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Buddying up with the beast
During a visit by Harvard professor Joseph Nye Jr, cofounder of the neoliberal
school of thought in international relations, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said
cross-strait relations were improving because of Beijing’s “soft power,” while
Nye suggested that Taiwan was using “smart power” — a combination of soft and
military power — to maintain its security. However, both the renowned professor
and the president seemed to miss one critical point: As Taiwan buddies up with
China, Taiwan’s soft power is increasingly being tarnished by the association.
Beijing is undoubtedly an economic force to be reckoned with. Many countries
look to Beijing to acquire manufactured goods and they want to maintain good
relations to tap into that vast market. Taiwan is no exception and benefits from
its status as a neighbor with a similar culture to China. However, economic
power does not translate into soft power.
Under the Ma administration, Taiwan, in its sprint to cement economic ties with
Beijing, has acted against some of the values underpinning a soft power strategy
that the nation has used with great effect for years, most notably support for
human rights, freedom of expression and democracy. The government seems afraid
to demonstrate its core values on the international stage — it was unwilling to
invite Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer to Taiwan to attend a screening of the film
The 10 Conditions of Love, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at one point
labeling her associates as terrorists; Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama
was snubbed instead of being invited with open arms as in the past; Ma’s
speeches on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre were toned down,
while after Chinese activist Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) was named as the Nobel Peace Prize
winner, Ma’s exhortation that China “solve major human rights incidents with
honesty and confidence” was disappointingly — if not embarrassingly — tame.
Silence on China’s human rights abuses is not the only point where the
government is departing from the foundations of Taiwan’s soft power. Taiwan’s
stand for democracy and the rule of law has served it well, too. However,
elements of these have been hollowed out as evidenced by what appears to be the
government’s outright refusal to allow a referendum on the Economic Cooperation
Framework Agreement, the curious timing of the final verdicts in former
president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) cases right before municipality elections and
the fact that some in the government spoke so strenuously against the not-guilty
verdicts, raising the question whether the executive branch had influenced the
judiciary’s guilty verdicts.
While the foundations of Taiwan’s soft power erode, China’s hard power looms
over its soft power. Chinese Communist Party officials appear to think economics
trump everything and that they can do whatever they want because the world
relies on China’s factories and access to its market. Meanwhile, which countries
in the world, besides Myanmar and North Korea, want to emulate China’s political
system? China has become synonymous with repression no matter how many Confucius
Institutes it builds or Confucius Peace Prizes it awards and Taiwan does itself
no favors by proclaiming itself a friend of such a regime.
Taiwan is slowly becoming more vulnerable as it buddies up with China, allowing
many of its core values to be muddied by close relations with one of the world’s
worst human rights offenders. Smart power relies on an adequate balance of soft
and military power. Taiwan’s military power is already well below that of China,
while the contamination of the sources of its soft power poses risks to the
nation’s ties with the one country that stands as its military benefactor — the
US.
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