Taiwan will not open median line: Ma
　

SAFETY FIRST: Senior government officials said Taiwan could not agree to flights routed directly across the Taiwan Strait because of national security concerns

By Mo Yan-chih
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Jul 04, 2009, Page 1

Taiwan will not open the median line of the Taiwan Strait to air traffic because the area is used for training by the country’s air force, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said on Thursday.

At present, direct flights between Taiwan and China are routed over the East China Sea and South China Sea rather than directly across the Taiwan Strait.

“We have told [Beijing] very clearly before that we will not open the median line. We are not trying to make things difficult. It’s about national security,” Ma said on Thursday in Panama City at a gathering with Taiwanese reporters during his trip to Central America.

Ma made the remarks in response to a call by Wang Yi (王毅) the director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, that Taiwan open the median line because of increasing numbers of direct cross-strait flights.

As to the establishment of a military mutual trust mechanism, Ma said such a framework could be forged only after the signing of a peace agreement with China.

“While the two sides indeed have to strike a cross-strait peace pact, we believe it’s not an issue of great urgency at the moment,” Ma said.

Ma said the government would focus its efforts on the negotiation of an economic cooperation framework agreement.

“What’s more urgent at the moment is to solve the issues that matter more to the public. Normalizing cross-strait economic relations, for example, is very important to Taiwan,” Ma said.

When asked whether he would meet Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in his capacity as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman, Ma said he had no immediate plans to meet Hu. It would be better for leaders across the Taiwan Strait to meet after the two sides have found solutions to certain fundamental issues, he said.

Ma is expected to take over the KMT chairmanship after an election on July 26.

Senior officials accompanying Ma on his trip said Taiwan could not agree to flights routed directly across the Taiwan Strait because of national security concerns.

“China reserves 90 percent of its airspace for military training, while we only have the airspace on our side of the Taiwan Strait meridian,” said one official, adding that Taiwan could not afford to budge on this issue.

Noting that both Taiwan and the US are concerned about regional security in the Taiwan Strait, the official said steadiness was more important than speed in cross-strait development at this stage.

In Taipei, Democratic Progressive Party acting spokesman Chuang Suo-hang (莊碩漢) said if Taiwan opened the middle line of the Strait to China, Taiwan’s defense would collapse, adding that the proposal raised by Beijing was unthinkable.

DPP says policy on PRC tourists a failure
　

By Rich Chang and Mo Yan-chih
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Jul 04, 2009, Page 1

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday said that despite government claims that opening the country to Chinese tourists would benefit the economy, the policy had proved a failure.

Acting DPP spokesman Chuang Suo-hang (莊碩漢) told a press conference that since the government opened up the country to Chinese tourists on July 4 last year, only about 360,000 tourists from China had visited the country, or around 1,000 per day, much less than the government’s promise of 3,000.

About 3.5 million Taiwanese visited China in the same period, 10 times the figure for Chinese tourists, he said.

As Taiwan opens to Chinese investment in Taiwan’s tourism market, China should reciprocate and open its tourism market to Taiwanese investment, Chuang said.

He said that several Taiwanese travel agencies had complained that their counterparts in China had delayed payments, with some delayed payments turning into debts.

Chuang concluded that opening up to Chinese tourists had not benefited tourism or the economy and the government should be held responsible for its failed policy.

Chuang’s comments came after the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) challenged President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) policy, saying it had only generated revenue of about NT$18 billion (US$548 million) because the number of Chinese tourists was far less than had been expected.

At a separate setting, DPP Legislator Yeh Yi-chin (葉宜津) said the government claimed that Chinese tourists would bring NT$60 billion in revenue per year.

“Where is the NT$60 billion?” she asked.

She said that according to the Sun Moon Lake National Scenic Area Administration, Chinese tourists spent on average NT$1,500 per day between January and last month, similar to what the average foreign tourist spent in the 1970s.

Meanwhile, Ma yesterday dismissed concerns about the disappointing number of Chinese tourists, saying more would come.

Ma yesterday acknowledged that the number of Chinese tourists in Taiwan varied from several hundred per day to about 5,000 per day, but added that his campaign promise would be carried out when the tourism industry is improved.

The industry should strengthen related facilities, such as increasing the number of tourist buses and boats, and raise the quality of its services to meet the demand of growing numbers of Chinese tourists, Ma told reporters yesterday in Panama City.

“There’s nothing wrong with the situation now and I believe we will attract more Chinese tourists when the tourism industry is ready. Chinese tourists are very interested in visiting Taiwan,” he said.

As of Tuesday, the recent number of Chinese tourist arrivals to Taiwan stood at 2,008 per day, said Steven Kuo Su (郭蘇燦洋), deputy director-general of the Tourism Bureau.

Attributing the low numbers to the global outbreak of (A)H1N1 influenza and the economic downturn, Kuo Su said he was confident that the situation would improve next year and that Chinese tourist arrivals would increase year-on-year.

“The Tourism Bureau plans to launch new promotions every year until 2012, by which time Chinese tourists arrivals should reach an annual 1.2 million,” Kuo Su said.

Lu tells media in US of the perils Taiwan is facing
　

‘STEP BY STEP’:: The former vice president told news outlets in the US that the nation was steadily being turned into Chinese Taipei by Ma’s pro-China policies

By William Lowther
STAFF REPORTER , WASHINGTON
Saturday, Jul 04, 2009, Page 3
　

Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) said in Washington on Thursday that “step by step and day by day” Taiwan was being changed into Chinese Taipei.

There was a danger, she said, that Taiwan would lose its democracy and become a province of China.

She said that under President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) pro-China policies, the country could be cooked like a frog in gradually heating water until it is eventually “Hong Kong-ized” and eaten up by Beijing.

In a speech entitled “Prospects for Taiwan’s Future: All Options Open,” Lu told a conference at the National Press Club that while foreign observers were delighted by what they perceived as a decrease in tensions across the Taiwan Strait and an increase in stability, Taiwan had made compromises that were too deep and too large.

She said that agreements with China had excited some, but that others saw them as a trap arranged under China’s united front policy.

Lu did not meet with politicians or think tanks during the Washington visit but held talks with a number of leading US newspapers.

She said that she was now concentrating on her role as founder and publisher of the weekly Formosa Post and that while she remained a member of the DPP, she had no plans to run for political office.

Lu said she was confused by the many accusations against former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and that she only hoped he would receive a fair and open trial.

She recalled that she had been a victim of the old political system and did not want to see the courts abused again.

A short biography handed out by her aides read: “In a 1979 rally commemorating International Human Rights Day, she gave a 20-minute speech urging the then-Chinese Nationalist government to embrace democracy and improve human rights. Her speech landed her a 12-year sentence in jail. She was released in 1985 because of intense international pressure.”

Before DPP leaders go to China, she said, there needed to be four vital rules in place: There should be no preconditions set by Beijing; all aspects of the visit should be transparent; there should be no secret deals and those going should have no self interests involved.

Lastly, Lu urged all Americans to pay close attention to what was happening in Taiwan “before it is too late” and before pro-China policies “undermine the stability and strength” of the country.

Dog eat dog, Aboriginal-style

Saturday, Jul 04, 2009, Page 8

It might be the effects of the economic downturn, but there is something rather strange about the dwindling role of ethnicity in political discourse in recent months.

True, when cash is a problem, people tend to fine-tune their priorities and focus on what really matters — and this might help to extract nonsensical ethnic politics from day-to-day political activity.

But the fact remains that the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has an agenda that bodes ill for people who identify culturally or ethnically as Taiwanese. Normally the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) champions the response to this agenda, but of late the DPP has been struggling to champion anything.

So, for now, economics rules the roost, and anyone who wants to mobilize support on any other issue is going to struggle for attention.

There has been a vivid exception to this trend in recent days. The Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) turned up the heat last week in dismissing a campaign by Pingpu (highly assimilated Aboriginal groups) representatives for official recognition — hence denying them eventual government funding of various descriptions.

The problem is that Council Minister Chang Jen-hsiang (章仁香) rejected the claims in an obnoxious manner that was both troubling and entirely unsurprising: For months she has been under fire from Aboriginal constituents and even members of her own party, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), for her mediocre management skills and the callous conduct of her aides.

The minister’s problem now is that the Pingpu groups in question are sufficiently proud to demand recognition for its own sake, not just the financial benefits that would flow from it.

By conducting herself in such an insulting and high-handed manner, this minister is exhibiting not only a willingness to deny the historical record (the last speakers of certain Pingpu languages have all but died out, which is nonetheless proof of a living legacy), but also to dabble in the ugliest of exclusionary ethnic tactics.

The facts are these: The minister’s own Amis ethnic group contains no shortage of people who fail to speak their people’s native language yet identify and live as Amis in Aboriginal communities. Meanwhile, among the Amis, some deny their Aboriginality and seek to integrate with the Han majority through marriage for personal reasons. Neither circumstance refutes the existence of an ongoing Amis cultural legacy and identity, nor does it prevent people from claiming benefits that the law affords Aboriginal people.

There is more than enough scholarly research to demonstrate that Pingpu traditions survive in Tainan County among descendants of the Siraya people, and that Pazeh people in the region of Puli (埔里), Nantou County, for example, retain a compelling identification with a culture that as recently as 60 years ago formed definable communities.

Chang’s political power does not derive from Aboriginal activism or the influence of the church but from family and KMT patronage. Her father was one of the most powerful Aboriginal politicians of his era, and it was his connections that helped her to rise to the top. Predictably, now that she has made it there, Chang has shown precious little enthusiasm for pursuing legal and administrative reforms necessitated by passage of the Aboriginal Basic Act (原住民族基本法).

For Chang to insult Pingpu people is an indictment not only of her personally and her family’s ­generations-long debt to KMT largess, but also of Ma’s wisdom in signing off on her appointment as CIP minister. It would be surprising if her tenure lasts into a second Ma term, even if Ma is unlikely to appreciate the irony of an Aboriginal politician turning on people whose Aboriginal heritage was denigrated by the KMT for decades.

The problem of Pingpu recognition is complex, but there is one thing that can be said for certain: The present CIP minister is not equipped to deal with the issue.