Paradigm Shift: Expanded opportunities for Chinese espionage in Taiwan

The MacArthur Center for Security Studies (MCSS) at the Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University (NCCU), had its grand opening today, with six panelists — including The Associate Press’ Peter Enav, Wendell Minnick of Defense News and myself — discussing national security and the Taiwan Strait. About 125 people were in attendance, including officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Security Council, as well as foreign diplomats (AIT Director William Stanton made an appearance but did not stay for the round table). The MCSS is sponsored by the US-based MacArthur Foundation, with an annual budget of US$550,000 for three years. Its Web site can be accessed here.

Interestingly, about a dozen Chinese exchange students (undergraduates) were also present. In my short chat with them, they told me that the process of getting visas to come to Taiwan was very complex — especially on the Chinese side. They said that about 30 students were currently at NCCU for one term, until the Spring Festival.

I presented the following paper:

Paradigm Shift: Expanded opportunities for Chinese espionage in Taiwan

Introduction

While it is too early to render judgment on whether the cross-strait policies of President Ma Ying-jeou will create long-lasting peace in the Taiwan Strait, there is growing evidence that rapprochement has not resulted in a military drawdown on the Chinese side. In fact, while Beijing has shown some diplomatic “goodwill” toward Taiwan, the Chinese military posture vis-à-vis Taiwan has remained belligerent and, in some ways, has hardened. Beijing has refused to redirect or dismantle the 1,500 ballistic missiles it targets at Taiwan, and the rapid modernization of its armed forces, though not solely directed at Taiwan, has been accomplished with a Taiwan contingency very much in mind.

Given this, we can assume that this military posture is being replicated on the espionage front. This is arguably the area where China has benefited the most since Ma assumed office in May 2008, for while the military balance in the Taiwan Strait has gradually been drifting in China’s favor, there has been no fundamental change, no paradigm shift, in Taiwan’s ability to defend itself militarily. In other words, attacking Taiwan today would be just as formidable a challenge as it was, say, five years ago.

On the intelligence front, however, a paradigm shift has occurred. We are seeing today an unprecedented influx of Chinese visitors in Taiwan. This creates opportunities for Chinese intelligence to conduct surveillance, gather information and cultivate sources, “conscious” or otherwise. The second shift has occurred in the investment sector. By opening Taiwan to Chinese institutional investment, the Ma administration is exposing various sectors of the economy to economic espionage, technology transfer and cyber attack. In other words, while investment could be beneficial economically, we must not forget that China is not an ordinary investor and that it may have ulterior motives.

The threat assessment can be summed up with the following: While China’s intent and capabilities have remained stable in military terms, on the espionage front its capabilities have been greatly enhanced by Taiwan’s rapid opening to Chinese tourism and investment.

Tourists, or spies?

In late May this year, a Chinese tourist named Ma Zhongfei was caught taking pictures in a restricted area at the Armed Forces Recruitment Center in Taipei. We will probably never know whether Ma was simply curious, had improvised himself as a spy, or was acting on orders from the Chinese government. What is certain is that his actions were clumsy, overt, and not the work of a professional intelligence officer. This case nevertheless highlights the greater potential for spying by the Chinese intelligence apparatus.

Beijing has retained a tight grip on the Chinese who are allowed to visit Taiwan. By controlling the spigot, China is in an ideal position to insert agents posing as tourists or businesspeople, or to ask ordinary citizens to do something for the state, either for patriotic reasons or through blackmail. Given Taiwan’s relative lack of intelligence about ordinary Chinese, screening potential spies before they enter Taiwan will be a formidable, if not insurmountable, task. It will be even more difficult to keep tabs on Chinese visitors in Taiwan once restrictions on their movement are relaxed, which the Ma administration has said it would do. Clumsy Ma Zhongfei was caught, but for every one that is caught, many intelligence-gathering operations may have succeeded and gone unnoticed. As I have argued elsewhere, it is also possible that Ma Zhongfei was part of campaign to overload Taiwan’s security intelligence apparatus with a series pinprick “attacks.” By creating “info glut,” Chinese agents could generate so much noise that it becomes virtually impossible for Taiwan’s finite intelligence resources to tell credible threats from false ones.

For the past 60 years, strict rules on Chinese visitors to Taiwan meant that its borders were relatively secure from human intelligence (HUMINT) operations on its soil by Chinese agents. As a result, little effort was made to protect critical infrastructure, airports, telecommunication nodes, government offices and military bases from espionage. The sudden influx of Chinese in Taiwan, however, caught everybody by surprise, with the consequence that most of that infrastructure is now relatively accessible to anyone with an intent to conduct espionage. In some cases, “spies” do not even have to be highly professional to collect actionable intelligence.

Chinese media

The Ma administration has also shown its willingness to allow more Chinese media to operate in Taiwan and to water down restrictions on the duration of postings. Given the state’s control of most Chinese media, and in Xinhua news agency’s case its close ties with the Chinese intelligence apparatus, Chinese reporters also represent a real espionage threat to Taiwan. While there is a long history of journalism acting as a cover for intelligence officers — not only by China but also the US and the UK, among many others — Xinhua distinguishes itself by being seen by most Western intelligence agencies as an espionage threat. In fact, my former employer, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), always assumed that whoever was sent to Canada by Xinhua was an intelligence officer. In light of the situation in the Taiwan Strait and the high stakes involved, we can assume that whoever Chinese media deploy to Taiwan will not only be more aggressive in their intelligence collection, but also far more professional. By virtue of the greater access that the profession gives them, such agents could develop high-level sources, gather information on dissidents and members of the media, and provide a variety of actionable data on government, the military and critical infrastructure.

Chinese investment

After embracing market reform during the Deng Xiaoping era, China under President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao appears to have backtracked on economic reform, with the state gaining more, rather than relinquishing, control over the private sector. While some critical companies (in the energy and communications sectors, for example) are fully owned by the state, the great majority of firms are semi-private or only private on paper, with funding coming from state-owned banks.

Many boards of directors and chief executive officers at such companies are retired Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. For example, China Mobile chairman Wang Jianzhou is a CCP official who has occupied various posts in government, while Zhang Qingwei, the chairman of the board at Commercial Aircraft Co of China, or COMAC, is chairman of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense of the People’s Republic of China.

With this in mind, the Ma administration’s decision to open various sectors of Taiwan to Chinese institutional investment is troublesome. While critical sectors, such as telecommunications, defense, semiconductors and LCD, remain off-limit or restricted for the time being, many others, such as real estate, banking, electronics and construction, are now — or will soon be — open to Chinese investment. One that door has been opened, little by little the Chinese could whittle away at Taiwan’s restrictions on investment, while Taiwanese firms may pressure Taipei to accelerate the pace of opening or lift restrictions altogether, until we reach a point where no sector is off-limit to Chinese investment.

Already, we have seen attempts by China Mobile to buy a 12 percent stake in Far EasTone Telecommunications (FET), Taiwan’s second-largest telecommunications operator, while the Taiwanese government-owned Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation (AIDC), which among other things designs the Ching Kuo Indigenous Defense Fighter, has proposed cooperating with COMAC to co-assemble commercial airplanes.

As with tourists and journalists, the more contact there is between Chinese and Taiwanese, the greater will be the opportunities for Chinese individuals to collect intelligence, cultivate sources, conduct blackmail, set “honey traps” and so on. Furthermore, institutional contact will involve creating data links between Taiwanese and Chinese parties to facilitate the sharing of information. The consequences of Chinese investment in the banking and telecommunications sector could be dire for Taiwanese, as Chinese intelligence could far more easily gain access to personal and credit information at the source (e.g. theft, malware, etc), or by conducting intercepts on electronic conversations, transactions and so on. Aside from purely economic espionage, the principal targets of such activity could be government and military officials, as well as the Taiwan Independence movement, members of the opposition, and its supporters. Creating an in-depth profile of such individuals and drawing a link network (i.e., who knows who) would therefore be far easier than it has been in the past.

Implications

All this is contingent on the Taiwanese government’s assessment of the threat. Previous Taiwanese administrations also opened certain sectors of Taiwan to Chinese investment, or allowed Chinese to visit Taiwan. But as their threat perceptions was far more cautious than that of the Ma administration, they set quantitative and qualitative limits to ensure that national security would not be undermined. The Ma administration, however, seems to live under the premise that its still testy cross-strait initiative has resulted in an immediate change of posture in Beijing. In fact, in the wake of Typhoon Morakot, Ma was arguing that nature, rather than China, was the nation’s greatest enemy. There are indications as well that the National Security Bureau (NSB) under secretary-general Su Chi has adopted a more China-friendly attitude, which implies that its threat perception may have changed. A close reading of Chinese elite views on Taiwan,[vi] however, or an assessment of its Order of Battle (ORBAT), shows that cross-strait dialogue has not been accompanied by goodwill in terms of the behavior of the Chinese military and intelligence apparatus. The kind of assistance, if any, that the Taiwanese government provides to the industry to help it protect itself against Chinese espionage will be a good indication of whether Taipei takes the threat seriously or not.

Lastly, while there is no knowing what will happen in cross-strait dialogue, as the two sides start addressing more contentious aspects of the relationship — political issues, sovereignty and so on — frictions are bound to arise, not only in the dialogue itself, but from within Taiwanese society, which could threaten to derail Ma’s plans through electoral retribution in 2012. Should Beijing fear a return of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the Presidential Office in 2012, it could decide that force is the only option and could do so in concert with aggressive intelligence operations in Taiwan. Given the paradigm shift that has occurred since Ma came into office, Beijing would be in a far better position to target Taiwanese society, critical infrastructure, government buildings, and military bases — the direct result of the intelligence collected by Chinese agents while Taiwan slept.

Government keeps mum after alleged missile test

By J. Michael Cole
STAFF REPORTER, WITH AFP, TAIPEI

Taiwan has carried out a major missile exercise less than a fortnight after China showed off advanced ballistic weaponry in a massive National Day parade in Beijing, local Chinese-language newspapers reported yesterday. The Presidential Office, however, declined to confirm or deny the reports.

Missiles capable of striking major Chinese cities were launched on Tuesday from the tightly guarded Jioupeng (九鵬) base in Pingtung County, both the pro-opposition Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) and the pro-government United Daily News reported.

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who has been accused of being too friendly with China, was among the observers of the exercise, the papers said, citing a “reliable military source.”

Both Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) and the Ministry of National Defense yesterday declined to comment on the reports.

The Apply Daily yesterday quoted anonymous military sources as saying that Ma was “very satisfied” with the missile test.

The missiles tested included the Hsiung-Feng 2E (HF-2E), which has a range of around 600km and has not yet officially entered the military’s inventory, the media reports said.

The missile is intended for launch from both land and sea and would be capable of striking airports and missile bases in southeast China, as well as cities such as Shanghai and Hong Kong, military experts say.

In the annual presidential address on Double Ten National Day, Ma said Taiwan would “never ignore the other side’s military threat despite significant improvements in cross-strait ties.”

China celebrated 60 years of Communist rule on Oct. 1 by parading high-tech weapons, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, through the streets of Beijing.

Asked for comment yesterday, Wendell Minnick of the Defense News global weekly said: “I am skeptical there was a test of the HF-2E cruise missile. For one, we are only a couple weeks away from the first economic cooperation framework agreement [ECFA] meeting with China and I do not believe Ma would do anything to upset that meeting.”

“Second, [Taiwan’s] budget for Hsiung-Feng 2E was cut last year,” Minnick said. “Third, if there was a missile test, it was for the Hsiung-Feng 3 anti-ship missile or the Tien Kung 3 air defense missile, but that is a big maybe.”

Developed under extreme secrecy at the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology in Taiwan, the Hsiung-Feng 2E missile program has run into difficulties over the years. Defense News reported in October 2007 that the US State Department had been pressuring Taipei to cancel the program because of its offensive nature.

The US defense establishment is also reported to have refused to provide Taiwan with terrain- mapping data necessary for the missile’s guidance system, although sources say such systems could have been obtained from a third party.

While the Taiwanese government has pledged to only develop and acquire defensive weapons, pressure mounted under former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration to develop a deterrent capability.

Link to article.

Security Prison 21

It was a cool evening in Phnom Penh, the low-lying French colonial houses in the capital slowly fading into the bluish darkness as I gazed from the rooftop of the Chinese-owned Golden Gate Hotel, situated in the posh diplomatic neighborhood. It was also surprisingly silent — nothing like the constant roar of cars, buses, MRTs and motorcycles in Taipei or other big Asian cities. As night fell, my thoughts turned to the city’s past — three decades ago, to be precise, when a nightmare of unprecedented evil would descend upon the city, force everybody out, and reset the clock to zero in an orgy of bloodletting. From my vantage point, I could almost see families being forced from their homes; men, women and children, at first not comprehending what was happening, being murdered in the streets by the Khmer Rouge, or taken away to the Killing Fields, where more than 2 million Cambodians were slaughtered.

Before being taken to one of the 800 mass graves discovered so far in Cambodia, many Cambodians were held at the infamous S-21, which prior to being turned into a prison had been the Chao Ponhea Yat High School. Today, the site is known as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which I visited on Saturday.

In a mere four years (from 1975-1979), an estimated 20,000 Cambodians are believed to have been held at S-21, which consists of a few concrete complexes surrounded by barbed wire and a few desolate trees. Even as a school, the buildings must have been grim. Reconfigured by the Khmer Rouge as a prison and mostly left the way it was found when the Vietnamese liberated the capital in 1979, the buildings have retained an aura that can only be explained as lingering evil. The moment one approaches them, one is visited by the uncomfortable feeling that something not right, almost inhuman, happened here. Decades have failed to completely wash that sticky darkness away.

One three-story-high building is filled with row upon row of pictures of Cambodians — men, women and children — who at one point were detained there. A few are smiling, suggesting that the pictures were taken when the revolution was still young and news had yet to spread about what was going on. Many looked defiant, others terrified. The great majority — even the children — had the eyes of grown-ups who had seen their share of atrocities. Other pictures showed the narrow wooden chair on which prisoners were ordered to sit while their picture was taken, a vise-like device holding the head straight from behind. One picture has a young woman sitting on such a chair. She is holding a baby. Thousands of pictures. All of them were massacred. The “fortunate” ones were taken to one of the Killing Fields nearby and killed there, usually with farming equipment so that the precious bullets could be spared to fight the Vietnamese. The less “lucky” ones — former government officials, the educated class — were subjected to torture so evil in nature that the act cannot be reconciled with the need to extract information. In fact, there is only one way to explain what went on there: the torturers took delight in inflicting horrendous, sadistic pain on their victims. In other words, torture was not a means to an end, but was rather the end in itself, evil unleashed for no purpose.

The next building shows us what happened. Climb a few stairs and you find yourself on a balcony surrounded by barbed wire, designed in such a way that while it would prevent inmates from running away, the wounds inflicted would never be severe enough to make suicide an option (some, however, were able to put their hands on knives or pistols and managed to do so). The rooms on the ground floor are fairly large, perhaps five by seven meters. There is nothing in them, aside from an iron bed frame in the center. On one wall, a black-and-white picture shows the state the room was in when it was discovered in 1979: human remains shackled to the bed, twisted like insects, their banged-in faces frozen in agony and a pool of dark blood underneath the bed. Here again, various agricultural instruments were used: axes, shovels, knives, pincers. Room after room, the spectacle of horror is the same. Only the victims differ, and the manner in which they were tortured and finally murdered. It is easy to imagine oneself in such a room, or the cries that must have emanated from them, even if special glass windows were used to dampen the sound.

Another building has the holding cells, their size depending on which floor they are located. Some were meant for groups, while others were individual cells, about one-by-one meter. The separations are made of red brick and the narrow wooden door has a small window at the center. The hours spent locked in those rooms must have been interminable and harrowing.

After S-21, a one-hour bus ride will take you to Choeung Ek, one of the Killing Fields on the outskirts of the city. The name itself has an ominous ring to it. There, among the grassy knolls and ancient trees, thousands were eliminated and thrown into mass graves. As one walks around the area, bone remains, pieces of clothing still dapple the ground, left untouched as monuments to what happened here. “Here lie the remains of about 100 women,” a wooden placard reads, just above a small pond filled with murky water. Here lie about 150 corpses, reads another. Then there is the “magic tree,” which was used to hang loudspeakers that blasted loud noises to drown out the moans of people who were being executed. As many as 20,000 Khmers are believed to have been murdered there. At the center, a simple shrine has been erected, which contains the skulls of about 8,000 Cambodians. May the souls of the dead rest in piece, reads a card left behind by visitors from the Japanese Red Cross. Underneath the skulls, clothes have been piled up, ostensibly belonging to the many victims. All over the county, similar shrines, their bellies filled with skulls and bones, can be found, reminding us that the nightmare spared no one. City dwellers and peasants alike were all fair game in Pol Pot’s infernal revolution.

I visited S-21 and Choeung Ek with a group of students from Taipei American School. Sadly, most didn’t seem to fully grasp the significance of those locations, or simply couldn’t relate to them. One or two didn’t want to visit, but we made them. Horrible though these places may be, they serve as reminders of man’s potential for inhumanity — an extreme, granted, in Cambodia’s case — and of the fact that these things can happen again. Fifteen years after the liberation of Cambodia, about 800,000 Rwandans were being killed in genocide. Never again are empty words, mere slogans, if we fail to learn from the past, whcih is why I found it unfortunate that the children I was with did not seem interested. Some of them are descendants of victims of the 228 Massacre in Taiwan, where as many as 20,000 people were massacred by the KMT regime. Taiwan had its very own S-21, which was located on Green Island. The horrors there were of a different degree, granted, but no less real for that. Other students were from South Korea and will soon have to do their military service. Their home country faces an unstable enemy that, in a matter of hours, could incinerate Seoul and kill tens of thousands, if not more. 

It can touch them. It can touch all of us. We cannot afford to ignore these things, or believe that we are exceptional in that somehow history would spare us. It spares no one.

Life, however, goes on, and Cambodians are healing, however slow and painful the process may be. A handful of surviving Khmer Rouge officials, including the director of S-21, are now in the dock and awaiting trial for genocide and crimes against humanity. Justice was never served to Pol Pot, who passed away before he could be apprehended (for many years, top Khmer Rouge figures were allowed to walk freely, while others fled overseas or across the border into Thailand). Lower Khmer Rouge militants, for their part, faced immediate justice after the Vietnamese came in: they were sent to the wall and executed.

All things in balance. The principal reason for the trip was to build houses for 10 families who, because of their deeds in the previous year, had been selected by villagers. The site was a mere hour’s drive outside Phnom Penh and was striking for its poverty (as a local reporter told me, there’s Phnom Penh, and then there’s Cambodia). The contrast with the capital, what with its diplomatic compounds, bars, restaurants and SUVs, could not have been more obvious. Entire families lived on next to nothing, proof that whatever money is being made has yet to trickle down to ordinary Cambodians, who make the great majority of the population. Only a small corrupt clique, fed by diplomats, NGOs and international aid (China and the US are fighting it off for influence, the same local reporter told me), as well as the proceeds from illegal logging, mining, prostitution, and sheer corruption, is benefiting and prospering. In that injustice, I fear, may lie the seeds of the next revolution, which could reopen old, terrible wounds and unleash yet another round of bloodletting. Looking at the beautiful, brown-skinned children who found joy with a mere soccer ball, I hoped against hope that unlike previous generations, they would be allowed to prosper and not be visited by some new iteration of the Khmer Rouge demons.

Interview with Martin Jacques, Part Two

Part Two of my interview with Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the World, was published today in the Taipei Times. In it, Jacques turns to the notion of “contested modernity,” Taiwanese independence, Western reactions to his theory and the possibility of a trade war between the US and China.

From this interview, and the great amount of material that was generated during our discussion but didn’t make it into the final text, my sense is that Mr Jacques equates “modernity” with brand new airports, skyscrapers and double-digit GDP growth and that the cost to the environment and personal freedoms is only of secondary importance. This definition of modernity, in my view, is rather narrow, as it does not encompass more novel notions of modernity such as environmental protection — which sometimes acts as a brake on industrial development — and personal freedoms. Based on his definition of the term, big Chinese cities, pollution and repression notwithstanding, are more “modern” than, say, Taipei, whose development may have been less striking in the past decade (of course, rapid development will be more impressive when it starts from nothing, which wasn’t the case with Taipei, whose development began much earlier). The same holds for GDP growth; gone are the times when Taiwan will experience the same rapid pace of growth that developing economies like China and India have seen, simply because Taiwan is already a developed economy, and rapid growth cannot be sustained indefinitely.

Jacques was a very agreeable person to be with and he seemed to appreciate being challenged on some of his assumptions. While readers are likely to find much to disagree with in Jacques’ book, there nevertheless is value in our own assumptions being challenged by a work that — in Jacques’ own words — was geared more towards Chinese readers than those in the West. Sadly, making his work “acceptable” in China, an issue that is raised in the interview, may have come at the cost of a rosier picture of the Chinese Communist Party than was warranted. In one instance, for example, Jacques claims that the communists played a prominent role in the resistance against the Japanese during World War II, a view that has now largely been discredited (I raised the matter with him, to which he replied that he had yet to be convinced by the “evidence” his detractors had shown him, adding that such questions were a matter of opinion rather than facts).

BOOK REVIEW: Su Chi’s ‘Taiwan’s Relations with Mainland China’

Su Chi, sometime government official, sometime academic, shows his political colors in his treatise on cross-strait ties under Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian

The problem with academics who are also politicians is that they tend to say one thing when in office, and something quite different when they’re in academia. This certainly applies to National Security Council (NSC) Secretary-General Su Chi (蘇起), who is both an academic and has a long history of involvement in government under former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and in the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration, and served as a legislator for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for a good part of Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) presidency. Su the political animal has a weakness for hyperbole, such as when, in October 2007, he claimed that Taiwan was developing nuclear weapons, which was false.

A consequence of this is that Su the academic must be approached with caution. That being said, this does not mean Taiwan’s Relations with Mainland China: A Tail Wagging Two Dogs is a bad book. In fact, it’s a fairly good book — at least when Su manages to restrain his political Mr Hyde.

Su’s book covers the period from 1988 through 2004, which includes tentative efforts to open diplomatic talks across the Taiwan Strait all the way to the end of Chen’s first term as president.

My review of Su’s book, published today in the Taipei Times, is available in HTML and PDF.

INTERVIEW: China to ‘rule the world,’ British author says

Published earlier this year, British author Martin Jacques’ book When China Rules the World argues that the global environment is being reconfigured as a result of the re-emergence of China, a ‘civilization state’ with such a long and complex history that Western concepts of modernity cannot fully account for its significance. Jacques sat down with Taipei Times staff reporter J. Michael Cole on Tuesday to discuss this development.

Part One of my interview 1-hour, 46-minute interview with Martin Jacques during his two-day passage in Taiwan as part of his Asia book tour, is available here. Part Two will be published in the Monday edition of the Taipei Times.

Let’s turn the wire crap filter on — again

Good old Agence-France Presse (AFP) has done it again. This time, reporter Amber Wang, or whoever edited the piece afterwards, managed to bring their reporting to a new low not only by misrepresenting developments, but clearly getting the facts wrong. Let’s dissect:

China plans to sign a key financial pact with Taiwan later this month as a reward for the island barring a visit by Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, a report [by the Commercial Times] said Thursday … [citing] remarks by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office officials to Taiwanese businessmen in Beijing ahead of the mainland’s Oct. 1 National Day. The arrangement was made after Taiwan decided last week to prevent exiled Kadeer, branded a “criminal” in Beijing, from making a trip to the island, the paper said. [my italics]

Here’s the facts: Taiwan and China have been discussing the financial pact for months, and even before Kadeer was invited to Taiwan it was expected that the agreement would be signed later this year (with an ECFA following early next year). It is therefore misleading to portray the signing of the pact as a “reward” for the Taiwanese government’s decision not to allow Kadeer to visit. To be fair, the Commercial Times may be the originator of that lie, which AFP simply would be perpetuating.

For different reasons, financial pacts are important for both Taiwan and China — perhaps even more so for China, given the political implications of further tying Taiwan’s economy to China’s. Given this, and since abandoning the pact would go counter to Beijing’s interests, it is downright incorrect to refer to China as “rewarding” Taiwan for something. It also encourages the distorted notion that Taiwan is embracing Beijing’s ideology (on Uighurs) and as a consequence reaping the economic rewards, while providing the image of a father figure (China) rewarding its child (Taiwan) when it “behaves.” Kadeer or no Kadeer, visit or not, that pact was to be signed, period.

AFP continues:

The opposition Democratic Progressive Party will show Kadeer’s film and a documentary on alleged Chinese repression in Tibet later Thursday to demonstrate Taiwan’s support for freedom and democracy, it said. [my italics]

There is nothing alleged about repression in Tibet — it’s a fact. Truth be told, the very person who made the documentary has been jailed by Chinese authorities for making it. There is documentation, eyewitness reports, photographs and various electronic recordings of Chinese repression in Tibet, from 1951 onwards. If stark facts such as Chinese repression can be made light of, what other fundamental aspects of our world is AFP not taking seriously, realities easily discarded or conveniently ignored when doing so coincides with the rising untouchable giant?

China’s ‘terrorists’ are now Taiwan’s

It is the prerogative of governments to decide who can and cannot enter their borders based on national interest considerations. In that regard, the Taiwanese government was entirely within its rights when it said on Friday that it would not give an entry visa to Uighur leader Rebeiya Kadeer if she applied for one following an invitation by Taiwanese groups for her to visit the country.

Had Taipei limited itself to saying that a visit by Kadeer it this point in time would be “inappropriate,” that it risked “damaging” relations between Taiwan and China — or even that it was not in the “national interest” — the denial could have been bearable, however begrudgingly.

In rationalizing its decision, however, the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) entirely undermined its credibility by adding that the World Uyghur Congress is related to “a terrorist organization” — ostensibly the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). “We are trying to prevent terrorism from overshadowing Taiwan,” Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) told the legislature on Friday.

Terrorism overshadowing Taiwan? Based on whose assessment — that of Taiwanese intelligence agencies? US? Or Chinese? Furthermore, even if, as it sought Chinese acquiescence prior to its invasion of Iraq in 2003, Washington agreed to list ETIM as a terrorist entity (a decision that is now being questioned), it never recognized Kadeer as a terrorist, as doing so would have constituted guilt by association (in fact, after being sent into exile from China, Kadeer received asylum in the US).

It now appears that Taiwan’s assessment of who can and cannot be allowed in the country, and of what constitutes terrorism, is dictated by Beijing. In fact, the Taiwanese government never listed ETIM as a terrorist entity. It was unnecessary for the MOI to add the reference to terrorism, unless it felt the need to signal, to Beijing and the rest of the world, that Taiwan under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) now sides with China on issues of self-determination, seeing “splittism” as coterminous with terrorism.

In many online forums and comments posted on Chinese newspaper Web sites, Taipei’s decision is being feted by overtly xenophobic and racist readers as “wise.” If wisdom means mirroring the views of a murderous authoritarian government, then the government under Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is indeed becoming wiser.

Mobilize — now!

I’ve long been a believer in retributive democracy — in other words, using election to “punish” governments for their misdeeds. But the way things are going right now, with the judiciary acting in a way that is reminiscent of Garrison Command in Taiwan and using the “law” to target a widening circle of pro-independence officials from the Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) administration (while dropping cases involving members of the pan-blue camp), would waiting until 2012 to achieve this too long a wait? Some other form of mobilization is direly needed, both in Taiwan and abroad among its supporters, but I’m just not seeing it! I see many bystanders shaking their head, but some odd (if not inexplicable) sense of powerlessness seems to prevent them from acting. I find this hard to explain and welcome my Taiwanese readers to share their views on this: What they think is the cause of this, and means by which this could be remedied.

I’ve written many pieces calling on Taiwanese to get “angrier” and to not act like sheep — all well received — but this led nowhere. Someone with gravitas in Taiwan (and this has to be a Taiwanese) will have to rise up and say enough is enough. The Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration, and now the judiciary, are just not listening. I increasingly wonder if the tool of democracy might not be unsuited for a situation like this, when one side in the “conflict” simply acts in an undemocratic manner.

Thoughts on the 10 Conditions

On a related subject, it is interesting to see how often Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese officials accuse the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of trying to “cause trouble” or “derail” cross-strait talks through shenanigans such as inviting the Dalai Lama and presenting The 10 Conditions of Love, the film about Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer. What the KMT doesn’t seem to understand is that the DPP, along with the opposition writ large, feels powerless, mostly because of the KMT’s quasi-total control of the executive and legislative branches and its refusal to listen to public apprehensions and to explain its policies. It blames the opposition for acting “irrationally” — a term long favored by the KMT when describing the DPP — but does not realize that the fear of the unknown that drives this type of behavior is of its own making. Seeing little alternatives to be heard, of course the opposition will politicize visits and movies, and try to “derail” cross-strait talks. What else can they do when the legislature is a one-sided street while the executive acts in an increasingly authoritarian manner, a reality that can only be exacerbated when Ma becomes KMT chairman. People are cornered and they will do whatever they can to be heard.

Another factor behind this tactic is that it serves to reaffirm Taiwan’s values while determining whether remains possible, on Taiwanese soil, to invite whoever we want to invite, or show whichever movie we want whenever we want. Under a fully democratic system, these used to be taken for granted. It seems we can no longer make that assumption.

Reactions

I encourage readers to read the following article in the Global Times about reactions to the screening of the Kadeer documentary. It’s that bad. Note, for one, that Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) is referred to as “Taiwan ‘Premier,’” and that Xinhua news agency refers to Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) as “Chen Shui-bian the second.” A so-called Chinese expert, meanwhile, claims that “The separatists [sic] in Taiwan are being marginalized, and their political power has been compressed [sic] … They have to collude with the separatists in Xinjiang and Tibet to make their own voices heard.”

Note, too, the transparent attempt by Chinese media to split Taiwan into two bickering entities — Taipei, which like Beijing “criticizes” Chen Chu, and Kaohsiung, in the south, which is filled with “separatists.” The fact is, “Taipei” — that is, the central government — did not criticize the move; only some KMT legislators did (in fact, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin 郝龍斌 has just announced that he welcomed the documentary being shown in Taipei, adding, however, that the city government would not sponsor it). This is an overt attempt to portray Taiwanese “separatists” as isolated and without appeal in northern cities.

Beijing corrupts minds

I’ve pointed this out many times before: One cannot deal with China and not be changed in some fundamental way by it. Even when, strictly speaking, relations are limited to economic exchanges, the ramifications of that contact quickly spread to other areas, such as defense, culture, and human rights.

In early August, Australia had a taste of this with China’s belligerent attitude to the presentation of The 10 Conditions of Love, a documentary about Uighur leader Rebeiya Kadeer, at the Melbourne Film Festival and the festival’s subsequent invitation of Kadeer to attend the film’s showing. Beijing’s saber-rattling, added to repeated attacks on the festival’s Web site by “lone” Chinese nationalists in Australia and elsewhere, and the pulling out of three movies — including one co-produced by a Taiwanese film company — caused an unfortunate controversy, but festival authorities stood their ground and did not allow freedom of expression to be undermined by Chinese machinations.

Other instances, such as the torch relay prior to the Olympic Games in Beijing, showed the various effects of the Chinese “corruption of minds,” with some cities adopting security measures (amid tensions in Tibet) that would have perfectly fit Tiananmen Square in the lead-up to the People’s Republic of China’s 60th anniversary celebration. In those instances — and there are many others — liberal democracies smothered their core values to ensure stable relations with Beijing. In other words, people looked the other way and ignored Beijing’s many ugly sides for a fistful of yuan.

Taiwan, which under President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has increasingly become beholden to the mighty renminbi, is now facing a similar onslaught, and sadly there are signs that some people will not be as resistant to Chinese pressure than their counterparts in other parts of the world. The refusal by Ma and other members of his administration to meet Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama when he visited Taiwan a few weeks ago was one such instance, where elected leaders of a democracy chose (or rather were forced) to avoid meeting a person reviled by Beijing within their own borders. More recently was the decision by the Kaohsiung Film Festival not to present The 10 Conditions of Love during the festival, as originally planned, but rather two weeks earlier to ensure that Beijing would not be “angered.” This concession was the result of pressure from the Taiwanese tourism sector, which argued that Chinese tourists would cancel their hotel reservations in southern Taiwan if the film were presented during the festival. A Kaohsiung City councilor from the KMT upped the ante today by comparing Kadeer to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Hitler!

In other words, tour operators were putting greed ahead of the nation’s hard-earned values of democracy and freedom, and saw not “angering” Beijing as more important than retaining the right to choose which movies we can watch, where, and when. This decision, which for some (such as Kaohsiung Tourism Association chairman Tseng Fu-hsing, 曾福興), was still not enough and still risked irking the rulers who control the spigot of Chinese tourists, creates a dangerous precedent, as it can only invite further meddling by China into the socio-cultural affairs of Taiwan. If a film about Kadeer can result in self-censorship, what’s next? Movies about the Japanese? Books? TV series? Dance shows? Theater? (Two film directors, Chen Li-kuei 陳麗貴 and Chen Yu-ching 陳育青, have announced the withdrawal of their films from the festival in protest of the city government’s decision to reschedule the screening of the documentary.)

If Taiwanese do not take a firm stand against this cultural aggression, and if, by doing nothing, they allow Chinese censorship to determine the content of what we’re allowed to access in Taiwan, then the creeping transformation will only accelerate and Beijing will have won.

It’s still too early to see how the Kaohsiung City Government under the capable Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) will react. But if this self-muzzling is allowed to proceed, others will have to take action. One way to do this would be to boycott Chinese films playing in Taiwanese theaters — especially movies that serve as cover for propaganda. One appropriate target would be the “propaganda blockbuster” Jianguo Daye (Lofty Ambitions of Founding a Republic), a movie produced by the state-owned China Film Group and directed by its chairman and chief executive, Han Sanping, about the Chinese civil war and the defeat of Nationalist forces by the communists.

Ironically, the Taiwanese government said it would not censor the movie, which will be released in Taiwan next year.

INTERVIEW: Former envoy to US warns on Ma policies

The Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration is proceeding carelessly in its cross-strait policies, is unreceptive to criticism and appears to be focusing on its relations with Beijing at the expense of the nation’s ties with long-standing allies, former representative to Washington and Mainland Affairs Council chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said in an interview with the Taipei Times last week.

In its efforts to develop ties with China, Wu said, the Ma administration seemed to have decided on the political end-state before conducting the proper security/strategic assessments to determine the wisest course of action.

“On the higher national security level, there has been no grand assessment on Taiwan’s standing with China and all other important countries, and no report on Taiwan’s priority list with other countries, including China,” said Wu, who is now a research fellow at National Chengchi University’s Institute of International Relations.

Since Ma came into office, old allies like the US, the EU and Japan have been ignored, he said, adding that the only country that seemed to matter to Ma was China.

He also said some prominent US academics had begun to worry that China has gained more influence and leverage over Taiwan than the US.

The full text of my interview with Joseph Wu, pusblished today in the Taipei Times, is available here.

‘Status quo’ is a hostile takeover

Ever since the US ended diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (ROC) and recognized the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1979, a move followed by the passage of the US’ Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) in April that year, Washington’s policy on Taiwan has consistently been that its future cannot be determined through the use of force by China.

The diplomatic relationship with Beijing, the TRA reads, “rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means [and that] any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes” would be “of grave concern” to the US.

This remains Washington’s official line on the Taiwan Strait, which was reinforced by the fifth article of the “Six Assurances” to Taiwan issued in July 1982, stating: “The United States would not alter its position about the sovereignty of Taiwan … that the question was one to be decided peacefully.”

Attendant to this formulation has been Washington’s reliance on ambiguity through the so-called “status quo,” which on the one hand is contingent on Beijing not using force against Taiwan, and on the other on Taipei refraining from doing anything — adopting a new Constitution, moving toward de jure independence, and so on — that would undermine that stability.

For three decades, this strategy appears to have been wise, for aside from the Missile Crisis of 1995 and 1996 and occasional violations of Taiwanese airspace by Chinese military aircraft, the Taiwan Strait has not descended into war and both sides remain de facto separate entities.

This article, published today in the Taipei Times, continues here.

CSIS has more in common with the CCP than you’d think

Those out there who do not understand how Chinese authorities have managed to control, censor and manufacture information within their country for so many years need look no further than a certain intelligence agency in what is otherwise a leading, mature democracy, to understand why. That agency, of course, is the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), where I worked as an intelligence officer from April 2003 until September 2005.

As I argued in Smokescreen, my book about my experiences at CSIS, one of my main disagreements with the agency was its resistance to change and different opinions. Seeing that this inflexibility fixed minds in time and prevented the organization from adapting to current (and ever-changing) circumstances — in the process allowing for great abuse of human rights — I felt it was important for someone “from the inside” to tell that story to the public. Of course, given the agreements that I signed upon joining CSIS, I could not do so while I was employed there. Two-and-a-half years after I handed my resignation, however, the book was released, and I was extremely pleased to see that CSIS had ordered copies. It was my hope that while I could not change things from within (and I made repeated, albeit unsuccessful attempts while I was there), future generations of intelligence officers who read my book would at least be somewhat more critical about the directives and information that is forced upon them from above the moment they join the service.

As expected, my book was not well received by CSIS, about which I was unashamedly critical, and some members of the larger Canadian intelligence community also took exception to some of my arguments — which is fine, as debate on intelligence matters, Canada’s role in the “war on terrorism,” and alliance with states such as the US and Israel, was what I hoped to spark with my book. Others, mostly rights activists, lawyers and members of the media (not to mention a former informant for CSIS), openly welcomed it and provided favorable reviews.

A little more than a year after the publication of Smokescreen, I released another book titled Democracy in Peril: Taiwan’s Struggle for Survival from Chen Shui-bian to Ma Ying-jeou. As the title indicates, my second book has nothing to do with CSIS or the “war on terror,” but rather focuses on Taiwan, China, and Northeast Asia, as well as the international community’s engagement of those players. Given the substantial amount of useful open-source intelligence contained in my book, added to the fact that CSIS has an obvious interest in the matter (not so much Taiwan, but certainly China), it was my belief that despite my critical book about it, CSIS would order my second book. To this end, I asked a close friend who works there to look into the matter. Her reply today confirmed my expectations and reinforces the arguments that I make about CSIS in Smokescreen:

I had an interesting response from the circus [i.e., CSIS] today when I asked them why they had [Smokescreen] and not [Democracy in Peril]. They responded that the 1st book was ordered to assess your credibility. It was decided by the ‘experts’ that your info is skewed and so they will not order it [Democracy in Peril].

So there you have it: I criticized them, so my views were “skewed.” While the second book has nothing to do with them, they nevertheless could not risk my “skewed” views infecting the young minds of their employees for a second time.

My friend continues:

I tried to make a case, but got the impression my wrists were being slapped. I’ll bet if you had not been a member [i.e., a former employee], they would have loved your work.

This is how organizations — which in CSIS’ case I likened to an “authoritarian system” — and indeed entire countries can resist change and remain monolithic in their view of the world around them. If this can occur, albeit in a limited circle, in countries like Canada, it certainly can be perpetuated in countries where a government has tentacles in every sector of society, with hundreds of thousands of brainwashed government officials and millions of party members. If organizations that operate in liberal democracies like Canada can resist change despite the tremendous pressure that exists outside, then there is every reason to doubt that, barring a traumatic event, China will liberalize and democratize of its own volition.

Who would have thought: China as an analogy for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. They can criticize me for all they want, or not order my books because their feelings were hurt. I rest my case.

Who cares about human rights when the world needs China so badly

Even after the administration of US president George W. Bush realized it needed China’s help to combat international terrorism, launch an invasion of Iraq and deal with the North Korean nuclear issue, Washington continued to openly criticize Beijing on human rights. Tone down the criticism it certainly did, but criticism nevertheless remained.

Now, one could question the Bush administration’s own record on human rights and argue that, by contrast, the administration of US President Barack Obama is faring better in that domain, with some improvements on the Iraq front, the CIA interrogation program and the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Given this, one would expect that Washington with Obama in office would be more critical of Beijing’s human rights record, especially as it hasn’t improved since Bush left office, and quite possibly has worsened.

Statements by US officials, however, show that this hasn’t happened. Arguably, though the US’ need for China’s acquiescence on the “war on terror” and Iraq may have diminished somewhat, new problems — predominantly the global financial crisis — added to lingering ones, such as global warming, AIDS, swine flu and North Korea, appear to have convinced US officials that criticism on human rights should remain minimal.

Nothing made this clearer than a statement by US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, who during an address in Washington honoring Wu Bangguo (吳邦國), chairman of the rubber-stamp Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China, did her utmost to highlight the need for greater cooperation between the US and China on a slew of challenges.

“The relationship between our two countries has the potential to chart a brighter course, not just for our own nations and peoples, but indeed for the entire world,” Clinton said, adding that Beijing and Washington have had “productive exchanges on issues ranging from the global economic crisis to climate change to poverty and disease to the security threats that confront us.”

Tellingly, the American Institute in Taiwan’s Electronic Information Service’s Highlights on Foreign Policy and International Relations, to which I subscribe, did not once mention references that Clinton may have made to human rights in China. Only the full transcript of her speech showed that Clinton did not ignore the issue altogether.

“We have different histories, different experiences, different perspectives,” Clinton is quoted as saying. “But we must seek to talk honestly and openly even when agreement is not possible. And we are committed to doing so. In July, we had a very full and frank discussion about human rights, and we agreed to hold the next round of our Human Rights Dialogue before the end of the year, and to reconvene the US-China Legal Experts Dialogue. We know that this is an important part of our engagement with China.”

This passage, which does not even openly criticize China on human rights, is the only reference to the matter in Clinton’s entire address. (Not a single mention, meanwhile, was made of China’s continued arms buildup, or Taiwan.) In fact, one reading could argue that Clinton appears to be embracing, or at least not criticizing, the view that human rights do not apply in Asia or in China. In fact, her choice of words appears custom-made to reflect remarks Wu made in March this year that “The Western model of a legal system cannot be copied mechanically in establishing our own,” which basically meant that China would never develop into a Western-style democracy and would emphasize the primacy of the “path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

At best, the US has a “disagreement” with China, based on “different histories,” “different experiences” and “different perspectives.” As long as the universality of human rights is not stated clearly by the US, China will be able to deflect criticism and make a case for “exceptional circumstances” that allow it to continue to repress minorities, dissidents, free speech, religious organizations and neighbors alike, while threatening stability in certain countries it conducts business with, such as Myanmar, Sudan, Zimbabwe and many others.

So much for “chart[ing] a brighter course, not just for our own nations and peoples, but indeed for the entire world.”

A feckless opposition made a harsh ruling against Chen possible

Although some foreign media on Saturday referred to the life sentences handed to former Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and his wife, Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍), as “unexpectedly stiff,” to quote the LA Times, anyone who has paid close attention to politics in Taiwan since the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regained power last year would see this as an almost inevitable outcome.

From the very beginning, the handling of Chen’s trial over allegations of corruption has been marred by political meddling in the form of gerrymandering within the judiciary, leaks to the media and guilt by association. The fact that the former president was kept in jail for almost 10 months for no valid reason also serves to highlight the fact that expectations of a fair trial were all along unfounded.

While a case could be made that the harsh sentences were to teach a lesson or, as the Apple Daily editorialized, to “serve as a warning for all parties and politicians,” it is difficult to imagine that a similar ruling would have been made had the political environment been different.

First of all, Chen, whom Beijing referred to as the “scum of the nation,” spearheaded the independence movement in Taiwan by carrying the torch lit by former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), in the process taking the rhetoric to the next level. Regardless of whether his policies ever succeeded in taking Taiwan closer to official statehood, the fact remains that for Beijing, Chen came to serve as a symbol of resentment and umbrella for the entire pro-independence movement. By muzzling him during his trial and giving him a life sentence, the Taiwanese judiciary was responding, if perhaps unwittingly, to the political needs of the KMT administration, which has sought to develop closer ties with Beijing. As a token of “goodwill,” Beijing could not have asked for more.

One reason why the trial could become so overtly politicized, or the ruling been so harsh, is the ineffectiveness and fecklessness of the entire opposition movement, which has been divided against itself (for no small part as a result of the case against Chen) and has therefore been unable to challenge to Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration with one voice. So weakened has the opposition become, both in the legislature and in public opinion, that Ma has been able to ignore public apprehensions about his cross-strait policies, going as far as to snub an otherwise legal request for a referendum on the proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China. The best that Ma and his team of cross-strait negotiators has been able to come up with in terms of answers has bordered on blind faith, which in effect concealed resentment for public opinion.

A more unified opposition would have forced the Ma administration not only to take more seriously the apprehensions of the public vis-à-vis an ECFA, but quite equally would have ensured a fairer trial for Chen. If, as has been the case, the Ma administration can so readily disregard public fears over policies that will undeniably have a substantial impact on the future of this nation, it follows that making a “gift” of a harsh sentence against an individual who stood up to Beijing and earned its venom would also have been relatively easy.

There is no doubt that in its calculations, the judiciary and its masters took the potential for backlash against a severe ruling against Chen and his wife into consideration. Had they feared that a harsh ruling would be detrimental to their ability to remain in power, or that it would serve as an incident that would allow the fissiparous opposition to coalesce into a coherent movement once again, political intervention would have verged in the opposite direction; in other words, the Ma administration would have pressured the judiciary to ensure a lighter verdict.

Fears that Taiwan is slowly turning into an authoritarian state may be a little premature, but there is no denying that when the opposition is discredited, disorganized and easily discounted by those in power, the judiciary will inevitably yield to the political preferences of those at the top, especially in highly charged political environments such as the Taiwan Strait. As such, the key to Taiwan’s future as a healthy democracy lies as much in the hands of an opposition that will need to get back on its feet quickly as in those of the officials who currently hold the reins of power.

The need is all the more pressing in Taiwan, for behind the KMT officials and members of the Ma administration who are slowly becoming intoxicated, if perhaps unconsciously, with the sweet wine of authoritarianism, lies a far more dangerous entity that is far less restrained in its use of the swift knife. If Taiwan is to survive at all as a democracy, it will need to deal with its problems at home before it’s too late. This starts with an opposition that can be taken seriously and whose voice cannot be ignored, with an opposition that is credible enough to serve as a brake on those who would otherwise ride roughshod on that which, to this day, remains the best — though by no means perfect — political system we have to deal with conflicting interests.

Put simply, we need voices that can promise consequences if the government overreaches, as it may have done on Friday.

A slightly diffferent version of this article appeared in the Taipei Times on Sept. 16,

Fidel, Che, 9/11 and a call for radicalism

As the saying goes, you don’t choose books; books choose you. Rather than keep reading a book by National Security Council Secretary-General Su Chi (蘇起), which I intend to review for the Taipei Times, or distract myself with Murakami Haruki’s Wind-up Bird Chronicle, I spent my day off reading Simon Reid-Henry’s fascinating dual biography Fidel & Che: A Revolutionary Friendship, while enjoying Café Odeon’s fine selection of Belgian beers and perfect background music.

Why, on Sept. 11, 2009 — eight years after 9/11 and the day former Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and his wife were receiving life sentences for alleged corruption — would I pick, or be picked by, a book about the Cuban revolution and the two individuals who spearheaded it?

That’s a good question. As I approach a burn-out, my mind wanders and needs to take a step back from Taiwanese politics — only to be drawn back in as parallels and analogies emerge in what would, ostensibly, be altogether different histories. As it turns out, Taiwan and Cuba — both island nations threatened and politically isolated by a larger neighbor — have quite a bit in common. I have lived in Taiwan for almost four years, and visited Cuba twice. Both countries have amazed me and won my admiration and love for their accomplishments in the face of great odds. While Taiwan eventually became a democracy, Cuba remains authoritarian, a system that replaced a right-wing regime propped by Washington.

What struck me, as I followed a young Ernesto Guevara and Fidel Castro become radicalized in the face of injustice, is that the revolution in Taiwan may not be over. After all, it faces an existential threat in China’s ambitions to annex it — and heaven knows that even if Taiwan has become a liberal democracy, its opponent remains radical and revolutionary at the core. Given this, can Taiwan afford not to be revolutionary as well? Can a democracy survive in the face of a far bigger undemocratic opponent? As the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) forge ahead with their policies of tying Taiwan economically — and eventually politically — with a murderous and undemocratic regime, it might be time for Taiwan to see the emergence of its own Ernesto “Che” Guevaras and Fidel Castros, for it is becoming amply obvious that democratic means will not suffice. I regret to say this, but when a government rides roughshod on democratic principles in its quest to achieve political goals that do not have the sanction of the majority of the population, something must be done to correct the imbalance. Even Fidel, radical that he was, initially relied on opposition politics to change things, until the military coup by Fulgencio Batista obviated that recourse.

I am all for democracy. But on the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington — the day I was starting my Master’s Degree in War Studies — I am convinced more than ever that extremism will arise if all other democratic venues have been extinguished. Extremism, or radicalism, as probably better applies to the two subjects of the biography I read today, is not its own raison d’etre; it is, rather, a means to counter injustice, and when democracy is ignored, or threatens to be undermined by external forces, it may not be entirely unacceptable for it to turn to more radical means to right wrongs or make itself heard.

Almost a year ago I was publishing a well-received article titled “Wanted: Angrier Taiwanese Youth,” which called on young Taiwanese to stop wasting their lives on video games, TV and other leisurely activities and to act in a meaningful way to ensure the survival of their beautiful country. Nearly one year has elapsed, and I have yet to see signs that what needs to be done is being done. Many have written to me, some have published excellent articles on their blogs or participated in colorful demonstrations against Ma, his cross-strait policies and the visit to Taiwan of Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林). But it ended there, while Taiwan continues to drift into the toxic embrace of the People’s Republic of China.

Where are the youth of action, those who give a voice to ideas? Fidel and Che were flawed characters, but they never ceased believing in the idea, and never shied from doing what was necessary to achieve what they believed in. Their accomplishments were far from perfect — I have seen this firsthand on my visits to Cuba — but there is reason to believe that, had they not acted, Cubans could be doing far worse today.

Chen was a flawed leader. But he is being sacrificed by a regime that cannot help but bend over backwards to please Beijing. As he and his wife face life behind bars, Beijing has successfully split Taiwanese Aborigines, turned Taiwanese against one another, while dealing as death blow to the only opposition party in Taiwan that makes the country worthy of being called a democracy.

The sadness I experienced eight years ago is still clear in my memory, the tons of concrete vaporized in downtown New York, the thousands of lives extinguished in an act of ultimate anger. I deplored the act, and in fact joined an intelligence agency to ensure that such extremes would never be carried out on Canadian soil. But I remember being even angrier at the fact that the world had ignored serious — and reasonable — grievances for so long that a group of individuals had felt it necessary to make use of such extremes to awaken us.

I certainly do not wish a 9/11 in Taiwan, or anything resembling a Cuban Revolution. But if the voice of the people continues to be ignored like this, and if Beijing continues to succeed in its plan to annex Taiwan one voice at a time, I fear that nothing less will be necessary.

‘Like a rave without sound’

To “celebrate” the unexpected resignation of (incompetent) premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) yesterday, some coworkers and I at the paper decided to go out for drinks after work. Once the paper had been sent to the printer down south, we tempted fate and took the trouble-plagued Muza-Neihu (a.k.a. Zahu, or “cheating,” as at mahjong) MRT Line and got off at Nanjing E Road, ending up, inevitably, at the expats’ favorite watering hole, the Brass Monkey. Far from my favorite place in Taipei, the place nevertheless has decent drinks and, as an extra, two-for-one pizza on Monday nights.

The place was unusually packed for a weekday, and it took me about as long as it takes to say “Guinness” to realize that the patrons weren’t the usual bunch. The place was filled with foreigners alright, but on that night, the foreigners consisted of, oh, maybe 60 or 70 athletes from the Deaflympics, which are currently being held in Taipei.

Though packed, the bar was, quite understandably, eerily silent, and one could actually hear the music. The waitress who served us seemed surprised when she realized we could actually hear and speak. Later in the evening, a walk to the washroom provided a fascinating scene, that of a bar filled with deaf and mute individuals all communicating in sign language, like some choreographed dance or, as a friend put it, like a rave without sound. Some people were obviously inebriated, others were engaged in what were obviously animated discussions, but in the half-light it was like a Kabuki dance, slightly out of place in what is usually a rowdy bar, but none the less fascinating.

As 1am approached, the waitress walked around the bar holding a sign that said, in both Chinese and English: “Sorry, we are closing at 1am.”

Leaving the place, I wondered if, when mute individuals become intoxicated, their sign language becomes slurred and confused, as does the tongue and mouth for those of us fortunate enough to be able to communicate “normally.” Does the hand become sloppy, too? Probably.

Once again, this wonderful country was providing me with rich, new experiences.

’Tis the season to ‘hurt the feelings’ of the Chinese

Here’s a short bit of good news for freedom of expression, brought to you by the City of Kaohsiung: Organizer Liu Hsiu-ying of the Kaohsiung Film Festival (KFF) announced yesterday that the festival, which will be held from Oct. 16 through Oct. 29, would screen Ten Conditions of Love, the documentary about World Uighur Congress leader Rebiya Kadeer. Fresh in memory is Beijing’s childish fit over the Melbourne Film Festival’s decision to present the documentary in early August, which resulted in cyber attacks against the festival’s Web site, the removal of Chinese-made films (including a co-production with Taiwan) and Chinese officials bullying of Australian government officials.

The theme of the festival, Liu said, will be “people power,” adding that the fact that none of the 70 films to be shown came from China was merely a “coincidence.” A likelier explanation for the absence of Chinese films, of course, is that movies about “people power” are simply not being made in China, because producing them would quickly land whoever is involved in the project in jail (or, at minimum, see all funding removed).

Coming on the heels of a visit to Taiwan of Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama — another “splittist” reviled by China — news that the KFF will be screening the documentary will likely further “anger” China … and perhaps even hurt the feelings of the Chinese people, which is a good thing, because whenever Beijing gets angry and its 1.3 billion people hurt, it means that we’re doing something right, something that corresponds with our values.

There are no news yet that Kaohsiung will imitate Melbourne by inviting Kadeer to attend the screening, but that, too, would be both desirable and interesting. In fact, it would be fascinating if Taiwan were at one point to host a festival featuring all the movies and documentaries that have been banned or censored in China, and invite artists and individuals that Beijing attempted to silence for addressing “forbidden” topics.

This is another great move by the south. Yes, it’s a bit of politics, but it’s also an expression of Taiwanese thirst for freedom and a message to the world that despite Taipei’s efforts to forge closer relations with authoritarian China, the people remain committed to safeguarding their identity and rights.

The ‘China Post’ takes democracy to task

Even before I began working for its competitor three years ago, I was never a big fan of the English-language China Post newspaper. Not only did its pan-blue political line not coincide with my preferences, but the quality of its copy, and dearth of local reporters, made alternatives more obvious choices to stay informed about what’s going on in Taiwan.

This said, I cannot but help encourage my readers to check out the editorial it published on Wednesday, titled “Time to think the unthinkable on system of government?” I urge readers to give it a try not because they will learn something, but because it is so irreparably bad. After all, what else should we expect from an opinion piece that opens with the following: “Democratically elected former President Chen Shui-bian [陳水扁], some would argue, has turned out to be the most corrupt head of state in modern Asian history,” which is followed by a similarly risible, albeit dishonest, attempt at political balance: “Democratically elected President Ma Ying-jeou [馬英九], others would argue, has turned out to be the most incompetent head of state in modern Asian history”?

Most corrupt? Most incompetent? Where was the China Post when Ferdinand Marcos, Thaksin Shinawatra and Suharto, to name just a few, were in power, amassing billions of dollars illegally while mismanaging their countries, sometimes bringing them close to civil war? What about Kim Jong-il, Pol Pot, or Mao Zedong (毛澤東), for that matter, who all engineered widespread famine, dislocated and displaced entire segments of society, and executed untold many of their own people?

The gist of the editorial is that Western liberal democracy “is nothing more than a political system riddled with defects,” and that democracy can do no better than offer voters a choice between the lesser evil. It argues that Francis Fukuyama, who announced “the end of history” soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, was wrong (in that regard, the Post isn’t entirely off the mark) and that former British prime minister Winston Churchill, in all his wisdom, was equally mistaken in saying that “Western liberal democracy may be a system riddled with defects, but it is nevertheless the best form of government mankind can ever hope for.”

The China Post argues that “the rest of us” — that is, not Churchill, Fukuyama and those who are foolish enough to place their hope in democracy — do not have to accept that flawed Western liberal democracy is our best option. The alternative, we are told, is “an entirely different political system, one that isn’t riddled with defects.”

Fair enough. So what is this new political system? The Post: “something unfamiliar to most of mankind, and which most of mankind has yet to try. Perhaps the final form of human government, the one that will replace Western liberal democracy, is ‘self government.’”

Ok, now we’re getting somewhere: “self government.” That form of governance, the Post tells us, is not the US model, which is “elective government,” whereby an influential minority, or self-interest groups, govern and “coerce” the majority. Sadly, by the time we reach the last line, which wisely advises us that “perhaps it is time to think the unthinkable,” we are no closer to knowing what “self government means.” In fact, I’m not sure the Post knows either. The wording is nevertheless chillingly reminiscent (though probably more banal) of Standing Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea member and Khmer Rouge Vice Premier for Foreign Affairs Ieng Sary’s reference to socialism “without reference to any existing model,” which quickly became the nightmare of the killing fields in Cambodia soon after Phnom Penh fell in April 1975.

Whatever system of government a country chooses, it will always be flawed, as human beings are by their very nature flawed. The few experiments in history where groups of people attempted to scientifically engineer a flawless, or Utopic, political system, led us collectively into the heart of darkness and cost tens of millions of lives: communism, fascism and all the authoritarian and totalitarian regimes in between. “Thinking the unthinkable,” the Post’s prescription for a better Taiwan, is just empty words, hot air that altogether fails to propose anything.

In its dirge for Western liberal democracy, furthermore, the editorial completely fails to contrast this undeniably flawed system with that which defines governance across the Taiwan Strait — a non-liberal, non-Western and certainly non-democratic system that brooks no opposition, silences, locks up and kills dissidents, and corrupts whoever comes in contact with it, even Taiwan. Is this silence an apology for that system? Is this the “unthinkable” the China Post would have us ponder?

Yes, democracy is flawed. But Churchill (and many others who came after him) was right: It is the “least bad” system we have at our disposal and the one that is most likely to impose checks and balances on power and the few who wield it in our name. A good criticism of democracy is healthy. But to discard it out of hand while proposing an undefined “unthinkable” is an insult to our intelligence and invites social experiments that had better be left alone.

‘Taipei Times’: ‘splittists’’ No. 1 source of information

Couldn’t help it … I edited and designed the front page. Picture taken today as the Dalai Lama was heading for Taipei on the high-speed rail.