Ma ‘elected’ KMT chairman, Hu congratulates him, markets ‘react’

In a highly anticipated electoral farce with a foregone conclusion, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Sunday was “elected” chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) with 92 percent of the about 300,000 votes cast. Voter turnout was low, at about 56 percent, and Ma was the only candidate. Clearly satisfied with the result, Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) broke 60 years of diplomatic ice on Monday by sending Ma a 73-word congratulatory telegram, in which he pompously said: “I hope our two parties can continue to promote peaceful cross-Strait development, deepen mutual trust, bring good news to compatriots on both sides and create a revival of the great Chinese race.”

Some political analysts are already suggesting that Hu’s telegram is a sign that he would like to hold a summit with Ma sometime before he retires in 2012, which dovetails with both leader’s ostensible hankering for a Nobel Peace Prize. While Ma has denied having any immediate plans to meet Hu, pressure has been mounting for him to do so, especially now that he is KMT chairman. Of course, a precondition for any meeting between Hu and Ma would be that it be held between party chairmen rather than presidents, as the latter would symbolize that Taiwan is a sovereign country, which Beijing denies.

MARKETS REACT

In an article on the Hu letter today, Reuters could not refrain from adding that Ma’s “election” and Hu’s telegram “helped boost Taiwan stocks [,] which rose 0.79 percent … to end above 7,000 points for the first time in 11 months.” In recent months I have observed a tendency by both wire agencies and financial analysts to equate rises in the Taiwanese stock market with “improved relations with China” and to blame drops on Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) “troublemakers” (demonstrations and so on). As the Reuters piece does not attribute the comment, we can only conclude that the reported reached this conclusion on his own or was paraphrasing a unnamed financial analysts.

What Reuters fails to mention, however, is that today — and here I quote The Associated Press — “Asian markets extended their winning … as hopes company earnings will rebound along with global growth continue to drive investors into stocks.”* What Reuters also does not mention is that (a) the Taiwan stock exchange opened flat this morning and (b) investors have known for quite a while that Ma would win the “election.” While recognizing that so-called financial experts and analysts, when contacted by wire agencies, cannot remain silent and must attribute rises and falls in the stock market to something, linking Ma’s “election” or the Hu telegram to a 0.79 rise in the local bourse when region-wide macroeconomic factors and agreement on “better global economic prospects” far better explain the modest rise is dishonest.

The reflex by financial experts to use cross-strait political developments as a proximate cause of stock performance in Taiwan is so prevalent that I am beginning to wonder if investment houses are not letting their own political agendas interfere with their assessments.** It is increasingly evident that big business and financial investors (at least in certain sectors that stand to benefit) all favor cross-strait rapprochement, if not eventual unification. By invariably portraying rising stock value in Taiwan as a direct result of Ma’s successes (and conversely, by blaming devaluation on DPP shenanigans), those analysts are politicizing their assessments and undermining their credibility as “experts,” while helping the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party take us closer to economic ultradependence and eventual unification.

* Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 stock average rose 144.11 points, or 1.5 percent, to 10,088.66; Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 268.83, or 1.4 percent, to 20,251.62; South Korea’s KOSPI gained 1.4 percent; Australia’s stock measure was up by 1.2 percent; the main index in Shanghai climbed 1.9 percent. Agence France-Presse reported that Singapore shares closed 1.71 percent higher Monday, mirroring gains in regional markets amid hopes of an economic rebound globally.

** On Oct. 24 last year, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) reported that the Taiwanese stock exchange was down nearly 3 percent as the result of a mass rally organized by the “right wing” and “separatist” DPP, failing to mention that on the same day, all Asian stock markets were also markedly down: Japan 7 percent and South Korea 9 percent, among others. Then, on Oct. 30, it wrote that the Taiwanese bourse was up nearly 6 percent on “positive signs in Taiwan-China ties” ahead of “important dialogue from Nov. 3 to Nov. 7 [ARATS Chairman Chen Yunlin’s visit] to discuss expanding ties.” There again, DPA did not mention that on the same day, the Hong Kong stock exchange was up 12.8 percent, Tokyo almost 10 percent and Seoul 4 percent, while Australia, Singapore and the Philippines added 4 percent or more, developments that had far more to do with macroeconomic factors than cross-strait ties.

This article appeared in the Taipei Times on August 1 under the title “Pro-China politics and the tracking of stocks.” Unfortunately, the article erroneously refers to the South Korean stock exchange as the KOSI. It should have read KOSPI.

The myth of the Sino-Russian strategic alliance

The growing relationship between the Bear and the Dragon does not threaten the West. It is rife with contradictions and at best tactical, author Bobo Lo argues

The history of Sino-Russian relations is a long and tortuous one between neighbors that eyed each other with suspicion. To this day, the Russian psyche continues to be affected by memories of the Mongol invasion and fear of the “yellow peril,” with images of “barbarian” hordes pouring over the border seared in people’s consciousness. For Chinese, Russia was for a brief period a modernizer and ally, but also a threat, as during the border clashes in 1969, which came close to sparking nuclear war. On one side, Russia sees itself as a great power, one which draws ideologically mostly from Western civilization; on the other, China is rising, but its identity is firmly rooted in the Asian tradition and its focus is on domestic development and regional stability.

The long history of mistrust and ideological differences makes Russia and China the least likely of allies. But since the end of the Cold War, the two countries have grown closer and managed to settle, if only temporarily, a number of territorial disputes such as the contentious Russian Far East. Cooperation has increased dramatically in such fields as military procurement and natural resources, while Moscow and Beijing have helped create regional security bodies — such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — to facilitate coordination and “democratize” international relations.

This is not to say that the process of rapprochement was not without friction. As Bobo Lo, director of the Russia and China programs at the Center for European Reform, argues in Axis of Convenience: Moscow, Beijing and the new geopolitics, the road to convergence was marred by a combination of different expectations, underlying xenophobia and changing global circumstances. Rather than progress smoothly, relations between Moscow and China suffered many setbacks, such as when, in the wake of 9/11, Russian President Vladimir Putin allowed the US to deploy troops in Central Asia without first informing Beijing.

My book review of Axis of Convenience, published today in the Taipei Times, is available in .pdf here and HTML here.

The ECFA is like an unstoppable train

The China Times reported today that Taiwan and China would begin negotiations on a “comprehensive trade pact” — an economic cooperation framework agreement — in October. The vice trade ministers from both sides would head the negotiations, the paper said, quoting Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘). Yiin, who met his Chinese counterpart at an APEC conference in Singapore earlier this week, said Beijing was “keen” to push for the pact. The two sides will aim to conclude discussions by the end of this year, the report said, with possible signature at the next SEF-ARATS meeting in Taiwan later this year.

Of course Beijing is “keen” for the process to accelerate, as I’ve argued before, and judging from an AFP report on the matter today, which only mentions in passing that “critics warn against the island becoming overly dependent on its giant neighbor,” so are Taiwanese.

But here’s the problem: Many Taiwanese are not “keen” and the main opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party, has just completed the first step toward holding a public referendum on whether an ECFA should be signed, something that AFP could not even be bothered to mention.

AFP is simply regurgitating the usual “closer ties” developing between Taiwan and China, with talks on an ECFA serving as yet another symbol of “rapprochement” between the “former rivals.” There’s nothing new here. But for Yiin to say that negotiations would begin in October before the matter of a referendum — to which we must now add this week’s infuriatingly racist comic blunder explaining the intricacies of the trade pact — shows utter disregard for the opposition’s voice, as if it didn’t exist, or as if an ECFA were an inevitability. No “we’ll discuss matters with our constituents first and get back to you if and when we’ve reached a consensus on the viability of and urgency in signing an ECFA with you.” In other words, Yiin already knows that the referendum will either fail, or that the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration will somehow manage to derail it, or prevent it from being held in the first place. Either way, this is undemocratic and showcases yet again the Ma administration’s scorn for different views or criticism of its increasingly teleological cross-strait policies.

When millions of people oppose or have doubts about the benefits of a policy, a democratic government cannot assume that it can proceed unchecked. That Yiin would think so — and with Ma’s blessing, I gather — shows us that the government does not intend to act democratically when it comes to creating closer ties with China, even as Beijing has openly said that it sees an ECFA as part of the process for eventual unification.

How to insult a people

The characters were the result of long, painstaking efforts by public relations experts to reflect the make-up of the general public and were “absolutely not” meant to discriminate against anyone from any social stratum. Thus spoke Ministry of Economic Affairs Deputy Minister John Deng (鄧振中), defending a comic strip explaining the intricacies of the proposed economic framework cooperation agreement (ECFA) between Taiwan and China.

Of course they were not. One character is Fa Sao, a 40-year-old Hakka from Hsinchu who works as a supervisor at an import-export company. Fa is active, self-motivated and highly capable. She is a married woman who is fluent in English, Mandarin, Hoklo and Japanese. She is hungry for knowledge and eager to learn more about money-management. Her profile suggests she keeps herself well-informed and is a keen observer of market trends. Fa Sao was recently promoted to company spokesman. Her knowledge of cross-strait trade has prompted her to learn all about the ECFA.

Yi-ge, meanwhile, is a 45-year old Hoklo-speaking (that is, native Taiwanese) man from Tainan City who works as a salesman in a traditional industry. Yi-ge is a vocational school graduate who speaks “Taiwanese Mandarin” (whatever that is) and knows very little about the proposed ECFA. He is content being a follower, but when it comes to protecting himself, he “goes all-out.” If, for example, he were ever accidentally short-changed by a clerk at a breakfast restaurant, he would do almost anything to get the money back, even if it was just NT$5.

One is rational, educated, and works in the business sector. As she is in exports and imports, she likely does business with China. From her description, Fa could therefore be seen as “a good, rational Chinese.” Yi-ge, however, has an “extremist” and “irrational” streak, adjectives that interestingly have often been used by both China, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and pro-big business media to attack their pro-independence nemesis, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), as well as the Democratic Progressive Party and independence activists in general.

Deng can say all he wants about the ministry not wanting to insult anyone, but the fact of the matter is, surely, at one point in the process of creating the cartoon, someone in the army of “public relations experts” that came up with this brilliant idea would have noticed that by design or accident, the depictions were prejudicial, if not outright racist. Surely, someone would have raised an objection, or called for caution. If this happened, then that person was silenced, as often happens in government. If no one did, then it means that whoever was involved in the creative process all agreed on what can only be seen as defining characteristics based on biology, which is the first step toward outright racial discrimination.

According to the cartoon, Taiwanese natives (Hoklo speakers) are less educated, know very little, “go all out,” are finicky about money and followers, while non-natives (mainlanders, Hakka and so on) are active, self-motivated, highly capable, fluent in many languages, hungry for knowledge, well-informed, eager to learn and in big business. Yes, all of this is an accident, as if it were not part of a long, sad pattern of describing the people in Taiwan using different terms. In fact, to this day people in China — the big happy Chinese family, who care so much about Taiwanese they want to bring them in their fold, by force if necessary — describe Taiwanese as “primitive,” “uncouth,” “uneducated” and “low-class.”

If you’re informed and from the “upper class,” you are for an ECFA. If you’re uninformed and from the supposed lower social stratum, you’re against it. This is a perfect Manichean view of the world, one that has no room for opposition to an ECFA based on “irrational” fears that it is part of Beijing’s long-term efforts to annex Taiwan by creating undue economic dependence. The message is that people oppose an ECFA because they are ignorant, and that Taiwanese tend to be more ignorant than Mainlanders, Hakka and so on.

Surely, then, Taiwanese natives like former presidential candidate Peng Ming-min (彭明敏), who speaks Hoklo, Mandarin, English, Japanese and French, who penned revolutionary articles in French and Japanese about the laws of space before anyone had even conceived of the need for such things, and who wrote documents calling for political reform in Taiwan during Martial Law in such impeccable Chinese that KMT officials were convinced that Peng and his friends had been helped by Mainlanders, are just an aberration. Or my wife, for that matter, who speaks impeccable Hoklo and Mandarin and English and is learning French far faster than I ever will Mandarin, who as a 16 year old just arrived in Canada with her family single-handedly filled all the forms — in English, at a time when she barely spoke it — so that her family members could immigrate to Canada and who went on to obtain a Bachelor’s degree in psychology, in English and, since we relocated to Taiwan, earned a number of diplomas in the teaching of Mandarin and so on. She, too, must be an aberration, like all the “low class,” Princeton- and Cambridge- and Cornell-educated Taiwanese that I have come to know since I moved to Taiwan, some of whom are professors at NTU, in the top echelons of the country’s primary financial institution, heads of the Rotary Club, talented architects, Japanese translators for major businesses, officials in High Court, and recruits at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Many of them do not agree to an ECFA, or at minimum would like to get more information about it before they make a decision. But none is low-class, uninformed, uneducated or extremist, as the comic suggests.

The MOEA’s comic is insulting, discriminatory and no accident. Nothing so sensitive, so downright incendiary, would have been allowed to see the light of day had there not been someone at the top who permitted its release. It belittles an extremely capable people who put literacy levels in China (the real levels, rather than fudged official figures) to shame. It is also part of a long history of attempts by the KMT and China to erase achievements in education made during the Japanese colonial period in Taiwan.

If the ministry is not responsible for its contents, whoever is, from the writers to the public relations experts, should be fired and forced to apologize to all Hoklo-speaking Taiwanese and those who love them, as I do. This is state-sponsored racism, paid for with taxpeyers’ dollars, and it has no place in a democracy.

Echoes of White Terror, or descent into paranoia?

Paul Lin (林保華), political commentator and frequent contributor to the Taipei Times, is worried. The China-born critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and, more recently, of the Chinese Nationalist Part (KMT), recently went public with fears that his activities are being monitored by the authorities. In an op-ed to be published in tomorrow’s edition of the Taipei Times, Lin alleges that on July 14 he received a phone call from the local section chief of the Investigation Bureau, who accused him of having “ties” to individuals (“terrorists”) from the Uighur independent movement. Lin writes that as the call was taking place, an agent was already outside his residence and requested to have a chat with him — a request that Lin turned down. He also alleges that since he helped launch the Taiwan Youth Anti-communist Corps (台灣青年反共救國團) last month, police have visited his home and informed him that his activities were being monitored.

Equally worrying are his allegations that his computer has been “hacked” into — despite a computer expert’s being unable to find Trojan horse software. Lin writes that unless he unplugs his Internet connection, his computer will, on its own, send “more information … than I had saved on it.” Lin and his wife also suspect that their telephone may have been tapped, as they have been hearing “strange noises” on the line for a while.

It’s hard to know what to make of all this. The Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB) is a criminal investigation and counterintelligence agency that is subjected to the coordination and supervision of the National Security Bureau (NSB), which itself is subordinate to the National Security Council, whose Chairman, Su Chi (蘇起), is under the direct administration of the president. Recent developments, including comments by the National Immigration Agency last week that it would bar entry to Dolkun Isa, secretary-general of the Munich-based World Uighur Congress, if he attempted to come to Taiwan, are worrying developments about the state of civil liberties in Taiwan. Increased harassment by police of bloggers and groups in recent months also points to what appears to be a developing trend, of which Mr. Lin’s case could be part.

While not directly accusing the MJIB, Lin contends that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and/or the KMT may be targeting him for his activism, in what would be disturbing echoes of the environment independence activists faced during the dark period of White Terror in Taiwan. At this point, it’s hard to tell whether Lin is indeed being targeted by security agencies, or whether his growing paranoia is simply being fed by the authorities in an attempt to silence him.

Let’s take a closer look at his allegations. First, if Lin indeed were under surveillance, police would not have visited him at his home to inform him of this. Once a target becomes conscious that he is being monitored, he will either engage in counter-surveillance and/or change his habits, thus making it more difficult for the authorities to conduct physical surveillance. The only explanation for the admission by police, therefore, would be that the warnings served as intimidation.

Regarding his fears that his telephone line is being wiretapped: Phone intercept technology has come a long way in recent years. It is an urban legend that wiretaps create “strange noises” on the line, as the process is now fully digital. Two explanations therefore suggest themselves: Either an increasingly paranoid Mr. Lin is becoming more sensitive to background noise, or if wiretapping is indeed taking place, whoever is on the other side wants him to know — either by using rudimentary technology or deliberately generating “noise.” Another possibility is that rather than being a professional (i.e., conducted by the MJIB or the NSB) job, whoever is tapping Mr. Lin’s telephone line is an amateur (lone KMT elements, pro-unification groups, etc).

As for his computer transmitting the contents of his hard drive, Mr. Lin must provide more information on the matter, such as how the computer specialist managed to determine that this is happening, and what, as no Trojan Horse was found, is causing the transfer.

I am not saying that Mr. Lin is imagining all this, but his piece — with his conclusion that if something should happen to him, people should “remember him” — exhibits a level of paranoia that is hard to equate with his activities (unless, of course, he has engaged in more than publishing articles critical of the CCP and KMT). Fear, especially when there are precedents, as during the White Terror era in Taiwan, and in Communist China, where Lin lived for “almost 30 years,” can play tricks on the mind and create a whole new world of lurking shadows. As one gets sucked into the quicksand of paranoia, random occurrences will often be perceived as patterns (during the visit of ARATS Chairman Chen Yunlin [陳雲林] last November, for example, my Internet connection at home was interrupted for four days; the wires were cut, Chunghwa told us. Was it sabotage, given my criticism of the visit, or the fact that the wires were old, in a box exposed to the elements?)

Maybe all of this is real, or maybe none is. More likely, the truth lies somewhere in between. But the man is undeniably scared.

Why Uighur leader Dolkun Isa is persona non grata

The National Immigration Agency (NIA) said on Friday that Dolkun Isa, secretary-general of the Munich-based World Uighur Congress, would be stopped if he attempted to enter Taiwan, in effect contradicting comments on the same day by the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) that as long as Isa entered Taiwan under his own name, he would not be denied entry. The contradiction stems from the fact that the NIA and CIB fall under different branches of government. Situations like these happen far more often than we’d think, especially in countries like the US that have multiple agencies serving different, and sometimes competing, purposes (e.g., the CIA and the FBI, or CSIS and the RCMP).

The CIB falls under the National Police Agency (NPA), which itself is under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior (MOI). As its name says, its mandate is to investigate criminal activity. Although the NIA also falls under the MOI, the guidance and coordination of intelligence affairs at NIA and three other civil agencies is the remit of the National Security Bureau (NSB) — the nation’s principal intelligence agency — which itself is subordinate to the National Security Council (NSC).

What this means is that from a crime-fighting perspective, Isa is not a threat, as he is not believed to have engaged in criminal activity. Hence the CIB’s having no objection to his entering Taiwan. For the NSB, however, Isa could be deemed a person of interest (or “target”) as his activities may include political violence or “terrorism.” That is why, to use a different example, a domestic agency like Canada’s RCMP (Canada’s CIB, if you will) will investigate criminal organizations like the Hells Angels, but not, say, “terrorist” groups like Hezbollah (only when political violence and criminal activity intersect, such as selling contraband cigarettes to finance a “terrorist” organization, as Hezbollah did, will the RCMP and CSIS work together on a target).

Yang Wen-kai (楊文凱), the head of the International Affairs Division at the NIA, said the decision to bar Isa entry was based on the assessment (denied by Isa) that he doubles as the vice chairman of the East Turkestan Liberation Organization (ETLO), which China (thought not the UN or the US) has listed as a terrorist organization.* Challenged on the matter as to why Taiwan now also seemed to regard ETLO as a terrorist organization, Yang said “we obtained our information from a friendly country.”**

Some critics have rightly observed that the friendly country could be no other than China and that Yang’s comment was obfuscation, on par with the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration and Beijing’s attempts to keep everything “unofficial.” The problem with this criticism, however, is that intelligence agencies all over the world make it a policy not to publicize where they obtained, or the means by which they collected, intelligence. Sources are always kept secret, even in warrants and affidavits: human sources get numbers; foreign agencies, rather than be named, are “friendly” or “allied”; while communication intercepts (wiretaps, video surveillance, etc) are “reliable sources.” It is therefore perfectly normal for the NIA — and by extension the NSB — not to name their source, even if who it is is perfectly obvious, and a nefarious one at that.

Far more troubling than the NIA’s apparent lack of candor is the fact that Isa would be barred entry based on less than airtight intelligence from China, something that would not have happened under previous administrations. Behind this are Ma’s efforts to please Beijing and, perhaps more importantly, the nature of the man who heads the NSC, Chairman Su Chi (蘇起), whose pro-Beijing leanings and China ties are known facts. It should also be noted that the NSC is under the direct administration of the president. With Ma and Su at the top of the nation’s decisionmaking on intelligence matters, it is therefore no surprise that China’s “terrorists” would become Taiwan’s. Which raises the specter of future cooperation on intelligence. First it was Isa, the head of a so-called “terrorist” organization. Next it could be the other two “evils” as seen by the Chinese Communist Party — “extremism” and “splittism,” two concepts with dangerously loose interpretations that could very well include independence activists in Taiwan, pro-Tibetans, pro-Uighurs, Falun Gong practitioners, and human rights activists seeking change in China.

Intelligence drift based on ideology, and political “gifts” of assistance in intelligence matters are dangerous, dangerous things that can undermine the very moral core of individuals.

* Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, two members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, both designated ETLO as a terrorist organization. Despite heavy lobbying by China, in December 2003 Washington refused to recognize ETLO as a terrorist entity, although it did designate its loose affiliate and allegedly al-Qaeda-linked East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) a terrorist entity the previous year. Many pundits have argued that Washington’s decision to comply with Beijing’s request on ETIM was motivated by the Bush administration’s need to secure Beijing acquiescence at the UN as it prepared to invade Iraq.

** James Millward of the East-West Center in Washington wrote in a report titled Violent Separatism in Xinjiang: A Critical Assessment that since 2003, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security has catalogued four Uighur organizations — ETIM, ETLO, the World Uighur Youth Congress (WUYC) and the East Turkistan Information Center (ETIC) — as terrorist organizations. Millward argues that a report published on Jan. 21, 2002, by the Information Office of the PRC State Council titled East Turkistan Terrorist Forces Cannot Get Away with Impunity was “less than systematic in its treatment of terrorist or separatist organizations” and “relies frequently on such vague generic terms as ‘the “East Turkistan” terrorist organization,’ which it intersperses confusedly with references to specific groups, many of which also have ‘East Turkistan’ in their names,” which results in “ambiguity over whether a given act was committed by a specific group known to espouse a separatist line (such as […] ETLO) or by unknown perpetrators whom the authors of the document claim, without providing evidence, to be East Turkistan separatists.”

My colleague Celia Llopis-jepsen has an interesting op-ed on the same subject in Wednesday’s edition of the Taipei Times.

Tokyo releases White Paper, Taipei provides … cartoons

Having read through most of the Japanese Defense Ministry’s wide-ranging 2009 White Paper published this month, I can attest to the fact that such documents are no light beach reading. My four years at the Royal Military College of Canada, and nearly three at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, where I worked closely with the Department of National Defense, also imposed upon me countless hours analyzing white papers, aides-memoires, briefings and bulletins that would make anyone yearn for a manual on how to fix your vacuum cleaner. The difficult, and often tedious reading, means that it will be restricted to a small, specializes audience and remain for the most part outside the public sphere.

Perhaps sensing this, communications departments within the Taiwanese government have come up with a solution: cartoons. Sometime in October, the Ministry of National Defense will unleash upon young Taiwanese readers a cartoon version of its most recent White Paper, all part of a plan to attract young minds to the military as it aims to achieve an all-volunteer force by 2015. Taiwanese youth are avid readers of comic books, and the US did something similar by introducing online videogames to boost recruitment, so the idea might not be entirely outlandish. I still think it reflects poorly on a nation’s maturity level and reading abilities (at least in the government’s view), but it’s worth the try.

Where the cartoons lose their humor, however, is when the Ministry of Economic Affairs announces that it will launch a series of four-column cartoons to explain the doctrines of the controversial economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration has proposed signing with China. With the opposition completing the first step in applying to hold a referendum on the matter, the Ma administration appears to have concluded that now is the time to explain the contents of the agreement, which to date have remained obscure. Rather than treat adults like adults, however, or assume that Taiwanese are intelligent enough to seize the complexities of the ECFA (which they most certainly are), the government will hand out brochures, in which we can expect anime-like Hu Jintaos and Chen Yunlins informing readers that they harbor no sinister intentions.

This tactic reminds me of the Chinese government’s introduction, about two years ago, of cute online characters — oversized-eyed male and female police officers — reminding Chinese Internet users to surf the Web “responsibly,” which is Newspeak for avoid accessing information on human rights, Tibet, Taiwan and basically anything that could remotely constitute criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). (Anyone who thought that Beijing’s censoring of the Internet is primarily to protect young minds from the evils of pornography had better think again.) Through cute, friendly looking characters, the CCP sanitized an instrument of repression and banalized what was fundamentally an addition to the state’s multifaceted approach to mind control.

As there are many apprehensions surrounding an ECFA, which ulterior political motives or not will have a substantial impact on the future of Taiwan, cartoons could help the Ma administration ease the introduction of an ECFA and turn something of tremendous contentiousness into a banality that puts critical minds to sleep.

Taiwanese should know better. After all, they live in a country where the more beautiful and colorful an insect, arachnid or reptile is, the deadlier is its venom.

Wire irritants

I came early to the office today to search the wires for material I could use in tomorrow’s editorial. One drawback to writing editorials on Mondays is that the usual paucity of news developments during the weekend makes it more difficult to find something to write about (when this happens, an easy opt out is to turn to China, which on any given day is bound to have arrested, or killed, dissidents in some part of the country).

Thankfully, today some wire agencies had early on provided coverage of the renaming of National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall to its original name, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall — an easy target for a pro-independence, pro-democracy editorialist, given Chiang’s murderous past.

One of the handful of agencies that carried news of this development was the consistently off-the-mark Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA), which again did not disappoint by containing a few gems of reportage.

After providing brief and, in all fairness, historically consistent background to the man’s journey from China to Taiwan, DPA wrote that despite ruling with an iron first until his death in 1975, “Many Taiwanese are grateful to Chiang Kai-shek [蔣介石] for defending Taiwan from being taken over by Communist China.”

This is just plain wrong. The Chiang regime was imposed on Taiwanese and Taiwanese were until his death at the receiving of a regime of terror, starting with the 228 Massacre of 1947, instigated by governor Chen Yi (陳儀) at Chen’s request, in which as many as 20,000 to 25,000 Taiwanese are believed to have been killed in the following weeks. If any in Taiwan were “thankful” to Chiang, it was the Chinese who fled to Taiwan along with Chiang after the Nationalist’s defeat in 1949.

Chiang’s oppression of Taiwanese became known as the White Terror era, decades during which opponents — mostly, but not only Taiwanese — of the Chiang regime were spied on, discriminated against, jailed, disappeared, or murdered. Through various accounts and historical documents, the White Terror and its abuses has been well catalogued. And yet, according to DPA, Chiang and his son, Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), who succeeded him after his death, were criticized for their so-called White Terror rule. So called? The dictionary informs us that the definition of the adjective so-called means that something is “questionable,” “subject to question” and of “questionable origin.” A proven historical fact, therefore, is now of “questionable” veracity, something to be disputed, which dovetails with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) efforts to rehabilitate Chiang’s image as the “savior” of the nation.

This, of course, would not be the first time the German agency portrayed things in a manner that is highly favorable of the KMT — and murderous tyrants, it would seem.

[UPDATE]

Authorities said that about 600 police officers were deployed at the hall to ensure public order yesterday. Another 300 were reportedly deployed in the area, including MRT stations. Defending the mobilization, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said the number was in line with public safety standards, adding that it was one-tenth the size of police deployed when the hall was renamed during the DPP administration in 2007. In other words, Hau was claiming that between 6,000 and 9,000 police officers were deployed. A quick search through news archives tells us that the numbers in December 2007 were more along the lines of 600 — still high, perhaps too high, but certainly nothing that would lend credence to Hau’s claim.

Ma Ying-jeou the time traveler

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has more in common with characters in a science-fiction novel than you’d think. In fact, based on recent reports, he appears to have in his possession nothing less than a secret time machine. The revelation occurred on Saturday in his first weekly online video (Chinese only) targeting Taiwan’s large Internet population — a kind of tête-à-tête inspired, we are told, by former US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “fireside chats.”

In his premiere video, Ma told viewers that technology was very important to him and that in fact he had been using computers when he was a university student at National Taiwan University (NTU). Which is great, were it not for a little inconsistency: Ma graduated from NTU in 1972, a full year before the first personal computers were introduced. As Ma is, hum-hum, head of a “clean” government, surely he cannot be lying about this, so the only other explanation is that he somehow managed to travel into the future and bring back a PC for use on campus, hiding from view lest his time-defying little secret be exposed.

But I jest. To be fair, maybe some mad scientist at NTU, lurking in a dank basement, beat Bill Gates and friends in the computer race and created the world’s first clunking giant calculator, which for some reason he only allowed Ma to use, perhaps sensing the great future leader hiding under his scrawny façade. If that’s the case, the computer never surfaced. So back to wild theories: There’s more ammunition to support the time-travel theory, and it, too, comes from Ma’s weekly video. As the good old Franciscan friar William of Ockham (which Ma may have visited, who knows) once said, When competing hypotheses are equal in other respects …

Ma’s digital fireside chats, the Presidential Office tells us, are meant to address current affairs and provide updates on his activities — all exciting stuff, I’m sure, what with the daily jogging and verbal faux pas. The problem, however, is that savvy surfers discovered that if one changed the date on the Web site, future videos of Ma could be accessed — in other words, proof that Ma can travel to the future and record videos on current events then. For fear that his contraption would fall in the wrong hands — Americans, Japanese, or perhaps even Taiwanese — an army of programmers in the Ma camp managed to block access to Ma’s voice from the future, leaving surfers with little more than Ma in the present, or the receding past, as it were, given that time continues to speed ahead for the rest of us.

Some have accused Ma of “selling” out Taiwan to China, of mucking up the Neihu MRT Line or of becoming increasingly authoritarian as he grabs the various levers of power available to him. But his worst crime, it is now clear, was that Mr. Clean would lie to us, to Taiwanese, about his time machine. If we can’t trust him with such devices (and where else but in Taiwan would have it been manufactured?), how can we trust him on lesser things, such as national security and freedom of speech?

Maybe all this time travel has distorted his grip on reality, which would explain why, among other things, he was able to alchemically transform a Chinese boycott of the opening ceremony at the World Games in Kaohsiung into a sign of Chinese “goodwill.”

Taiwan the victim of Asian geopolitics

Currently in India on a three-day visit, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Saturday she was optimistic that a defense agreement between India and the US could soon be finalized. The “end-user monitoring pact,” as defense export controls are commonly known, will be essential for US defense contractors seeking to sell advanced weaponry to India. Once it is passed, US firms will be able to bid for a contract — one of the largest arms deals in the world, estimated to be worth US$10.4 billion — to provide India with 126 multi-role fighters as part of the Indian military’s US$30 billion, five-year modernization plan. Russia, France and Sweden, as well as the European consortium behind the Eurofighter Typhoon, are also in the race. Two US firms, Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, stand to gain from the pact.

Given the strategic competition that has been developing between India and China, compounded by the latter’s perennial fear of encirclement, news of the coming deal will exacerbate apprehensions in Beijing. Ironically, China’s ally and main source of weapons, Russia, could be contributing to that sense of vulnerability should Moscow win the contract with its MiG-35, though the unease would probably be worse if US firms landed the deal. Although in recent years Beijing and New Delhi have settled a number of territorial disputes, a sense of insecurity and mistrust continues to characterize relations between the two rising Asian giants. Part of India’s drive for modernization is also fueled by fears and the many unknowns surrounding China’s “rise,” as a recent article in Indian Defense Review, which claimed China could attack India by 2012, indicates. Meanwhile, with India firmly in the US sphere of influence and increasingly seen as a counterbalance to China, it would not be surprising if Beijing increased the rhetoric as the sale approaches, or used the modernization of India’s military, as well as US-Indian cooperation on nuclear energy (an agreement expected to be signed by Clinton during her visit), as an argument for further investment in its military.

Whether China represents a threat to India is highly in doubt, but in the increasingly realist world of Asian relations, such fears are used by governments, defense departments and arms dealers to justify heavy investment.

One potential victim of this reality is Taiwan, which continues to underinvest in its defense, a trend that has accelerated under the presidency of Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). The more China feels it is being encircled and the more insecure it becomes, the higher will be its investment in its military, both in terms of modernization and real numbers (i.e., Order of Battle). The implications of this are that even if China’s military development is geared toward India, Japan or the US, part of the growing arsenal will have applications for a Taiwan contingency, not to mention the impact the perception of encirclement would have on Chinese nationalism and its effect on decisionmaking.

Arms races are never good news, as they exacerbate tensions, increase the likelihood of error and ultimately aggravate the cost of war. If the modernization of India’s military prompted more defense expenditure in China, we can expect Japan would follow suit, thus creating a feedback loop similar to the one that made the Cold War such a threat to the human race. An accelerating arms race in Asia would be even worse news for Taiwan, for despite Chinese unease vis-à-vis external opponents, the principal objective of its military remains the tract of land it claims at its own, a mere 140km across the Taiwan Strait. In such a scenario, either Taiwan would maintain defense spending at the same level, meaning that with every year that passes the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait would further tilt in Beijing’s favor, or it, too, would join the arms race bandwagon and thereby make its own contribution to China’s military drive.

See also: Japan's 2009 Defense White Paper.

Taiwan can’t afford a fissiparous DPP [UPDATED]

The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Central Advisory Committee will hold a meeting next Thursday to make a final decision on the expulsion of members Fan Chung-tzung (范振宗) and Hsu Jung-shu (許榮淑) for defying a party ban on attending a cross-strait forum last week. DPP regulations stipulate that DPP members are allowed to visit China in a personal capacity, but are barred from doing so as officials, which is why Fan and Hsu are facing expulsion.

While the cross-strait forum is very much a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-Chinese communist Party (CCP) affair, this time around Beijing made “accommodations” so that DPP members could attend. As I argued in a previous article, as the main opposition party the DPP cannot afford to not know what’s going on at the forum, especially at a time when cross-strait rapprochement is being managed by the KMT and CPP in less than transparent fashion and when the Legislative Yuan has been sidelined by the executive. My argument was that the DPP should seek to achieve an admittedly difficult balancing act by sending observers while clearly stating its opposition to the manner in which rapprochement has been orchestrated under the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).

Fan and Hsu did not go as observers, nor did they attend in a personal capacity. In other words, they attended as DPP members, which the CPP (and to a lesser extent the KMT) could exploit to tell the world that the pro-independence party agrees with the process of unification — in other words, that it has come to its senses. In TV interviews last night, Hsu made it clear that her attending the forum in Changsha should not result in questioning of her allegiance to Taiwan, which, given her long service to country and party, is a fair statement. Her participation does not mean that she has abandoned her aspirations for Taiwanese independence.

Yes, Chang and Hsu broke party rules. But expelling them would be self-defeating, as it would play into the CPP’s divide and conquer strategy and splinter a party that since its twin defeats in the legislative and presidential elections last year, added to its minority in the Legislative Yuan, has struggled to remain relevant. Delinquent members, if they can be thus called, should be reprimanded for their infractions, but expulsions are too drastic and would further weaken the party while serving as fodder for those who argue that the DPP is intransigent, intolerant and unable to make accommodations.

The DPP’s problem is not that it bars members from going to China — to wit, Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu’s (陳菊) visit in May to promote the World Games — but that it lacks a strategy regarding its members’ participation in cross-strait talks, which whether we like them or not are simply inevitable. Dialogue is not intrinsically bad; what’s needed is for a confident opposition to ensure that talks do not sabotage Taiwan’s sovereignty and right to determine its own future. Expelling members for attempting to do so simply closes the door on dialogue and monitoring, and helps ensure that the process remains opaque. Admittedly, that opacity creates fears in the Taiwanese polity, fear that the DPP can exploit to its advantage. But a self-respecting political party worthy of running a country must have more to propose its people than that. Fear is the weapon of the weak, a poor alternative to ideas and policies.

DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) should overturn the decision to expel Fan and Hsu — hopefully via democratic means, meaning through party vote — before more harm is done to the party’s image. Failure to do so will open yet another door, one that allows critics of the DPP and Taiwan independence to portray the party as “extremist” and oppositionist at all cost. In other words, a party that claims to fight for democracy but that in reality acts far short of the principle.

UPDATE

Thanks to Taiwan Echo (see comments for this story) for providing extremely useful precisions on Hsu’s comments after she returned to Taiwan. This has forced me to revisit my assumptions about the gravity of her “error” and what the DPP should do about it. One question that needs to be asked, now, is what motivated her to do and say what she did? This is highly hypothetical, but I’m beginning to wonder if Chinese operatives might not have been keeping DPP officials under observation for signs of weakness or shifts in ideology for possible cultivation. It would be interesting to see if Hsu was directly invited by the CPP to attend — and if so, who. I have long argued that increased contact following an influx of Chinese in Taiwan would result in more espionage, collection and — yes — influence of local leaders. If, and this is a big if, Hsu was cultivated and approached by China because they were aware of a “weakness” in her identification with the DPP (old age, conflicts of interest, blackmail or perhaps even failing mental health), she could indeed have been used to create a rift within the DPP. Under such a scenario — this calls for investigation, not a witch hunt — I would definitely be in favor of her being expelled from the party.

2012 will not be 1996 redux

In my piece “Why 2012 will be a deadly deadline” published earlier this week, I argued that 2012 would be a dangerous year in Taiwan’s history, mostly because of the risks that electoral retribution could undermine President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) efforts to pursue rapprochement with China. As I state in my op-ed, Beijing has made not secret of the fact that it sees cross-strait talks and a possible economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) as means to ultimate unification. Both Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) have openly stated their views on the matter, hard facts that moot the criticism of those who have expressed apprehensions about the lack of transparency in cross-strait dialogue.

The 2012 presidential election in Taiwan, therefore, will be a pivotal point in the nation’s history, as it will serve both as a public verdict on Ma’s pro-China policies and an opportunity for the opposition to halt a process that has dovetailed perfectly with Beijing’s designs on Taiwan — with or without Ma’s blessing. In my article, I point out that in the lead-up to the elections, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) will likely seek to exploit the threat of Chinese attack to its advantage: Vote for us and there will be no war; vote for the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and China might attack. Ironically, the KMT could be right in raising such fears, because Beijing could very well resort to force if it perceives that the political pendulum is about to shift in the DPP’s favor.

This is where critics of this argument come in. One commentator has argued that my assumption that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would do a replay of 1996 — firing missiles off the waters of Taiwan to influence the Taiwanese electorate and compel voters not to vote for pro-independence Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and the DPP’s Peng Ming-min (彭明敏) — is flawed. Where the critics of my argument are wrong, I think, is in their failure to comprehend the tremendous changes that have occurred in China’s military posture in the 16 years between 1996 and 2012, during which the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has seen double-digit growth in its budget for more than a decade. China’s declared defense expenditures at the time of the missile crisis in 1996 was about US$10 billion — the equivalent of Taiwan’s military budget today. In March 2007, Beijing announced it would increase its annual defense budget by 17.8 percent from the previous year, to US$45 billion. In March 2008, the submitted budget was about US$57.22 billion, followed by a nearly 15 percent rise announced in March 2009. The period 1996-2009 also experienced a shift in China’s military reorganization and modernization drive following the Gulf War of 1991. Assuming similar double-digit growth in PLA expenditure until 2012, we can expect a defense budget by that year to be in the neighborhood of US$80 billion. While this still falls quite short of the US defense expenditure, and recognizing that the PLA has yet to achieve parity with the US military, there is no question that China is becoming more assertive within the region, both as a result of its growing economic clout and military strength.

This is not to say that it would make light of a decision to risk war with the US over Taiwan. But there is no question that the PLA today — and in 2012 — is far more confident in its abilities to fight a war than it was in 1996, when the missile crisis was more bluff than real threat. By 2012 Beijing could miscalculate by believing it could win a quick war over Taiwan, that its extended power projection could deter the US from intervening in the country, or even reach the conclusion that an already overstretched US military cannot afford to fight on another front in the Asia-Pacific region. The latter point is often neglected by critics of the 2012 scenario, who only focus on the Order of Battle and quantifiable forces while neglecting military commitments. The US military budget, and the quality of its forces, will dwarf China’s for many years to come, but this does not change the fact that the US military is serving in every corner of the world, fighting a war on terrorism in Afghanistan, in the Horn of Africa and in Iraq, while providing support in countries such as the Philippines, Pakistan and Colombia. China, meanwhile, has very little military commitments, its borders are secure and up until recently it has not become embroiled in the “war” on terrorism. A substantial part of its military budget, therefore, is solely dedicated to a Taiwan contingency or can quickly be reconfigured to meet that requirement.

One critic — ostensibly in reference to my background as an intelligence officer — wrote that:

It must be said how often these kind of predictions have been made in the past decade without actually coming to pass, you need only think of Lee Teng-Hui’s warning about 2008, or the warnings of trouble ahead of each of the elections since ‘96, to see how often they are proved wrong. I know Mr. Cole won’t like me making this comparison, but this is all rather reminiscent of the on-going crisis surrounding the Iranian nuclear program, where pundits feel free to make regular predictions of the inevitability of military action against Iran, and never seem to learn from the failure of their predictions to come true. Just as with Iran, the most likely outcome is that in three years time we will be roughly where we are now.

The problem with this argument, as anyone who has studied threat analysis will know, is that it adopts the fallacy known as T=T-1 (T is time, and what was applicable yesterday continues to be so today). What the critic implies is that my assumptions about 2012 are a “a failure of intelligence.” In reality, however, “intelligence failures” are as frequently overassumptions (e.g., Iraq and WMDs) as they are T=T-1 fallacies (e.g., the Iranian Revolution, Iraqi invasion of Kuwait). In the context of the Taiwan Strait, threat assessments made on the T=T-1 assumption — or that 2012 will be the same as 1996 — are extremely dangerous and blind us to changing realities, not only in terms of military capabilities, but also in political differences. In 1996, China was nowhere near achieving annexation of Taiwan; today and by 2012, that long-held dream is within reach, and the US, weakened by military campaigns, record national debt and the economic crisis, is no longer the dominant power it was a few years ago. Other imponderables, such as rising Chinese nationalism, social unrest and new CCP leadership, also make comparisons with 1996 tenuous at best.

I do not believe for one second that China is bent on expanding its empire, which is why I fully disagree with reports such as the Indian Defense Review that argue that “China will attack India by 2012 to divert the attention of its own people from ‘unprecedented’ internal dissent, growing unemployment and financial problems that are threatening the hold of Communists in that country.” I have just finished reading Bobo Lo’s Axis of Convenience: Moscow, Beijing and the New Geopolitics, which I will be reviewing in the Taipei Times over the weekend. Lo’s analysis convinces me more than ever that China has no interest in invading other countries, whether it be India or the Russian Far East, as its focus remains on domestic development. In that regard, the CPP has very much been the professional, rational actor. But I maintain that when it comes to Taiwan — which Beijing never ceased to regard as an “internal” problem along the lines of Tibet and Xinjiang — critics of my 2012 argument had fain avoid committing a second common mistake in intelligence analysis, and that is the assumption that the rational actor model applies in every case.

Even over Taiwan, China will never make light of a decision of going to war especially if this risks a confrontation with the US and Japan. This said, if China is to miscalculate, based on 16 years of solid military buildup — quantitative and qualitative —, a weakened US and cross-strait dynamics, 2012 will be it. I stand by my assessment regarding that year.

Why 2012 will be a deadly deadline

In an op-ed published today in the Taipei Times — meant for publication in newspapers abroad but not picked up by any — I argue that failure to pressure the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration now on human rights, transparency and accountability in its interactions with Beijing is sowing the seeds of disaster for 2012, when Taiwanese could very well derail his plans through electoral retribution. What, in this scenario, makes 2012 such a dangerous year is that aware of this possibility, Beijing has continued apace with the modernization of its armed forces despite better relations across the Taiwan Strait. If, after coming so close to unification (its openly stated goal for the cross-strait talks), Beijing saw that its plans risked failing because of Taiwanese voters, the likelihood that it would resort to force to complete the process could be higher than it’s ever been — much higher than during the 1996 missile crisis, when Beijing’s saber rattling was much more bluff than signs of a coming attack. This piece attempts to set the record strait and to provide a counterbalance to all those “experts” who have hailed Ma’s opening as “pragmatic” and “masterful,” or claimed, without ever setting foot here, that everybody in Taiwan is on the same wavelength on how to approach talks with China.

Al-Qaeda has a new enemy: China

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), an Algeria-based offshoot of al-Qaeda, has reportedly threatened to target Chinese interests overseas in retaliation for Beijing’s deadly crackdown against Uighurs in Xinjiang last week, in which 184 people were killed. Quoting a security consultancy, the South China Morning Post wrote that while AQIM was the first al-Qaeda-linked group — or, according to experts on terrorism, a loose umbrella for regional extremist organizations — to issue such a threat against China, others were likely to follow.

It matters little that, according to Beijing’s claims, of the 184 people who were killed in the clashes in Urumqi and elsewhere in Xinjiang, 137 were Han Chinese rather than Muslim. For extremist organizations like AQIM (a rebranding of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, GSPC) and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), the decades of victimization of Muslims in Xinjiang is the essence of the problem; last week’s violence was simply the trigger.

Interestingly enough, the targeting of China follows a pattern established with the West, and the US in particular, whereby the interests of the “oppressor” are targeted by al-Qaeda where they are weakest and as a means to pressure its central government to (a) change a policy and (b) leave the region. In this present case, the proximate enemy is China, but ETIM and other extremist organizations in Central Asia — China’s rear — are in no position to target it head-on. Instead, they will punish Beijing by attacking soft targets abroad: Chinese workers, diplomatic missions, firms, and so on. Just like the US, China will be the victim of its growing presence abroad. Given China’s severe reliance on oil and natural gas, combined with the fact that a large share of those resources comes from the Persian Gulf, Africa and Central Asia, exposure of Chinese interests to radical groups will not be minimal.

In coming weeks and months, therefore, we can expect kidnappings and attacks on Chinese soft targets in Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Maghreb and the Middle East, as well as certain parts of Latin and Central America with large Muslim populations, with the first two regions the likeliest to see violence. Should this transpire, we can predict that China, which so far has remained relatively hands-off on regional security, to become more involved militarily in Central Asia to protect its people, interests, and the flow of energy.

Implications for Taiwan

Two things stand out for Taiwan relative to this development. First — and this harkens back to my days in the Threat Assessment Unit at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service — by virtue of their similar features and language, Taiwanese abroad could be mistaken for Chinese and targeted by such extremist organizations. This is akin to the threat level facing Caucasians whenever al-Qaeda or other extremist groups call for attacks against Americans or British.

Another offshoot of this threat is that it will likely add urgency to US-Chinese cooperation on antiterrorism, as a terrorist attack against Chinese interests would “confirm” that Beijing and Washington face a common enemy. If this were to happen, this would provide Beijing with yet another lever with which to pressure the US — especially under a scenario where the People’s Liberation Army is called upon to exercise a security role in Central Asia and perhaps further into Afghanistan, where ETIM elements are believed to have sought refuge.

A slightly different version of this article appeared in the Taipei Times on July 19.

The CCP wants things to be ... simpler

The fifth round of talks between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continued in Changsha on Sunday, with more discussion on cultural matters. Aside from calling on academics and researchers from both sides of the Taiwan Strait to collaborate on standardizing scientific and specialized Chinese terms and to develop software that translates traditional Chinese characters into simplified form, a joint statement called on both sides to “gradually reduce the differences” between traditional and simplified Chinese characters.”

This statement can only mean one thing: One does not reduce differences between two systems by adding complexity to the simpler one; rather, they are reduced by dumbing down the more complex of two. In other words, Taiwan’s use of the more complex traditional Chinese would be simplified, one stroke at a time, in line with the simplified Chinese characters introduced by the CCP after it came to power in 1949.

While I’ve never been one to equate language with ethnicity (e.g., French as a defining factor in Quebec identity vis-à-vis Canada), the fact remains that language provides a direct link to the cultural baggage of a people; it serves as a bridge to the past, whereby ancient wisdom is kept alive, passed on from one generation to another.

When it comes to traditional Chinese, Taiwanese did not retain the more complex version for the sake of complexity, or as a means to prove their intellectual superiority vis-à-vis people in China. Nor, conversely, did the CCP adopt the simplified form solely for the purpose of helping to educate the masses. Rather, it’s the importance a people gives to the past that matters. While one system of government (Taiwan) chose to maintain ties with ancient times (both as a source of knowledge and a means by the KMT to “resinicize” Taiwanese after 50 years of Japanese colonial rule), the other (China) sought to reinvent the national discourse by disconnecting the population from the past. By abandoning the traditional system and imposing the simplified form, the CCP made sure that it could gradually engineer a population that did not know where it come from and therefore would be less likely to question authority based on the lessons of history (under authoritarian systems, ignorance is bliss — for those in power). Of course, ancient texts written in the traditional form could be translated into simplified characters, but this would take time, and the state could control which texts could be permissibly translated. “Dangerous” or “polluted” ones, works that did not dovetail with Communist China’s version of history after Year Zero, if you will, would be barred from translation and further recede into oblivion as generation after generation grew up under the simplified system. There is a reason why many people today will say that Chinese do not know their history — it was stolen from them after 1949.

Symbolically, the more Taiwan drifts toward simplified Chinese, the more it will be seen as doing so politically and culturally as well. If it came about, it would also threaten Taiwanese people’s understanding of their past. If a people doesn’t know where it’s from, it will be hard for it to dispute claims that it belongs to another.

To go or not to go: A DPP dilemma

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CPP) — rather than Taiwan and China, as some wire agencies would have us believe — launched this weekend the fifth round of cross-strait economic, trade and cultural forum in Changsha, Hunan Province. Despite what Wang Yi (王毅), head of the Taiwan Work Office of the CCP said, the forum is not “in line with the common aspirations of people in the mainland and Taiwan,” as the main opposition party in Taiwan, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), refuses to participate. It is, at most, a meeting between CCP and KMT representatives, two political parties whose views on unification tend to run in parallel.

The principal reason why the DPP will not send officials is that by doing so it would risk playing into the CCP’s hands. As Michael Turton of The View from Taiwan pointed out yesterday, DPP participation would quickly be manipulated by Beijing, which would claim that the party’s presence was proof that “splittists” had finally come to their senses. Another risk is that its presence at the forum would divide the pan-green (“pro-independence”) camp and draw accusations from the grassroots that it has abandoned its pro-independence spirit, which is enshrined in its Charter.

Conversely, by choosing not to participate, the DPP invites accusations that it is intransigent and against cross-strait dialogue, which helps both the KMT and the CCP (via the media) score points in the war of minds over the Taiwan independence question. Whatever it does, the DPP’s image gets hurt.

Where I differ with the DPP leadership and Mr. Turton, however, is in their insistence that nobody from the DPP should attend the forum. Rather than keep itself in a lose-lose position, the DPP could clearly state its moral opposition to unification while sending non-participating observers. Doing so would serve a number of purposes:

First, it would help mute accusations that the DPP is a “radical” party that opposes dialogue at all costs. Second, by sending observers it would make it more difficult for Beijing to portray its presence as a seal of approval to the talks and unification. And third — perhaps the most important element — by monitoring the talks, DPP officials would be able to see what’s going. This is primordial, as ever since Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) came into office on May 20 last year, cross-strait talks between the KMT and the CCP have been anything but transparent. The lack of accountability has fed fears that the KMT is selling out Taiwan while allowing the KMT and its Chinese counterpart to bypass democratic processes in the road to rapprochement. We need to know. The presence of DPP observers could infuse some accountability into a negotiation mechanism that so far has been marked by opacity. More information would also help the DPP formulate better policies as it strives to ensure that the interests of Taiwanese are protected during cross-strait negotiations.

It’s one thing for the DPP to stick to its principles — and let us hopes it never abandons them. But as the main opposition party, it also has a responsibility to keep its eyes open and ensure that the Ma administration and the KMT do not hide things from the public, which they ostensibly have done, to some degree. The DPD cannot afford to remain an outsider and to remain in the dark as a result of moral opposition to the forum. What is required at this sensitive moment is a little more than principles — what’s needed is ingenuity in a critical, and by no means easy, balancing act.

Ups and downs

As I walked into my office today, I was excited to see that I had received a package from the publisher of my book Democracy in Peril, which meant that I would finally get to see what the end product of more than two years of hard work looks like. I must say that iUniverse did a commendable job; the front cover looks good, the print is of fine quality, and the paper is nice and thick. I am, by and by, quite satisfied with it and was thrilled that I was finally holding it in my hands.

Only after the initial excitement had subsided did I look at the package itself. To my horror, I discovered that the DHL sticker read “Neihu, Taipei TA, 114 Taiwan Province of China.” Sparing the reader the expletive that escaped from my lips, I then pointed out to my coworkers how ironic it was that a 440-page book arguing in favor of Taiwanese sovereignty would be shipped in a package with a “Province of China” sticker affixed to it.

I now need to determine whether it was the UK-based printer of my book that provided this address (the one I gave them obviously didn’t have the unfortunate addition) or DHL UK. Either way, this warrants a letter of complaint.

Ups and downs, news good and bad. Everything in balance. Well, maybe not. The book is out and I like how it turned out.

Xinjiang finally explodes, Taipei remains silent [UPDATED]

On July 29 last year I published an op-ed titled “Much suffering in store for Uighurs,” in which I argued that despite the world’s attention directed at it because of the Olympic Games, there was a high likelihood that Beijing would not hesitate to use force against Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang after Commander Seyfullah, a self-styled leader of an extremist movement, claimed responsibility for a series of bombings earlier that year. Thankfully, I was wrong, and the world did not witness the crackdown I was expecting.

By no means did this signify, however, that the level of popular discontent with Beijing’s discriminatory policies, mass arrests, population displacements and extreme poverty (among the highest in China) was any less. In fact, it continued to build up among Uighurs, and it finally exploded in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, on Sunday, with mass protests pitting ethnic Uighur Muslims against the dominating Han Chinese (Uighurs are the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, but not in Urumqi, where Han have been squeezing out the local population). According to reports, the protest, which involved between 1,000 and 3,000 demonstrators, spun out of control after protesters refused to disperse. Chinese security officials soon intervened, leaving at least 140 dead and as many as 828 injured, numbers that are expected to rise.

After the clashes, paramilitary police were marching on the streets, and parts of the city had been blocked. Internet access was cut, and many residents said their mobile phones didn’t work, in what was likely another attempt by Beijing to ensure that as few images of state repression came out of China as possible (Chinese state-controlled media showed graphic images of the violence on Monday, but all will have had to pass through Chinese censors).

Later on Monday, a new protest was being reported in Kashgar (the Chinese government has a controversial plan to destroy 85 percent of the old, historic part of the city as part of a “development” project).

The incident, Xinjiang Communist Party official Wang Lequan said, was “a profound lesson learned in blood,” and Beijing “must take the most resolute and strongest measures to deal with the enemies’ latest attempt at sabotage.” As usual, Beijing accused outside forces — in this instance exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer — of inciting the violence and attempting to “split” the country. “This was an incident remotely controlled, directed and incited from abroad, and executed inside the country,” a CCTV commentator said over images of the violence. “It was a planned and organized violent crime.”This begs the question: why, given state monitoring of Internet activity (specific Web sites were mentioned by the authorities), such organization would have been allowed to develop into a mass protest in the first place.

In the coming days, the international community, multilateral organizations like the UN and rights organizations will call on China to show restraint, and Beijing will counter by saying that the international community should mind its own business, as it is a domestic problem. The old minuet will play itself out, the dancers' legs will tire, and a few days from now everything will return to normal, with China continuing to play the role of Mecca for global merchants and investors.

Still, Xinjiang once again unmasks the murderous regime the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration wants to establish friendly ties with. These are the officials in Beijing, those who give the orders to spill blood, with whom Ma and his henchmen are dealing. These are the decisionmakers who are closer than ever of realizing their dream of annexing Taiwan, which would turn Taiwanese into another ethnic minority in China, another group to silence, repress and crush.

As expected, the Ma administration has been silent about this latest instance of state repression in China, lest doing so offend its new friends. In his defense, Ma is returning from his visit to Central America, so it may have been difficult to make an official comment. But in his absence, other state organs should — but have yet to (and perhaps will not) — release statements on the matter. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had nothing; the Mainland Affairs Council’s spokesman’s phone, meanwhile, was off, with the deputy spokesman answering calls for comment by saying that it was the spokesman’s responsibility to issue comments on the matter. In other words, “no comment.”

So far, exiled Wu’er Kaixi — a student leader at Tiananmen Square and himself a Uighur — has been the sole voice of authority to come out of Taiwan condemning the slaughter.

The longer this silence continues, the longer Taipei fails to condemn in no uncertain terms the Chinese Communist Party’s repression, jailing and mass-slaying of Uighurs, Tibetans and ordinary Chinese, the harder it will be to continue calling Taiwan a beacon of freedom in Asia.

UPDATE: In as clear a sign as one could find that Uighurs face a serious handicap in obtaining international support amid the carnage, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the US was “deeply concerned” about the reported deaths in Urumqi and called on both sides to “exercise restraint.” The problem for Uighurs is that States have been “deeply concerned” about Chinese authorities massacring their own population so often that the term has lost all meaning and has not traction whatsoever with Beijing. Furthermore, it is invidious to call on both sides to exercise restraint, as the power imbalance in the conflict could not be any starker. Gibbs’ comments create a moral equivalence that simply does not exist. Poor Uighurs. They come to the plate with already two strikes against them: they are a minority group in China, and they are Muslim.

UPDATE 2: The death toll from unrest in Xinjiang now stands at 156, with 1,080 injured. At this writing (Tuesday evening), the Presidential Office in Taipei continued to have “no comment.” This is despicable and unworthy of a democracy. If Taipei will not commit itself morally, Taiwanese must stage protests. However distant Xinjiang may be to them, these developments have implications for their future. Remaining isolated, keeping one’s head in the sand while Beijing massacres a minority group, is just unacceptable. Taiwanese must join hands with Tibetan refugees in Taiwan, Muslims and the few Uighurs who live here and take to the streets. They must condemn Beijing’s actions and equally criticize the Ma administration for its spineless silence.

UPDATE 3: (Warning: picture contains graphic content): Scanning the wire agency database for pictures of the situation in Xinjiang, I came across a series of extremely graphic photos and video grabs that bore the caption “Urumqi Government/Handout via Reuters TV,” which proves that the images have been approved for distribution by the authorities. Without exception, every picture of dead bodies had this caption and thus went through censors. Most pictures of the violence from the state-owned Xinhua news agency (or AP/Xinhua) tend to show the result of Muslim protests against the state — burned buses, overturned cars, defaced buildings.

But how do we explain Beijing’s candidness in allowing for the release of pictures of dead Uighur victims?

There is no doubt that the CCP propaganda machine is blaming the World Uighur Congress for “orchestrating” the violence (see, for example, cover of the Global Times), or that Beijing will claim to be fighting “Uighur, al-Qaeda-linked terrorists.” What does it think it can gain, therefore, by showing dead bodies of Uighurs in Urumqi? Is this, perhaps, meant as a warning against future protests — especially now that the government has given security officials permission to fire their weapons without warning shots? We can expect the bulk of pictures issued will continue to support the “Chinese victim of terrorism” falsehood; however, a few strategically released pictures that are ostensibly helpful the opposition’s cause — Uighurs — could be akin to killing the chicken to scare the monkey.

Historical quirks

With President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) visiting Central America last week, and the military coup in Honduras that saw President Manuel Zelaya exiled to Costa Rica, that part of the world has featured more prominently in Taiwanese media than it usually does. Still, this does not mean that the media — and sometimes the government — will get their facts right.

While doing some fact-checking for an article I was editing last week, I came upon a funny bit of news — on the Presidential Office Web site, of all places. During his remarks ahead of the inauguration of Panaman President Ricardo Martinelli Berrocal on July 1, Ma is quoted by the office’s Web site as having said that “the ROC [Republic of China] and Panama have a longstanding relationship, with diplomatic relations between the countries established back in 1909. This year marks the centennial of the founding of diplomatic ties between the two.”

One-hundredth anniversary of ROC-Panama ties. Wait — that’s impossible, given that the Republic of China was founded on Jan. 1, 1912. In 1909, it would have been the Qing Dynasty, not the ROC, establishing diplomatic relations with Panama. (Even more inaccurate was the same Presidential Office Web site on May 22, 2008, which had Ma saying that “the ROC (Taiwan) and Panama have close relations dating back many years. The two countries established diplomatic ties in 1909.”)

But who cares about such trifles, such little details, when the Ma administration continuously attempts to blur the lines between Taiwan and China at the political, epistemological and cultural level?

Announcement: Book Release

Dear friends of Taiwan,

I am thrilled to announce the release of my book Democracy in Peril: Taiwan’s struggle for survival from Chen Shui-bian to Ma Ying-jeou! More than two years in the making, Democracy in Peril comes at a critical period in Taiwan’s history, and its release could not be more timely. Over the next few weeks, my book will start being available at various bookstores and online. Already, it can be purchased at Amazon.com and barnes&noble.com (links below picture of the book, right), and the e-book can be directly purchased from the publisher at www.iuniverse.com. As bookstores may not have it in stock, you may have to special order it from them. Hopefully, it should also eventually be available at bookstores in Taiwan as well as on www.books.com.tw. I will try to organize a book launch in Taipei at some point. Please spread the word! This nation is worth it and the rest of the world needs to know what's going on.

Book description

Despite the warm reception in world capitals and favorable press coverage the cross-strait policies of Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou have received since he came into office on May 20, 2008, there is something rotten in Taipei. In just one year, the cost of closer relations with Beijing has become increasingly obvious in Taiwan, the small, officially unrecognized democracy of 23 million people, where police brutality, government meddling in the media and political persecution are reawakening the specter of its authoritarian past.

In a timely collection of essays and reportage written during the last 18 months of the Chen Shui-bian administration and Ma’s first year in office, Democracy in Peril offers a history of the present in Taiwan as this vibrant democracy and economic powerhouse strives for international recognition under the constant fear of Chinese invasion. It shows how the greatest threat to the nation’s survival now possibly comes from within, under a government that has proven divisive and whose efforts to improve relations with China could come at an unbearable price — not only to Taiwanese, but to the entire world.

Paperback: 440 pages
Publisher: iUniverse.com (June 25, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1440150591
ISBN-13: 978-1440150593
Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
Price: Trade Paperback US$27.95 (e-book US$6.00)