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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.

 

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