequences of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) westward plunge, while
most US experts have already filed it away as a foregone conclusion.
Regardless, a new vetting of Washington’s Taiwan policy might be inevitable and
might not be completely unwelcome to Taiwanese if Washington can come up with
something more farsighted than “status quo.”
Such a state of limbo, in which Taiwan has no formal sovereignty and no
constitution of its own other than inheriting remnants of the defunct Republic
of China, seemed to suffice until the day Taiwanese elected Ma as their
president. Overnight, Taiwanese found themselves going up a river without a
paddle.
Taiwan’s geostrategic position dictates that long-term stability in the region
would only be tenable when Taiwan becomes a normal, independent country as long
as China’s democratization remains a pipe dream. That could hold true even in
the unlikely event of China undergoing a democratic metamorphosis. This bodes
well for eventual Taiwanese independence. But it is how and when to get there
that would make all the difference in the lives of Taiwanese for decades, even
generations, to come.
A fresh look is necessary now that the “status quo” has become but a cliché
interpreted and exploited by various entities to suit their disparate purposes.
When former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) spoke out for Taiwan’s sovereignty,
he was castigated by Washington and other nations in the West for disturbing
regional tranquility.
In contrast, Ma’s 10-month-old subjugating effort garnered an international
chorus of praise for defusing a time bomb in the region while the pace of
Beijing’s build-up of missiles trained at Taiwan accelerated. Yet there is nary
a beep out of the US State Department lamenting the erosion of “status quo.”
Taiwanese by no means hold sway concerning how that pendulum — which represents
the cross-strait status — will keep swinging before settling into the most
stable position of an independent and neutral Taiwan. But Taiwanese still have
the faculty to at least minimize if not stay completely out of harm’s way by
launching an all-out effort to check Ma and company.
Beijing’s desire for de facto unification will only beget more desire for de
jure unification, which would thoroughly disrupt the age-old strategic
equilibrium and precipitate years — if not decades — of instability in the
region.
If Ma cannot be stopped now, Taiwan’s fate as that epicenter might be sealed.
HUANG JEI-HSUAN
Los Angeles, California
Cross-strait pact will benefit PRC, not Taiwan
By Lu Zhen-Ru
呂真如
Wednesday, Mar 11, 2009, Page 8
‘Lower cross-strait trade costs or duties will benefit China-based companies
rather than companies in Taiwan.’
When discussing the so-called economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA)
between Taiwan and China, local academics often cite studies that link Taiwan’s
absence from the ASEAN Plus groups and the decline of the nation’s GDP because
of falling international trade. This, however, is not the primary cause of
Taiwan’s GDP decline. What affects it more is the problem of “investment
diversion.”
To be specific, this means that it is more profitable for companies to make and
sell their products in an economically integrated region, with the result that
investment and production will increase in the countries participating in
regional groups. By the same token, companies in countries that are not part of
the group will see profits fall and investment in these countries will thus
decrease. This investment diversion effect has been proven by surveys on local
and foreign businesses in Taiwan.
However, one should also note that even if overall investment increases in an
integrated region, this increase will not be evenly spread. According to the
core-periphery model of Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, when trade costs between
two areas decrease, the greater market or region with a larger population
benefits and becomes the economic core for investment and production, while the
smaller market or region is deindustrialized and relegated to the periphery of
development. Later research by many other academics showed that when member
states of a customs union lower tariffs, the smaller countries may suffer rather
than benefit from the union and their losses may even exceed those of non-member
states.
Companies now only see the benefits of regional integration — e.g., their
production and export costs would drop — and therefore say they would be willing
to invest in Taiwan if it were a union member. The factor that will really
determine whether they will choose Taiwan for their manufacturing base, however,
is whether costs in Taiwan are lower than those in China. This is an aspect that
most companies have not yet considered.
As an example, look at the opening of cross-strait direct flights, which has
lowered the cost for for Taiwanese airlines. However, it has also lowered the
cost for Chinese airlines. Given the massive scale of the Chinese market,
economies of scale mean that the costs of Chinese airlines are still lower than
those of Taiwanese airlines. This means that the competitiveness of China-based
companies will increase, while the competitiveness of companies based in Taiwan
will drop. The same reasoning applies to other sectors.
In other words, lower cross-strait trade costs or duties will benefit
China-based firms rather than those in Taiwan. This may result in yet another
wave of businesses moving to China, thus making Taiwan the loser in the economic
integration. Since such a major policy involves the long-term interests of the
public as a whole, the government should not overstep its duties by making the
decision on its own. The only democratic way to deal with this issue is to hold
a referendum on the signing of an ECFA.
Lu Zhen-ru has a doctorate in
economics.