Liu Xiaobo wins 2010 Nobel Peace Prize

Imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today for his defense of fundamental human rights in China. As expected, the announcement in Norway sparked a furious response from Beijing, which accused the Nobel committee of honoring a “criminal.” Chinese state media reportedly immediately blacked out the news and the authorities blocked Nobel Prize reports from Web sites. In a statement on Friday evening, the Presidential Office in Taipei congratulated Liu for the honor, calling it a “historic” Nobel win that not only honored the 54-year-old, but also all other human rights activists in China.

In 2008, Liu helped organize the “Charter 08” petition, a manifesto signed by hundreds of Chinese intellectuals that called for sweeping political reforms. He was sentenced in December to 11 years in prison for “subversion.”

Beguiled by Wen’s missile promise

Speculation has been rife in recent months that Washington might reconsider its policy on arms sales to Taiwan if Beijing agreed to dismantle, or at a minimum redeploy, the about 1,500 ballistic missiles pointing in Taiwan’s direction.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), in New York to attend the UN General Assembly meeting late last month, added grist to the mill when, asked by reporters for his thoughts on withdrawing the missiles, he said: “I believe the issue you mention will be realized one day.”

Coincidentally, little more than a week later experts on Taiwanese and Chinese security gathered at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington to discuss the feasibility of such a scenario. Though unconventional in itself, what is particularly worrisome about the meeting is the fact that the fine points raised by participants could easily be missed, misconstrued, or conveniently ignored, as appears to be the case.

On paper, the idea of disarmament in the Taiwan Strait is worthy of serious consideration. However, if not handled carefully, talks on the matter could very well play into Beijing’s hands and end up hurting Taiwan.

Here are some of the problems associated with the recent enthusiasm surrounding the idea of demilitarizing the Taiwan Strait:

For one, there is less to Wen’s Sept. 22 remarks than meet the eye and nothing that he said justifies the positive reception they received in the media and from President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration. By not providing a timeline or context to his answer, “realized one day” could mean just about anything. In fact, Wen would not be lying if his “one day” meant the day when Taiwan is annexed by China, at which point deploying the missiles would be nonsensical.

Other Chinese officials and academics who have discussed the matter have also done so in general terms, an age-old tactic by Chinese officials that leaves too much room for interpretation for a problem of this magnitude.

Although a full redeployment — including the “entire infrastructure” of five missile brigades belonging to the Second Artillery’s 52 Base, as the Project 2049 Institute’s Mark Stokes, a speaker at the talks and a longtime advocate of arms sales to Taiwan, proposed at the conference, would represent a measure of “goodwill” and diminish the immediate threat to Taiwan, such a move would come with its own set of challenges.

My op-ed, published today in the Taipei Times, continues here.

Security experts warn on China threat

In the morning session of the International Symposium on 50 Years of US-Japan Security Alliance and the Security of Taiwan organized by the Taiwan National Security Institute and the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy on Tuesday, former Japanese minister of defense Gen Nakatani, now a member of the House of Representatives, said that with a rising China at loggerheads with Japan, the best way to resolve disputes in East Asia would be to establish a regional security system.

Beijing’s recent stance on the disputed Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) has raised apprehensions in Japan about the growing military imbalance with China, Nakatani said, adding that if the issue was allowed to fester, it could deteriorate.

Nakatani called for the creation of an Asian equivalent of NATO, which he said would provide regional powers with a platform for conflict resolution.

In the meantime, a relatively weakened US would have to rely more on Japan and Taiwan to ensure security in the Asia Pacific, he said.

Dan Blumenthal, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said the US-Japanese security alliance in the 21st century would likely be as important as, if not more, than the US-UK alliance was for Europe during the Cold War.

“China poses problems for the US-Japan alliance probably not seen since 1945,” Blumenthal said.

Full coverage of the conference was published today in the Taipei Times, with me covering the morining session and my colleague Ko Shu-ling taking over in the afternoon (where Arthur Waldron was the main speaker).

Intelligence treason in the making

The systematic efforts by our government, uncovered by this newspaper last week, to keep secret a visit by a top Chinese security official last month raise questions that go far beyond secrecy and involve matters pertaining to the very nature of our society.

Though alarming in itself, it is not unusual for senior security officials from different countries to meet behind closed doors. In some cases, such meetings even involve cooperation with countries that have poor human rights records. In the “war” against terrorism launched after Sept. 11, for example, Western intelligence agencies began working closely — and secretly — with their counterparts in pariah states like Pakistan, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

Controversial — and at times disastrous — though this cooperation may have been, there are fundamental differences between that type of cooperation and what is developing between Taipei and Beijing. For one, it involves countries that recognize each other. Also, there are independent, institutionalized oversight mechanisms in democratic systems that ensure a certain degree of transparency, which plays a crucial role when operations involve intelligence sharing with repressive regimes.

In the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was deported from the US and tortured by Syrian security officials, oversight and a subsequent inquiry helped expose the controversy, shamed Canadian authorities and made it more difficult for similar mistakes to be repeated.

Cooperation with China on cross-strait crime fighting, ostensibly the purpose of the visit by Chinese Vice Minister of Public Security Chen Zhimin (陳智敏), is not overly worrying. What makes the visit so problematic, rather, is the context in which it happened, at a time when the credibility of oversight mechanisms under President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), beginning with the judiciary, are now under question. It is also occurring at a time when Beijing is intensifying its campaign against Taiwan, seemingly with the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) acquiescence.

My unsigned editorial, published today in the Taipei Times, continues here.

Is Wen Jiabao playing with fire?

In what has been called his “boldest-ever call for liberalization,” Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) in late August created a bit of a stir among Chinese liberals and conservatives when he raised the issue of political reform in his country’s modernization program.

That he would raise such a topic on what pundits have described as his “southern tour” — a veiled reference, if at all, to Deng Xiaoping’s (鄧小平) visit to Southern China in 1992, ushering in a new era of economic development — on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, was probably no accident. The sheer symbolism of the anniversary, combined with the fact that Wen, a Deng protege, will be stepping down two years from now, must be weighing on the premier’s mind as he ponders his legacy.

Wen again raised the issue of political liberalization on a visit to the UN General Assembly in New York on Sept. 22, this time while answering questions from overseas Chinese media.

“I’ve previously said economic reform without the protection of political reform will not achieve complete success, and might even lose what’s been gained,” he said, adding, if perhaps vaguely: “Of course, we are trying to build a China with democracy and rule of law.”

What he had previously said, in his August speech, was that without the “guarantee” of political reform, “the fruits of the reform of the economic structure may be lost and it will be impossible to realize the goal of modernization.”

This op-ed, published in the Taipei Times on Saturday, continues here.

Chinese security chief’s visit kept secret

A visit to Taiwan by Chinese Vice Minister of Public Security Chen Zhimin (陳智敏) and his delegation earlier this month was shrouded in secrecy and intentionally unpublicized, even as talks were held with senior government officials, an investigation by the Taipei Times showed yesterday.

This important story, co-written with my colleague Vincent Y. Chao and others at the Taipei Times, continues here.

It baffles me that no Chinese-language media in Taiwan — including our sister paper, the Liberty Times — has picked up on the story. Some international media have, however, and they all source us:

星島 Sing Tao (Toronto)
Straits Times 
聯合早報 Zao Bao
南洋視界 Nan Yang Post

Shameless opinion poll shenanigans

It’s no secret that politicians often use opinion polls to support, rather than determine, policy decisions. Knowing this, the public is well advised to always approach such polls released by government agencies with skepticism, as numbers can be massaged to fit predetermined policy, just as intelligence can be used to buttress just about any plan, however frivolous.

One need only turn to an opinion poll on cross-strait relations released on Thursday by the Mainland Affairs Council for a perfect example of a politicized survey masking self-serving purposes.

The third question in the poll — “Stance on status quo, reunification, independence” — seems innocuous enough, until one looks at the answer categories: “Maintaining the status quo in the broadest sense” (86.2 percent), “Maintain the status quo forever” (30.5 percent) and “Maintain the status quo, and then reunify [sic] with the mainland or seek independence” (34.6 percent).

While on the surface there’s nothing wrong here, a hypothetical scenario can enlighten the situation.

Imagine a group of 20 judges is asked to decide whether a man caught stealing a goat should be (a) stoned to death for his crime; (b) allowed to walk free; (c) that further deliberation on the matter is necessary, though the end decision must be death or freedom; or (d) that deliberation should go on indefinitely. Unbeknownst to most but his closest aides, the village chief has already made up his mind and wants execution, no matter what. However, as he rules over a democracy, he orders an opinion poll to give the decision some veneer of legitimacy.

My unsigned editorial, published today in the Taipei Times, continues here.

Six decades of made-up politics

Aside from the business and geopolitical imperatives that stem from the international community’s desire to interact with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), another reason why Taiwan remains in political isolation is that its history and domestic conditions are misunderstood, not only globally, but also in China and by many of the foreign correspondents who cover Taiwan.

Routine references to Taiwan and China “splitting” after the Chinese civil war, for example, or the mention that Taiwan and China have been ruled separately for “more than six decades,” are not only misleading — they are wrong. Beyond failing to get the facts right (disunited entities cannot split, and Taiwan was ruled separately for at least 11 decades, counting Japanese rule), these facile insertions tend to reinforce the view that Taiwan and China are one and the same — or rather, that one ought to be subsumed into the other.

These generalizations also fail to take into account the political fabric of Taiwanese society, which rather than being the monolith it is often portrayed as (a mistake that has equal implications when it comes to coverage of China), is far more complex and diversified.

Ironically, the external view of Taiwanese politics tends to attribute to the 23 million people in Taiwan the position of a tiny minority on the island. This has been the true since Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) forces fled to Taiwan after their defeat by the communists in 1949. Soon afterwards, this government-in-exile imposed itself on Taiwanese and arrogated upon itself the right to rule the 7.39 million people who lived in Taiwan at the time, 1.37 million, or 18.55 percent, of whom were refugees from China.

This op-ed, published today in the Taipei Times, continues here.

Who said China must be ‘rational’?

Data recently released by the nation’s main spy agency, the National Security Bureau (NSB), put a new dent in President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) claims that his administration’s overtures to Beijing have helped reduce tensions in the Taiwan Strait.

Ma’s gambit, though initially hailed by many pundits as a brilliant move, has long puzzled experts who have been unable to account for Beijing’s failure to reciprocate. Indeed, its accelerating military buildup should only exacerbate fears in Taiwan.

The list of threats includes a growing arsenal of short and medium-range missiles that, perhaps even more importantly, are becoming increasingly accurate, as well as cruise missiles deployed further inland. To this we can add, among others, anti-ship ballistic missiles that would threaten any naval fleet coming to Taiwan’s assistance during a conflict and plans to acquire aircraft carriers, which would allow China to encircle Taiwan or extend its area of maritime denial.

While those developments have been apparent for a while, no one has managed to explain why Beijing would engage in what, prima facie, looks like self- defeating behavior. After all, why does China need such a large military, given that it faces no threat of invasion? Rather than reassure its neighbors, Beijing’s military buildup and increasingly aggressive positioning in the region are awakening some to the possibility that the paradigm by which we gauge China’s intentions may have been flawed all along.

There is a precedent for this, in the form of Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) decision to enter the Korean War after US and South Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel. At the time, the consensus in Washington was that Mao, who had just emerged victorious in a protracted and costly civil war against Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) Nationalists, would not expose China’s ruined economy to the risks of armed conflict with the US. This, however, is exactly what he did, and the West was caught off guard because analysts failed to think like a Chinese and assumed “rationalism” in the way it is understood in the West.

Although decision-making in China has become more complex and institutionalized since Mao’s time, this does not mean that how Beijing calculates costs and benefits has entirely changed or that what we think of as “rational” is seen as such at Zhongnanhai. Consequently, what might come across as paradoxical in our eyes could make perfect sense from a Chinese perspective.

We should keep this in mind as Taiwan develops closer economic, cultural and social ties with China. Case in point: The NSB reports that for the first half of this year, Taiwan was the target of 2.38 attacks by Chinese hackers every hour, or 10,346 attacks altogether, accounting for nearly one-third of all attacks directed at the country.

Cross-strait liberalization and “peace” notwithstanding, this shows that as with the military threat, China has maintained its aggressive posture vis-a-vis Taiwan. In turn, this reinforces the view that how decision-makers in Beijing evaluate costs and benefits can differ drastically from our own, resulting in acts that, from a business perspective, may make no sense whatsoever.

In this environment, the more Taiwan opens itself to Chinese investment, the more sectors will be exposed to the threat of espionage by Chinese individuals, firms and government agencies. This may seem equally self-defeating, but the danger to Taiwan, albeit more subtle, is no less severe.

Underfunded though it may be, the Ministry of National Defense has not been deceived by Ma’s window-dressing and continues to warn us about the threat posed by the Chinese military. Let us hope that the NSB and other agencies charged with protecting civilian and corporate infrastructure are equally aware that we are a long way from peace in the Taiwan Strait.

This editorial was published today in the Taipei Times.

Of nukes and men

The recent publication of a memoir by former US negotiator Jeremy Stone re-ignited a controversy last week over alleged plans under the former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) administration to launch a nuclear weapons program.

Stone’s allegations, which ostensibly were sourced from and corroborated post facto by former National Security Council secretary-general Su Chi (蘇起) — who at the time the controversy emerged was a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator — are hard to substantiate. That the Chen administration, for all its faults, would have engaged in nuclear adventurism stretches credulity. Though it has the technical know-how to do so (and inside sources say a turnaround could take as little as one year), Taiwan could hardly have launched a nuclear weapons program without the US, let alone China, becoming aware of it.

One does not have to read Stone’s self-aggrandizing book too closely to realize that the views of the former president of the Federation of American Scientists-turned-cross-strait-troubleshooter are wildly skewed in Beijing’s favor. Nothing makes this more evident than the many variations he uses to portray the Chen administration as a “troublemaker,” which may account for Stone’s credulity on the alleged nuclear program.

Unbeknownst to Stone, this very bias against Taipei — not his alone, but that of the international community — lies at the very heart of Taiwan’s defense malaise. In fact, the inherent imbalance was the main reason behind this newspaper’s decision, in August 2004, to publish an editorial that put the nuclear option on the table (despite what Su and Stone may believe, however, the Taipei Times did not and does not have a direct line to the Presidential Office or Democratic Progressive Party headquarters).

More than six years have elapsed and the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait has only continued to shift in Beijing’s favor. Furthermore, nuclear-armed China continues to threaten Taiwan, the would-be “troublemaker” who at no point under Chen adopted anything that could have been interpreted as a belligerent posture.

Given that this situation appears to be a comfortable “status quo” for the likes of Stone, is it not conceivable that Taiwanese would ponder various means to oppose China militarily and present it with a credible deterrent? In and of themselves, peace and democracy (which other publications have advocated as the surest defense) will be of little help against an opponent who plays by different rules, as highlighted by Beijing’s refusal to renounce the use of force against Taiwan amid supposedly warming ties. While nuclear weapons may be an extreme recourse — and an unadvisable one at that — Taiwan cannot afford the gullibility that has marked the course adopted by President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration in cross-strait rapprochement.

(Side note: media have repeatedly referred to “warming ties” and “rapprochement” in the Taiwan Strait. It should be noted, howeverm that those “warm ties” have occurred mostly on a party-to-party basis — that is, between the KMT and the CCP — rather than among individuals, which means that any conclusion to the effect that relations between Taiwan and China are peaceful would be premature at best.)

While Ma’s Cabinet has rightly stuck to less problematic, though by no means inconsequential, matters like economics in its dialogue with Beijing, there is no doubt that in the months ahead — especially as we get closer to Chinese President Hu Jintao’s (胡錦濤) stepping down as head of state — talks will touch on more controversial issues such as identity and sovereignty. Once those topics are tackled, friction is bound to emerge, which could quickly escalate and spin out of control. Any outcome to the 2012 presidential poll in Taiwan that isn’t to China’s taste could also serve as a catalyst for a military option.

In such a situation, Beijing, seeing a weakened opponent, could calculate that it can get away with the use of force at little cost, making military action more likely.

That is why, even amid untested signs of rapprochement, Taiwan must continue to acquire and develop not only the means to protect itself, but solid deterrent capabilities so that any military adventurism on Beijing’s part to fulfill its irredentist dreams would come at great cost. 

A strong Taiwan means less risk of war, not the other way around. Does Taiwan need nuclear weapons for this? Probably not, but it certainly needs more than naivety and Ma sloganeering, and more than the dishonest diplomacy exercised by the likes of Stone.

It is interesting to note that Jeremy Stone is the son of maverick reporter I. F. “Izzy” Stone. 

This unsigned editorial appeared, in slightly different form, in the Taipei Times today.

Sucked into the Chinese Civil War

There is no knowing whether an editorial in the People’s Daily on Friday that for all intents and purposes removed the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) as the principal defender of China against Japanese invasion during World War II was simply out-of-control Chinese nationalism, or a more sinister attempt to blur the lines in the Taiwan Strait.

For years now, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda has played down the KMT’s role in the war of resistance and elevated that of the communists to one that defies the historical record, a form of revisionism that, sadly, continues to be swallowed and reproduced by a number of Western academics, one of the latest being Martin Jacques in his influential book When China Rules the World.

While, for reasons of historical accuracy, the CCP’s claims should be countered with factual information (in many instances, CCP forces avoided directly confronting the Japanese, preserving their strength and weapons for the continuation of the Chinese Civil War after the war), the editorial comes at an odd moment in cross-strait relations, at a time when we would expect Beijing to play nice with the KMT as it gets ever closer to accomplishing the annexation it has long coveted.

At its most innocuous, this could be yet another example of Beijing shooting itself in the foot by failing to rein in its brimming nationalism. That it would downplay the KMT’s leading role in the war against Japan would be par for the course for the Chinese propaganda apparatus. However, that it would ignore the KMT’s role altogether gives the impression that it is attempting to pick a fight, and that it is doing so with an ulterior motive.

This op-ed, published today in the Taipei Times, continues here. 

Invading Taiwan through investment

The Financial Supervisory Commission’s rejection last week of a bid by a Hong Kong consortium to acquire Nan Shan Life Insurance Co was a welcome development because it demonstrated the government can, when it wants, protect the interests of Taiwanese.

Commendable though the decision was, however, the outcome was far from certain. The commission’s examination of the bid, spearheaded by China Strategic Holdings and Primus Financial Holdings, took several months and a final decision was delayed a number of times.

Admittedly, the case was a major one, as it affected about 4 million policyholders, 4,000 employees and more than 34,000 insurance agents. Questions surrounding the bidder’s ability to ensure operational continuity at Nan Shan, coupled with uncertainties about the nationality and political connections of the ever-shifting shareholders and board members in the consortium, made the bid an altogether problematic one. Over the months, the many reports prepared by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Pan Men-an’s (潘孟安) office on the matter were helpful in highlighting the scope of the problem.

Celebrations among those who opposed the deal could be short-lived, however, as the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), which is set to come into force imminently, will usher in a new era of cross-strait investment. The combination of China’s substantial investment power, Beijing’s long-term political objectives via investment in Taiwan, and President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration’s hankering for foreign investment, could present the commission with an insurmountable challenge simply by virtue of the workload it may face.

In other words, even with the best intentions in the world, the commission’s finite resources could be overwhelmed by a sudden bombardment of Chinese investment bids, some of which could be equally, if not more, problematic than the one involving Nan Shan, especially after Taiwan opens more, and increasingly sensitive, sectors to Chinese investment.

It is no secret that under Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) many “private” Chinese companies have either been renationalized, become dependent on loans by state-owned banks or have their board of directors controlled by former or current Chinese Communist Party officials loyal to the party. It is also well known that tracing a Chinese firm’s money to its source or determining who the real decision-makers are, is a daunting task requiring tremendous amounts of effort and time.

The combination of these two phenomena — an upsurge in Chinese investment bids in a number of sectors and the lack of transparency in the Chinese corporate system — could make it impossible for the commission or other regulatory bodies to handle future cases with the same level of professionalism it did throughout the Nan Shan case.

Added to the political pressure from an administration that gets high on good relations with Beijing, the commission could in certain cases be forced to cut corners or, for political considerations, look the other way. Intelligence agencies preparing threat assessment face this dilemma on a daily basis, where finite resources must tell signal from noise and consciously de-prioritize some information. In many instances, mere fatigue amid a constant barrage of threat information makes it possible for important information to slip through the cracks, sometimes with catastrophic outcomes.

There is a very high likelihood, therefore, that some Chinese investments that endanger national security, just as the one for Nan Shan did, will nevertheless be allowed — not because nothing untoward was found or because the threats were not apparent, but because regulatory authorities were overwhelmed.

Taiwan may have won this battle, but this war by other means is far from over.

In all honesty, I never thought I would get to write an editorial about the Nan Shan bid that opens on a celebratory note. Having spent a lot of time researching and writing about the Hong Kong consortium (thanks to Legislator Pan's office sharing documents with me), I am convinced that this was the right decision, especially in light of what I have also discovered in terms of Chinese espionage and the infiltration of the business sector by the CCP. Richard McGregor's book The Party has a good chapter on this. 

Our soldiers deserve better

The Ministry of National Defense last week took a group of reporters on a tour of the nation’s three military services, an event meant to highlight their ability to defend the nation from foreign aggression.

The visits, which included stops at an air defense base in Chiayi, an Army base in Penghu and a Navy base in Zuoying, Kaohsiung, drove home a few points about the state of the nation’s military: While the services are filled with dedicated men and women, and although every effort was made to showcase their high morale, there is no denying that the equipment they use is aging — fast.

This situation would not be so alarming if Taiwan did not face a strong adversary or was not facing the all-too-real threat of invasion. Nor would it make one apprehensive if the enemy had maintained a pace of modernization similar to that of Taiwan. However, the reality is that the frontline systems presented during the media tour — battle tanks, mine hunters, fighter aircraft — seem increasingly antiquated when compared with the weapons fielded by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in recent years. Some are, in fact, museum pieces kept operational for lack of newer equipment.

From the German-built minehunter ship boarded by reporters and the lone submarine submerging in the distance at Zuoying, to the M60A3 main battle tanks rumbling by on Penghu and the F-16A/Bs firing flares during a simulated air attack in Chiayi, it is becoming clear that despite the impeccable maintenance of those platforms, Taiwan is fast losing its edge in the Taiwan Strait. Even non-military experts could see that.

Despite the scarcity of modern systems acquired by Taiwan in recent years, such as Patriot air defense systems and Apache attack helicopters, which in qualitative terms may still keep up with Chinese equivalents, the balance quickly evaporates when the orders of battle are weighed in quantitative terms. In other words, with few exceptions, both qualitatively and quantitatively, Taiwan is running out of gas while the PLA is rushing ahead at breakneck speed.

Furthermore, since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) came into office, the defense ministry has been ordered to cut back on live fire drills, the utility of which in ensuring military preparedness cannot be compensated for no matter how many computer simulations are held. For three years in a row, the nation’s defense budget as a share of GDP has also fallen and will be just 2.6 percent of GDP next year — this amid very expensive efforts to create a fully professional military by 2015, a goal that increasingly looks like a pipe dream.

The Ma administration has staked its defense posture on the premise that its diplomatic overtures to Beijing will succeed. Though a peaceful approach to conflict resolution is commendable, doing so with China carries far too many unknowns for Taipei to forsake a robust defense. In fact, investment in the military is not antithetical to a diplomatic approach to longstanding tensions in the Taiwan Strait; it is, rather, responsible planning for various — by no means impossible — scenarios.

For the sake of the dedicated men and women, career soldiers and conscripts alike, who every day put their lives on the line to ensure that Taiwan’s way of life continues unthreatened, the Ma administration should get serious about defense and stop pretending that, a mere two years into cross-strait rapprochement, peace in the Taiwan Strait is upon us, or that today’s relative calm will inevitably extend into the future. Our men and women deserve systems and resources that are equal to the immense challenge they would face should confrontation replace diplomacy in a future scenario.

Though for the moment Beijing’s “peaceful” approach appears to be paying dividends, we should be in no doubt that it is equally prepared for a non-­peaceful outcome.

This editorial, based on my two-day tour with the Ministry of National Defense last week, appeared in the Taipei Times on Tuesday.

Analysis: Taiwan’s debate on submarine expansion resurfaces

Amid mounting apprehensions surrounding the emergence of China as a major military power, defense experts continue to focus their attention on Washington’s reluctance to sell Taipei advanced combat aircraft. A small group of military specialists, however, argues that another long-neglected system could prove a superior deterrent to Chinese aggression: submarines.
For almost a decade, the issue of submarines has been subject to the political vagaries of the triangular relationship between Taipei, Washington and Beijing, as well as disagreement over their utility and high cost.

Mark Stokes, executive director at the Project 2049 Institute, is a strong proponent of submarines for Taiwan.

“The key thing about submarines is their inherent stealth and potential lethality,” he told the Taipei Times. “They represent one of the few capabilities that would be difficult to take out in a first, disarming first strike, especially if on patrol.”

According to most scenarios, a Chinese attack on Taiwan would open with missile salvos against Taiwan’s military targets, including airfields and command-and-control centers.

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

Book Review: China’s journalists find chinks in the state’s armor

Watchdog journalism has flourished in China over the past decade as reporters and editors risk their careers and sometimes their lives to expose official corruption and government malfeasance

Despite strong control of information by the state, the characterization of Chinese journalism as invariably propagandistic and uncritical of the authorities is an unfair one. For a minority of reporters, watchdog journalism is their raison d’etre, a calling that forces them to play a constantly shifting game of cat-and-mouse with the state apparatus and corrupt local politicians who, more often than not, are the object of their reportage.

This noble tradition finds its roots in baogao wenxue (報告文學), or reportage literature, which artfully blends fact and fiction to expose actual events. One of the pioneers of the genre was the China Youth Daily’s Liu Binyan (劉賓雁), whose stories exposing injustice in the 1950s earned him the designation of “rightist” and landed him in a re-education camp until the late 1970s. Only during the period of soft liberalization in the 1980s, however, did investigative journalism in a form recognizable to Western news consumers emerge in China, especially after then-premier Zhao Ziyang (趙紫陽) in 1987 incorporated the term yulun jiandu (輿論監督), which literally means “supervision by public opinion,” into his annual report to party leaders.

This form of journalism is the subject of Investigative Journalism in China, which explores eight cases of watchdog journalism as told from the perspective of the prominent reporters themselves, who were invited to the Journalism and Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong to share their experiences.

This book review, published today in the Taipei Times, continues here (html) and here (pdf).

Taiwan caught in the middle as US, Japan to hold exercise near Diaoyutais

The Yomiuri Shimbun today reported that Japan and the US were planning to hold joint naval exercise near the disputed Diaoyutai (釣魚台, Senkaku in Japanese) Islands later this year. Citing unnamed sources, the paper said the US Seventh Fleet would participate in a scenario involving Japan recapturing an unnamed remote southwestern island from an enemy.

Japanese fighter and patrol aircraft, as well as 250 paratroopers from cargo planes guarded by F-15 fighters, will also be involved in the drill in Oita Prefecture, near Okinawa.

This announcement, though the Japanese defense ministry has yet to confirm it, points to a shift in US posture in the Asia Pacific. Not only does it come on the heels of a US Department of Defense report on the Chinese military threat, but the exercise will be held in an area close to a chain of islands contested by Japan, China and Taiwan, and away from the traditional exercises to Japan’s east, in the Pacific Ocean.

This is a shift inasmuch as it reinvigorates the US-Japanese security alliance after nearly a decade of neglect. The timing of the announcement, soon after a series of exercises with the South Korean navy in the Sea of Japan, points to US re-engagement with its traditional allies in the region. It also clearly places China, whose naval ambitions appear to be expanding, as the main enemy, and will most assuredly exacerbate fears in Beijing that it is being “boxed in.”

Where things become less clear-cut, however, is Taiwan’s position in the equation. There is no doubt that the US’ reaffirming who it would side with during conflict over the Diaoyutais is based on hard political calculations and that Taiwan, which has a claim of its own over the islands, is an afterthought in Washington. We can expect that the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration, along with the lunatic, China-funded Chinese Diaoyutai Defense Association, will go through the motions and express nationalist anger at this latest development, but at the end of the day, the US has little time for them: The principals are Japan and China.

In a way, this could be construed as a sign that Washington has abandoned Taiwan to the Chinese camp — something that would not have happened under the Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) or Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) administrations, which could even have sought (albeit with little chance of success) to participate in the exercise. There is a very real risk, depending on how Taipei responds to the situation, that the exercise will push Taipei further into Beijing’s sphere of influence. Whereas the line used to be drawn in Taiwan, we may be experiencing the consolidation of a fallback that is now clearly defined in the area near the Diaoyutais and Okinawa. This could be a way for Japan and the US of ceding territory to strengthen their rear, part of a strategic readjustment that began with Japan’s redrawing in June of its Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) from Yonaguni Island westwards, about 500km out at sea from Okinawa and 110km from Taiwan.

At this writing, Taipei had yet to respond to the announcement.

Cambodia nixes Taiwan trade office over ‘one China’

President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) promise that China would be more amenable to Taiwan inking free-trade deals or integrating with other regional economies after signing the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) was put into question after reports revealed that Cambodia turned down a request by Taipei to open a representative office because of Phnom Penh’s “one China” policy.

The Phnom Penh Post last week quoted Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen (seen above, left, with Chinese President Hu Jintao) as saying that Taiwan could not establish a trade office in Cambodia because the country abides by the “one China” principle, prompting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) on Aug. 11 to issue a statement emphasizing the Republic of China’s status as a sovereign and independent country.

Any Cambodian official departing from the “one China” policy and seeking to allow Taiwan to open a representative office would be dismissed, the Post said.

As Taiwan seeks to sign trade agreements with regional economies — especially ASEAN members — opening trade offices constitutes a crucial step toward achieving this goal.

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

Enough with words, a call to action

The pages of this newspaper [the Taipei Times] and other liberal publications are filled with beautiful slogans about the need to “protect” Taiwan based on lofty principles such as democracy, justice and human rights. Commendable as these prescriptions may be, in and of themselves they are impotent in the face of the present challenges confronting this nation.

Although the intentions of the opinion writers who propose such measures are undoubtedly honorable, their prose often lacks the rigorous intellectual inquisitiveness that would give them true meaning, leaving us with little more than a constellation of presumptuous abstracts. In fact, more often than not, the ideals they espouse are at best a means to contrast what the authors are trying to protect with the entity that poses the most formidable threat to it — China.

However, using words to describe what China is not is hardly the kind of call to action that will ward off the threat to Taiwan’s continued existence.

An understanding of the opponent makes this abundantly clear. Sloganeering doesn’t gain traction with the Chinese Communist Party and the politicians and business leaders in Taipei who seem inclined to be co-opted by the Chinese. It doesn’t move, sway or frighten them.

This op-ed, published today in the Taipei Times, continues here.

We are doomed

Car-free initiatives have become trendy in cities worldwide trying to sensitize the population to the environmental damage caused by motorized vehicles. Taipei, like many other major cities, participated in that initiative, doing so for the first time in 2008.

This year’s month-long series of activities will begin on Monday, with a festival and various promotions encouraging use of public transportation touted by the city government. However, in announcing the activities today, the authorities said that to avoid inconveniencing the public during the car-free day on Monday, the department of transportation would … not close roads to traffic, meaning that car-free day will be anything but car free.

Undeniably, car-free days in busy metropolises is always inconvenient, but isn’t that the whole point? Without hassle, without inconvenience, we simply go on with our highly polluting and highly destructive lives, unaware that this very insouciance is taking our fragile habitat closer to extinction, one particle per million of carbon dioxide at a time.

Short-lived inconvenience now, if it serves to educate us about the impact of our rapacious behavior, is far more desirable than the (likely permanent) inconvenience that awaits us years hence when we’ve passed the tipping point.

Media wars

Officials at the US-based Freedom House on Monday [early May] denied the watchdog was angry at the Liberty Times over its coverage of a draft report on press freedom in Taiwan released last week.

Want Want China Times Group’s CtiTV on Saturday accused the Liberty Times of “politicizing” the report in a front page article on Friday, in which it provided excerpts both in the original English version and a Chinese translation. The Chinese-language Apple Daily also ran a story on the report, as did the Taipei Times and Agence France-Presse.

Singling out the Liberty Times, CtiTV’s Washington correspondent Zang Guohua (臧國華) alleged that the Freedom House was “not happy with the paper after it used the report as a tool for political battle” and implied that the Liberty Times had overemphasized concerns raised by Freedom House over possible changes in the editorial line at the China Times following the takeover by Want Want Group in November 2008.

Zang’s report included excerpts of an interview with Karin Karlekar, managing editor of the “Freedom of the Press Survey” at Freedom House, in which she said of the Liberty Times article: “It is very troubling. We’re trying to describe a situation as best we can and raise issues of concern, but it is annoying to be used like this as part of a bigger political battle.”

In a telephone interview with Sarah Cook, the researcher who wrote the section of the report on Taiwan, Zang asked her if she had spoken with Want Want chairman Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明).

"No,” Cook said.

Pressed as to whether she had spoken with anyone else at the China Times, she said she preferred not to go into details of the sources used to write the report.

Asked about the CtiTV report on Monday, Freedom House officials said they were quoted out of context.

Moreover, while they denied having any major problems with the coverage given to the report by the Taipei Times or the Liberty Times, they repeated general editorial “concerns” about the China Times.

In separate telephone interviews from their New York offices, however, Karlekar and Cook both stressed there had been no major decline in press freedom in Taiwan.

Cook sent copies of her draft report on Taiwan to some newspapers last month, but the final report is not expected until next month.

“We have released draft reports for years. In past years, as happened this year, the media has wanted to pick up quotes from the draft report and we don’t have a problem with that," Karlekar said.

“The date of publication by the Liberty Times and the Taipei Times was not an issue at all. They published after the embargo, there was no problem," she added.

“The only trouble I had with the Liberty Times was that it wasn’t mentioned this was a draft report. And it seems that the bits concerning the China Times were the main bits that were quoted. I would be troubled if they were trying to imply the China Times was the reason for a big decline in press freedom,” she said.

I tried to make it clear there had not been a big decline in press freedom in Taiwan. The score remained almost the same as last year. The reason for any deterioration was not particularly the China Times. It was a pretty big report and the China Times was only one part of the report,” she said.

Moving on to the CTiTV program in which she was interviewed on camera, Karlekar said: “I have just looked at the CTiTV report and the bits that are in English are pretty selective. They must have had me on camera for about 45 minutes and so it was pretty easy for them to pull out the few bits that they felt would help them, that would help their story the most.”

“What I was trying to say, what I did say during the interview, was that I was not the person writing the report, that I was not sure what evidence they had, or did not have, of a change in editorial policy at the China Times. But we had contact with a number of sources and some of them had raised this as an issue,” she said. “That is why it was in the report as being a continuing issue of concern — that is, a potential change in editorial policy at the China Times. It’s not that we had hard evidence of it or that we had done content analysis, but some of our sources had raised this as an issue. And statements made by the head of the China Times group also raised concern and had become an issue.”

Karlekar said that while no major changes were expected in the final report on Taiwan, comments and criticism of the draft report would be taken into consideration.

Cook, who has visited Taiwan on a number of recent occasions, said that the China Times did not receive a copy of her draft report because “I had a contact at the China Times, but for some reason whenever I followed up with that person to send them drafts or information, I never received a response.”

"In the end I sent the draft to the Taipei Times and to a range of people that I know are interested in these issues. I feel badly that it seems there was some kind of discriminatory act here, but it was very much unintentional,” she said.

On the CTiTV interview, Cook said: “We do feel that there was some misleading, misquoting, out-of-context use of what we had said in the TV interview.”

“When I sent the draft to the Liberty Times and the Taipei Times, I had every intention that they would be able to quote it as it is and other than the fact that it could have been emphasized a little bit more that this was a draft report I don’t think we have serious concerns about the way it was covered,” she said.

“It was a fairly fair portrayal of the content of the report,” she said.

She said that Freedom House hoped that news stories about the draft report on Taiwan would emphasize the reasons for the small decline in press freedom over the last year.

“The reasons for the decline were circumstances other than the specific example of the China Times. And from that perspective the Taipei Times article was more even handed and reflective of what we would have liked to have gone out than the Liberty Times. They emphasized more of the China Times angle and that — in terms of the numerical scores and stuff like that — wasn’t something that contributed to the decline,” she said.

"Before the final report comes out, there will be more fact checking, she said, but “our intention is to put out in the public domain what we see as being an accurate reflection of the analysis we have done and not to change it one way or the other because it may upset particular individuals or entities,” she said.

We talked to a range of different people and looked at a range of different sources of information, including the comments that the owner of the China Times made himself to the media. Comments like that, coming from the owner of a media outlet, raise eyebrows,” Cook said.

“That was part of it, but there were other issues relating to the actual content of the newspaper and concerns that people were raising. Part of it was that concerns were being raised and we don’t have the resources at the moment to do a thorough content analysis," she said. “But we do feel it is important. We did not go in looking to raise concerns about the China Times. But when there are comments like that, and you have some of the other concerns expressed, and some of the other incidents that occurred during the year, we felt it was very important to reflect that. Again, it was concerns and not necessarily conclusive,” Cook said.

This article, scheduled for publication sometime in May, was eventually cancelled.