Sunday notes on Morakot emergency

There is a very moving passage in Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao’s book Will the Boat Sink the Water: The Life of China’s Peasants, in which elderly peasants who, after months of seeking justice in their village, decide to go to the township and county level to beg officials to intervene, only to be turned down. At one point, in a blatant reversal of cultural ethics, the elderly are described as kneeling in front of young government officials, who remain standing and ignore their pleas. Little did I know that a few days after reading this passage, Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) would practically behave like those young, callous officials after Taiwanese asked for help amid the devastation brought by Typhoon Morakot. In scene after scene, Ma has looked annoyed, impatient, and would often hide behind a wall of security officials as Taiwanese sought to approach him. On some occasions, elderly Taiwanese fell on their knees, and Ma remained standing, displaying a level of cultural insensitivity that will not be forgotten anytime soon. In that regard, Ma’s wife, first lady Chow Mei-ching (周美青), has fared much better, going down on her knees to bring comfort to grieving individuals and seeming far more at ease among ordinary people than her husband has.

Ma once again apologized publicly on Sunday for his government’s slow response to Typhoon Morakot. With thousands still stranded and without food for more than a week — something that was avoidable, had rescue efforts commenced when they should have — international media are beginning to criticize a leader who had hitherto managed to deflect all criticism, even when police overreacted to demonstrations during Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin’s (陳雲林) visit to Taipei in November, when the government attacked freedom of expression, when the judiciary less than impartially handled the Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) trial and that of other DPP officials, or when his administration chose to ignore widespread public fears created by his cross-strait policies. So pointed has the criticism become that at some point Beijing could start proposing that Taipei simply isn’t competent enough to govern itself and therefore Beijing has a mission civilisatrice to help its “compatriots” in Taiwan “modernize” themselves, a view that would certainly find echoes in China’s invasion of “barbaric” Tibet. That specter becomes less implausible when media outlets begin comparing Ma’s behavior with that of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) after the Sichuan Earthquake.

Ma ‘shoulders all responsibility’

At last, it would appear that Ma is finally being presidential, as he told media that he would “shoulder all the responsibility” for his government’s slow response to the emergency. But here’s the fine print: Asked by CNN on Sunday to explain what he meant by “shouldering all responsibility,” Ma replied that he would determine what was wrong with the rescue system, correct problems and discipline officials in charge. Now that’s taking responsibility! Not my fault…

Between ‘great powers’

Meanwhile, the great power game over Taiwan is on. Agence France-Presse reported on Sunday that both the US and China have offered helicopters to help with rescue operations in southern Taiwan. The US has offered CH-53Es Super Stallions, the US military’s largest and heaviest helicopter, while Beijing has offered what is being touted as the world’s largest helicopters (btb Russian-made Mi-26 helicopters). If the US military is allowed to come to Taiwan — officers say they could be here as early as late on Sunday (with transport aircraft already here) — this would be the first time since 1979, when Washington severed diplomatic ties with Taipei, that US troops stepped on Taiwanese soil to deliver humanitarian assistance. Given, as I have discussed, the Ma administration’s fixation on cross-strait rapprochement with Beijing and Ma’s reluctance to harm that relationship no matter what, the symbolism of a US presence on Taiwanese soil would be tremendous. Even more controversial, but probably inevitable, would be the deployment of Chinese military helicopters and troops in Taiwan. Aside from the obvious PR value of Chinese soldiers bringing humanitarian assistance to Taiwanese, it would be the first time in history that the People’s Liberation Army puts boots on the ground in Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own. The propaganda coup that this would serve both the Ma administration and the CCP would be immense and far-reaching.

As the Ma administration has given the go-ahead for a US presence in Taiwan, however, it will feel immense pressure to balance matters by also inviting/allowing the Chinese to do so. In fact, it is not impossible that during the so-called “temporary” refusal of foreign aid, Beijing and Taipei negotiated an arrangement behind the scenes by which Taipei could only request US assistance if it also requested it from China. Is should also be noted that refusing one or the other in this situation would have serious ramifications for future bilateral relations between Taiwan, China and the US, as well as between China and the US over “right of involvement” in the region.

Rarely has humanitarian aid had such complex political variables; what should be purely relief considerations has become politicized and may have created delays that, sadly, will cost lives. One could advance the argument that before Taiwan under Ma made Beijing its center of gravity, Taipei would have had far more flexibility in requesting foreign humanitarian assistance, or that before turning Beijing into a virtual decision-maker for Taipei, offers of assistance by Tokyo and Washington could have been accepted with far greater ease — and much earlier — regardless of whether Beijing liked it or not. The price of this shift may now have to be calculated in Taiwanese lives. Conversely, if Ma had not come to be seen, because of his pro-China policies, as a puppet of Beijing, he would have had more latitude in accepting aid from China, and the presence of Chinese soldiers on Taiwanese soil would not as readily been interpreted as capitulation on sovereignty.

Did politics undermine rescue efforts in Taiwan?

Speculation has been rife in the past week that the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration’s slow response to the catastrophic flooding in southern Taiwan following the passage of Typhoon Morakot on Aug. 8 was the result of ingrained indifference among pan-blue politicians for the welfare of predominantly green Taiwanese in the south. Others, meanwhile, have pointed not so much to domestic politics as to racism, whereby the lives of Han Chinese are deemed more important than those of native Taiwanese or Aborigines, who have born the brunt of the devastation.

Although racism and deep-blue resentment for deep-green individuals may be an undercurrent in some individuals, it is hard to imagine that elected officials seeking reelection would willingly allow people to die because of such beliefs. It would be equally difficult to conceive of a top-down directive ordering relief workers and the military not to intervene because of the ethnicity of the victims.

Domestic, external variables

While we cannot rule out these variables to explain the belated response by the central government, two likelier causes for its failure to act in timely fashion are (a) government incompetence and (b) the Ma administration’s fixation with cross-strait relations. Feasibly, the central government’s failure to respond was a combination of both.

Symptoms of incompetence in the context of the Morakot disaster include a failure to understand the magnitude of the catastrophe; an apparent lack of coordination between the central authorities and local governments; a failure to deploy enough troops early enough; focus on money and reconstruction rather than immediate rescue contingencies; a failure to declare a state of emergency; buck-passing; and a lack of presidential involvement. Buck-passing especially supports the incompetence theory, such as when Ma said that the Central Weather Bureau was to blame for failing to predict the amount of rainfall Morakot would bring. When a government accuses an agency of failing to predict an imponderable and then blames that same agency for the slow government response once the facts on the ground are quantifiable, what it is doing is trying to deflect blame. Ma has also blamed local governments, many of which simply do not have the resources to deal with a catastrophe of such magnitude, and kept a safe distance by declaring that the Cabinet, rather than the president, should be in charge, which is another way to ensure that criticism will be directed at subordinates rather than himself.

Ma’s strategy, however, appears to be backfiring, and this is mostly the result of the external variable — that is, his fixation with Beijing, and people’s perception of his willingness to please the Chinese Communist Party. While it would be invidious to blame Ma for the failure of his entire government to react appropriately to the Morakot disaster, he nevertheless serves as the symbol of his administration, and how it acts will for the most part be a reflection of his political preferences — especially when Ma, both as president and soon-to-be Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman, wields such power over the executive and the legislature.

Ma’s tunnel vision, whereby everything becomes predicated on improving ties with Beijing, would readily explain the otherwise nonsensical directive from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) to all its missions abroad not to accept assistance. Once that memo was leaked to the media, MOFA officials rushed to claim that the directive was only “temporary,” without explaining why a temporary order — when help is immediately needed — would be any less damaging.

‘Angering’ Beijing

The Ma administration’s initial refusal of aid — especially much-needed materiel such as transport helicopters and humanitarian assistance expertise — could find its roots in Taipei’s fear of “angering” Beijing by opening its sovereignty to foreign countries, especially the US and Japan, which were the first to offer. Memories of the 921 Earthquake 10 years ago, when Beijing virtually hijacked international relief efforts by forcing aid to pass through China before entering Taiwan, must have weighed heavily in the Ma administration’s decision to turn down assistance. Rather than risk causing friction by immediately allowing foreign troops and humanitarian workers to come to Taiwan, the Ma government claimed help was unnecessary and that everything was under control. In other words, not alienating Beijing took precedence over saving lives.

The interplay of incompetence and the external factor of relations with Beijing meant that Taipei may have been willing to underestimate the severity of the disaster. Under different circumstances (paranoid leaderships like those in Myanmar and North Korea aside), a central government would have had no compunction in allowing foreign aid, even if this meant overshooting — i.e., receiving more aid than is required to meet immediate needs. For Taiwan, however, whose sovereign status is unrecognized by Beijing, overshooting was not an option, largely because of the political ramifications of receiving foreign assistance. The Ma administration therefore acted cautiously and underestimated the need, thus ensuring that Beijing would not be aggravated; at minimum, it gave Taipei time to negotiate with Chinese officials for “permission” to allow foreign assistance, which could explain the “temporary” nature of the MOFA directive, or the Ma administration’s volte-face by first turning down aid, only to request it a few days later.

This now raises the very important question: Who are Ma and his administration serving: the people who put them in office, or their masters back in Beijing. When external political considerations undermine what should be the priority of a government — that is, the safety and welfare of the people they represent — one should question the legitimacy of the relationship. If the external agent is so corrupting as to compel an elected government not to do anything in its power to save the lives of its people, the very desirability of that dyad becomes doubtable.

Morakot was an unprecedented disaster, one that no government could have fully prepared for. The disaster forces us to ask whether some places — especially those that are located in mudslide-prone areas — are perhaps unsuited for human settlement, just as are the coastal areas in the US that, year after year, get swallowed by the forces of nature. This notwithstanding, the central government in Taiwan shares a great deal of responsibility for failing to comprehend the severity of the situation, and this was either the result of incompetence, external political considerations, or both. Military personnel, many of whom were eager to help but were told to stay put because the order from above had not been given, should have been deployed earlier, and in larger numbers. Only eight days after the typhoon hit are we seeing deployments that are commensurate with the devastation in southern Taiwan. If, for some reason, troop mobilization early on was infeasible, central authorities should have immediately called for outside assistance, and when it was offered, they should not have turned it down. Lastly, by focusing on reconstruction money rather than immediate rescue efforts, Taipei showed that its priorities were misplaced. In fact, Taiwan has plenty of money, and even if its emergency funds were insufficient, it could easily have tapped into its foreign reserve, which is the third largest in the world.

It was inevitable that lives would be lost. But the expected body count — 123 confirmed dead, with hundreds unaccounted for and unlikely to still be alive after one week — didn’t have to be so high. Some of those lives will have been lost because of the Ma administration’s incompetence and external political calculations.

Young minds show sense of social responsibility

I was off today, but duty still called and I ended up interviewing a brilliant and articulate student from Taipei American School who spearheaded efforts to send humanitarian aid down south. What was striking about the young man was not only his sense of duty to his community, but also his long-term perspective, which is rare in young people. This piece appeared in the Taipei Times today:

Although school hasn’t even resumed yet, Ian Chang, president of the Taipei American School (TAS) Student Government, was yesterday busy mobilizing forces to do something about the catastrophe in southern Taiwan.

On Wednesday, Chang convened 40 members of the student senate and launched an appeal to students and parents to help.

About 48 hours later, four truckloads, or about 600 boxes, of emergency material — blankets, sleeping bags, instant noodles, toiletries, sanitary equipment and scouring powder — had been gathered and was ready to be shipped south. All donations came from parents, the community and schools.

By 5pm yesterday, the 600 boxes were on their way to Kaohsiung American School, whose superintendent will personally take the donations to Namasiya Township (那瑪夏) , Kaohsiung County.

Donors ranged from small children bringing a couple of blankets or stuffed animals, to parents, who brought truckloads of items.

While the corporate sector did not participate in the TAS relief program, Chang told the Taipei Times that many TAS parents are in senior positions at big corporations, and many of them made sure that their firms donated toward relief efforts.

Chang said yesterday’s effort was just a short-term initiative, adding that plans are being made for TAS to foster schools destroyed in the south and help with reconstruction.

TAS has a long tradition of helping out in poor countries, Chang said.

“However, it’s not often that we get to help out at home,” he added.

As expected ... Beijing allegedly pledges US$16m

Agence France-Presse reported late this evening that China had pledged US$16 million for relief efforts following the devastation brought by Typhoon Morakot. If true, the donation would dwarf pledges of US$250,000 and US$103,000 by the US and Japan respectively. According to AFP, China’s financial assistance would come via the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait.

It is no small irony that a country that threatens to invade its neighbor, or to attack it with short- and mid-range missiles, would suddenly turn into a generous humanitarian donor. While money is certainly welcome, this is not the result of Chinese “warmth” — this is PR, and an effort to win hearts and minds in Taiwan by giving money. Wouldn’t it be nice if, rather than give when a catastrophe hits, China stopped threatening Taiwan, so that parts of the US$10 billion or so Taipei spends annually on the military to protect itself from China could be dedicated to, say, strengthening infrastructure. (To put things in perspective: A single DF-15 short-range ballistic missile, out of the about 1,400 DF-11s and DF-15s that China aims at Taiwan [excluding medium-range missiles], costs approximately US$450,000. In other words, China’s humanitarian pledge to Taiwan represents a mere 35 missiles. )

Additionally, while money and planning will be needed for reconstruction, the central government’s current emphasis on that phase, at a time when hundreds, if not thousands, of people are still stranded or missing, is just wrong. At this writing, a mere 8,500 soldiers have been deployed to conduct rescue operations, which isn’t enough, given the amplitude of the devastation. In the wake of a catastrophe, time and materiel are of the essence, which is why Premier Liu Chao-shiuan’s (劉兆玄) contention that Taiwan does not need non-financial assistance from countries that have offered it — Japan, the US — is myopic. When lives are at stake, transport aircraft from neighboring countries (e.g., US helicopters based in Guam or Okinawa) should be given precedence. Only once all lives have been accounted for, and health hazards addressed, should we turn to reconstruction. By turning priorities upside down, the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration is not only putting lives at risk, but it may also be attempting to detract attention from its less than stellar handling of the crisis.

When a house is burning, we should make sure everybody is out and safe before sitting down and discussing how to rebuild the roof or replace the furniture.

The cost of complicity

South Korean officials confirmed today that a pair of Chinese Falun Gong practitioners were repatriated to China in July following a court decision not to grant them refugee status. A South Korean court has reportedly also turned down petitions by 30 Falun Gong practitioners on a ruling that it could not find proof that they had been persecuted in China.

Seoul denies the repatriations were the result of pressure from Beijing, adding that it cannot allow illegal immigrants to remain in the country absent clear evidence that they would be persecuted because of their religious beliefs.

Clear evidence? In April the New York Times reported that since China launched its campaign against what it calls an “evil cult” a decade ago, tens of thousands of practitioners have been jailed, and as many as 2,000 have been killed. In the past year, the Times reported, as many as 8,000 have been arrested, of whom 100 are believed to have died while in custody.

Clear evidence? Last month, Shao Yuhua (邵玉華), a Chinese-born woman who married a Taiwanese and now has Taiwanese citizenship, was arrested in China while visiting her sister. Her crime? She is a Falun Gong practitioner. “Shao Yuhua was arrested only because she practices Falun Gong. She was subjected to sleep deprivation. The police tried to force her to write a letter promising that she will no longer practice. She and her family were threatened,” said Chu (Theresa) Wanchi (朱婉琪), a human rights lawyer who had a three-hour conversation with Shao after her release on Aug. 6.*

Whether Seoul is being pressured by Beijing to repatriate Falun Gong practitioners seeking asylum in the country is debatable, as is the likelihood that South Korean authorities would allow themselves to be influenced by Chinese demarches. But to claim that it is justified in repatriating Falun Gong practitioners because courts do not have clear evidence that they will be persecuted because of their beliefs stretches the imagination. Furthermore, by virtue of their having sought refugee status in another country, those practitioners have elevated their status while drawing international attention onto something Beijing would rather remained domestic. As such, the treatment awaiting them back in China will likely be much harsher, involving years of imprisonment and torture. For that reason alone, South Korea and other governments that believe they are not morally bound to grant Falun Gong members asylum should reconsider.

*International attention (Former Canadian parliamentarian David Kilgour, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International), protests by Falun Gong practitioners and help from the Taiwanese authorities (Mainland Affairs Council, Straits Exchange Foundation and the Ministry of Justice) all contributed to her release on Aug. 6.

Typhoon Morakot raises ghost of Lien [UPDATED]

A little less than 10 years ago, then-vice president Lien Chan (連戰) was visiting areas devastated by the Sept. 21, 1999, earthquake in central Taiwan (commonly known as the 921 Earthquake), in which 2,416 people were killed and 11,000 seriously injured. During his visit, Lien’s behavior was aloof and in-line with his reputation as someone who was disconnected from ordinary people. This, added to public dissatisfaction with the central government’s handling of the emergency, led to a scene in which Lien was chased off and fled in a helicopter. Many attribute his dwindling popularity, and subsequent loss in the 2000 presidential election, to his abysmal performance at the scene.

Fast-forward to Aug. 10, 2009. This time around, a cadaverous-looking President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is visiting Taimali Township (太麻里), Taitung County, one of the areas hit by flooding in the wake of Typhoon Morakot, which so far has left 23 dead, with hundreds still unaccounted for (at this writing, 56 are confirmed missing).

No one would ever have mistaken Lien for a man of the people, so his behavior after 921 was unsurprising. But for Ma, the allegedly charismatic Ma, to be visibly impatient as local people approached him to share their apprehensions, is something else altogether. Not only that, but he also blamed both the local authorities for reacting “too slowly” and the Central Weather Bureau for “inaccurate” forecasts.

Such remarks are not only uncalled for — who could have predicted that Morakot would bring rain unlike anything the country has seen in 50 years? — they also needlessly alienate individuals who are struggling to cope with the emergency (and, in the CWB’s case, they risk angering Cabinet-level officials).

Had Ma not had a track record of doing this (see, for example, his eerily similar reaction to floods in June last year), we could perhaps have explained his comments by arguing that he, too, is overwhelmed, that he is tired. But he’s done that time and again, deflecting responsibility, blaming others and claiming that dealing with natural catastrophes is not the remit of the president.

Perhaps. There might very well be a governmental org chart somewhere that supports what he said, that shows that relief efforts are the responsibility of the Cabinet and not that of the president. This notwithstanding, this does not give him permission to act callously, to insult the CWB (which did a fine job tracking the typhoon), ignore ordinary people and lay the blame on “poor” local (read southern Taiwan, green southern Taiwan) reaction.

President Ma is fixed on his cross-strait policy, so much so that catastrophes at home fail to light the fire in his belly the way they should if he were a true leader of and for the people. We can almost hear him think: “Not my responsibility, but look how great my China policy is! Oh, you’re suffering? Poor thing. An ECFA’s gonna be great, believe me!”

Now let’s see. Lien “Black Gold” Chan donated 1 million yuan (US$143,000) worth of down coats and 2.5 million yuan in cash to earthquake-affected areas in Sichuan in May last year — a generous act, truly. While the magnitude of the disaster in Taiwan is far, far less than that in Sichuan, there nevertheless is a serious need for help. The question is, will Lien donate?

Lastly, I can see this looming on the horizon, the specter of Beijing offering relief aid to Taiwan. The opportunity to demonstrate “goodwill” might just be too good for Beijing to ignore, which, if it happens, Ma would seize to once again show that his cross-strait policy is working. If that were to happen, we can be certain that his gratitude to China would be far more heartfelt than that for local officials, including some Cabinet-level officials.

UPDATE

The confirmed number of dead in southern Taiwan is now 41. Judging from images in TV and various news reports I have read, we have yet to see the kind of mobilization from rescue teams and the military that the situation warrants. Where are the soldiers? I have been informed that the military has cancelled the air show portion of the Taipei Aerospace & Defence Technology Exhibition because of the typhoon, and yet military personnel helping with rescue operations has been few and far between — especially for a military of Taiwan’s size, with about 200,000 active duty forces and 1.5 million in the reserve.

Perhaps this has something to do with the government refusing to declare a state of emergency. No one seems to be in charge and coordination seems to be deficient, leading to villages asking why other villages are being rescued first. While Ma criticized the CWB for its inability to predict the future and assess imponderables, his administration now has all the variables to assess the scale of relief efforts that need to be launched. The facts are there, on the ground, and the severity of the situation is quantifiable. This is where the slow reaction is occurring — in the central government, not in the regions.

The longer this is allowed to continue, the more lives will be lost needlessly.

Book on extreme poverty in rural China sheds light on Xinjiang riots

One day after the deadly July 5 riots in Urumqi and other parts of Xinjiang, I was observing how unusually candid Chinese authorities were about the incident, allowing the outside world to see more of rural violence than was usually the case. As I wrote back then, Chinese media and local authorities allowed the release of extremely graphic pictures not only of the clashes themselves, but also of their victims. Why, I asked then, was China allowing this, given that doing so would undermine the image of stability it has long sought to broadcast abroad?

The answer, it turns out, is all in how it’s spun, a subject that Chinese writers Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao touch upon in their highly readable Will the Boat Sink the Water: The Life of China’s Peasants. Through a number of case studies (mostly in Anhui Province), Chen and Wu demonstrate how individuals at the bottom of China’s so-called socialist society are mistreated, overtaxed and abused, with little recourse for redress, let alone compensation. In case after case, we see peasants struggling to bring justice to their villages and townships, first turning to local (and often corrupt) officials, only to be turned back or beaten by thugs hired by the authorities. On some occasions, peasants manage to bring the case to the county level — and sometimes even to Beijing — only to see their hopes dashed as reports and recommendations go down the chain of command, and requests for investigation trickle down to those who were responsible for the abuse in the first place, whereupon peasants are punished, beaten, arrested, and sometimes murdered.

When whole villages say enough is enough and mobilize, riot police is called in, resulting in mass arrests and more violence. It is here, I think, when tensions have reached a boiling point, when whole villages rise up, that lies the key to the Xinjiang riots and why the government allowed the story to come out. In the cases discussed in Chen and Wu’s book, the “official” story — that is, the one sanctioned by the authorities and reported by state-controlled media — focuses on the violence without providing any of the background, or any of the accumulation of top-down injustice that led to conflict. By spinning “riots” as instantaneous acts of violence threatening social stability rather than an ultimate act of desperation, it is easy for the Chinese government to depict the “rioters” as “extremists” and “terrorists.” In many of the cases exposed in the book, the victims often end up portrayed as the aggressors, while the heavy-handed police response — often unwarranted and disproportionate — is ignored.

The same applies to the July 5 riots. While we saw and read much about the “spontaneous” violence, we were provided with little information, if any, about the root cause of the problem, which was likely the accumulation, over months (if not years), of grievances by the oppressed party (Uighurs). Based on the precedents laid out in Chen and Wu’s book, we can safely assume that Uighur leaders went to the authorities to try to resolve matters and apprise cadres of whatever injustice they were suffering. We can assume as well that their pleas were ignored. It is quite likely that some of them were arrested or beaten; in fact, their ethnicity as Uighurs and minority status probably made it easier for Han authorities to mistreat them and to ignore their pleas.

The riots were not orchestrated from abroad, nor, unlike what Beijing claims, did World Uighur Congress Rebeya Kadeer sanction them. This wasn’t terrorism either. Far more likely, it was a situation that came to a boil after calls for justice were ignored again and again. This knowledge allows us to question the veracity of official Chinese claims that the majority of the 200 or so dead were Han killed at the hands of Uighur, and to be critical about the circumstances under which they lost their lives: Were they innocent bystanders, or were they, too, armed and involved in the violence? Were they the victims, or the aggressors?

Far more than just exposing the widening gap between rich and poor in China, or the inefficiency that is inherent in a system of government in which the ratio of official to commoner is 1:67 (5,430,000 people on government payroll in 1989), with no less than five levels of government, Chen and Wu’s work of investigative journalism sheds precious light onto Chinese media reporting on unrest in rural areas and how even apparent openness, such as we saw during the Xinjiang riots, in fact masks all the important points.

(One odd thing about the book is that Chen and Wu used their real names for the publication of Zhongguo Nongmin Diaocha (The Life of China’s Peasants), which, as expected, had deleterious consequences for their careers (they are husband and wife). Soon after their book was banned, bricks were thrown at their house, and police would not intervene. They were sued, denounced on TV, and Chen was forced to resign from his job. Given everything they had seen, one wonders how they could have imagined that their book would be welcomed by the Chinese government, or that they would not be harassed for publishing it.)

Book Review: Trading with the enemy: the paradox of economic integration

It would be difficult to overstate the importance and timeliness of Scott Kastner’s Political Conflict and Economic Interdependence Across the Taiwan Strait and Beyond, which seeks to explain why, despite hostile political relations between Taipei and Beijing, economic ties have not only persisted, but accelerated.

Kastner, an assistant professor in the department of government and politics at the University of Maryland, goes far beyond the general, albeit contested, view that increased trade between two states reduces the likelihood of armed conflict. Rather, he argues that the more important question is when conflict affects trade. His main hypothesis is that national leaderships that are more accountable to “internationalist economic interests” are less likely to act in ways that threaten economic stability.

To make his case, Kastner looks at three protracted hostile political relationships, or dyads — Taiwan-China, India-Pakistan and South-North Korea — with emphasis on the Taiwan Strait. What follows is a fascinating exploration of the cross-strait paradox, whereby despite serious political conflict, trade between the two sides from the 1980s on has accelerated.

While prior to the mid-1980s economic interaction between Taiwan and China was extremely limited, democratization in Taiwan, added to a revaluation of the New Taiwan dollar that made domestic manufacturing less competitive, brought gradual changes in Taipei’s policies on investment in China. Democratization meant that the authorities became more accountable to the people and could no longer ignore business associations, or the “internationalist economic interests,” which gained clout as the size of the businesses investing in China grew. As liberalization intensified, the cost to the national leadership of ignoring those interests, or of preventing their expansion, increased.

Full review is available in the Taipei Times here.

A review of Zhao Ziyang’s ‘Prisoner of the State’

Former Chinese premier and Communist Party secretary-general Zhao Ziyang’s (趙紫陽) memoir, Prisoner of the State, was released on May 19, just in time for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Prior to its release, many wondered if the volume — based on about 30 tapes that he recorded, in secret, around 2000, when he was still under house arrest following the events of 1989 — would cause a stir in China. After all, the Beijing leadership created an emergency body to deal with the potential repercussions of Zhao’s death in 2005, fearing that his passing could somehow reawaken passion for liberalism among Chinese, a passion for which, given his reform-mindedness and opposition to the crackdown at Tiananmen Square, he had become a figurehead — or would have, that is, had he not been completely erased from people’s collective memory by his house arrest and severe restrictions on travel.

Zhao’s book, the result of efforts by a group of individuals in China who risked their personal safety to bring his thoughts to an international audience, came out, it sold well and was generally well received. And Beijing ignored it.

Now that this milestone has passed, and with a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) whose grip on power is perhaps more secure than it ever has been in its 60-year history, the relevant thing to do with Zhao’s book is to mine it for insights into the inner workings of the CCP and the man himself. After all, if Zhao the reformist managed to climb the ladder of power, other officials within the CCP today could be made of the same mettle and, given the right circumstances, could endeavor to continue Zhao’s efforts to liberalize the country’s political system.

One thing that is important to note, however — and Prisoner of the State makes this quite clear — is that while Zhao was undoubtedly a reformist on the economy, his political views when he was a party official were relatively conservative. At the very least, they were pragmatic, and Zhao demonstrates time and again that he could play with the best as he sought to maneuver amid the main factions within the party, those that sought to open China to the world and experiment with market economy under a socialist system, against those whose views seemed to have ossified back in the 1950s. Only late in life, after years of house arrest and a few years before his death, did Zhao seem to acknowledge that, though not without its flaws, the Western style of parliamentary democracy is superior to other forms of governance, and should therefore be emulated, however gradually, by China. The key here is that while he was in power, such thoughts do not appear to ever have crossed his mind, and Zhao toed the line like any other CCP official when it came to ensuring the supremacy of the party, or the question of Taiwan (which gets surprisingly little mention).

Contrary to popular knowledge, Zhao’s political star waned before the tragic events of June 4, 1989, as his conservative detractors within the party used a botched consumer goods price adjustment, which resulted in panic and a bank run, to strike at the economic liberalization he had carefully managed, with elder Deng Xiaoping’s (鄧小平) blessing (while history credits Deng with laying the foundations to China’s economic development, Zhao’s memoirs clearly show that the theory and hard work behind this success was largely his). His soft approach to the demonstration in the lead-up to the Tiananmen Square Massacre, his assessment that the student demonstrators did not threaten the survival of the CCP, and his willingness to talk with them to find common ground also served as ammunition for his conservative opponents, who saw his handling of the matter as proof that he was attempting to split the party, or even sided with the students. (Ironically, Zhao seems to have believed that the demonstrators only wanted the CCP to correct its flaws rather than challenge the one-party authoritarian state, a view that, with the advantage of hindsight, seems a little naïve.)

While Prisoner of the State does not reveal much that wasn’t already in the literature (e.g., The Tiananmen Papers) about the weeks leading to the Tiananmen Square Massacre, when Zhao’s retelling of that period is taken in the context of the growing opposition to his rule, which he discusses in the sections “War in the Politburo” and “A Tumultuous Year,” it becomes easier to see how the CCP — with Deng’s approval — would quickly dispose of Zhao and turn back the clock on reform, both economic and political.

The section “House Arrest” is of particular interest, as it shows the lengths the CCP and the security apparatus would go to make sure Zhao did not come in contact with society. The result is tragicomedy, with Zhao having to fight to play a round of golf at a Japanese-owned gold course; the state’s refusal for him to travel anywhere near Hong Kong and Guangdong, or to attend funerals; and its outright refusal to reply to his numerous letters asking for a description of, and the rationale behind, the restrictions imposed on him under his house arrest. This section highlights the randomness and lack of logic that is inherent to authoritarian states, so much so that the state’s 30-point investigative report about Zhao’s “misdeeds” during the Tiananmen crisis — which is quoted in full — reads more like an homage to his actions than a list of incriminating evidence.

Equally relevant is the section on Zhao’s personal journey on the economic front, which culminated in his efforts, as premier, to bring about liberalization of the economy, an enterprise that, given the not insubstantial opposition to reform that existed at the time, would not have succeeded had it not been for Deng’s similar views on the matter.

Late in his active political career, Zhao seemed to have reached the conclusion that economic reform could not continue without some degree of political reform, with the caveat that the CPP should remain primus inter pares. However, by the time he was adopting those views, it was already too late, and the drift toward his political exclusion had already begun, with the events of June 4 — and Zhao’s opposition to the use of force against the demonstrators — serving as the ultimate push that sent him to his demise.

Ultimately, what is most striking about Prisoner of the State isn’t what it tells us about Zhao, whose views, though progressive for the time and the party he served, are far from exceptional. In fact, most of what he discusses — even the most “controversial” aspects — are just plain common sense. The truly striking thing is that people in China today, 20 years after the disruptive events at Tiananmen Square, still have to risk their personal safety and that of their families to bring this book into being. What Prisoner of the State shows us, therefore, is that while China has grown by leaps on the economic front, politically it remains a country that, to paraphrase Zhao, is run by a few men who refuse to yield an inch on their control of the state. Toward the end, Zhao saw the need for a free press in China. That books like this collection would continue to be banned in China today, or that individuals would have to use cloak-and-dagger measures to bring the tapes out and compile them into a book, shows us that freedom of expression still doesn’t exist in China. Therein, perhaps, lies Zhao’s penultimate condemnation of the CCP, his final act of defiance.

Prisoner of the State isn’t a bad book; in fact, it’s a pretty good book. But there’s nothing dangerous in it — not even for the CCP.

Cross-strait semantics

When one is as immersed in the fascinating world of politics of identity and sovereignty in Taiwan as I am (which probably applies to many readers), the seemingly careless manner in which academics and the media use of words to characterize relations across the Taiwan Strait can be frustrating. Seen through this lens, terminology such as “Mainland,” “island” and “one China” take on a special meaning.

Three terms that are bandied about as if they were interchangeable are deserving of special consideration, as their meaning is in fact quite divergent: reunification, unification, and annexation.

Reunification is often used, though not exclusively, by the regime in Beijing, which continues to claim that Taiwan is part of China. Aside from historical documentation supporting the fact that Taiwan never was part of China and that it was not “returned” to China after the end of World War II, it would be an even more grievous fallacy to claim that Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic of China.

Unification, meanwhile, implies that the two sides are in favor of a union and that both are proactively pursuing that objective. While both the regime in Beijing and Chinese in general agree to that goal, poll after poll in Taiwan has shown that the great majority of people in Taiwan (90 percent) support the “status quo” rather than a union with China. As such, when one side favors an outcome that is not sought by the other, the term unification is inapplicable.

Which brings us to the third term, annexation, which is a far better description of the situation in the Taiwan Strait. Annexation involves the appendage of a small entity to a larger one, and though it does not do so explicitly, it also implies a force imbalance in the relationship, meaning that the union is sought against the will of the smaller entity. As we have seen, despite the cross-strait rapprochement launched by the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration and growing cross-strait exchanges in the economic, social and political spheres, the desire for a union with China does not exist at the moment (in fact, support for the “status quo” has grown in inverse proportion to cross-strait integration over the past 20 years). Annexation would gain special meaning if Ma’s policies engendered such dependence on China as to put Taiwan in a straightjacket.

Three words, all used as if they meant the same thing; but in fact, they are laden with implications regarding history, dynamics, and will. For readers who are acquainted with the history of Taiwan’s relations with China, it is easy to tell which words are closer to approximating the truth. But for readers abroad, who may not know much about the situation — but whose support could be key one day — misuse of the terms could create false impressions and mislead them as they make decisions.

GIO angered by removal of film

By Shih Hsiu-chuan and J. Michael cole
STAFF REPORTERS

The Government Information office (GIO) yesterday expressed its displeasure at Fortissimo Films, the Amsterdam-based distributor of the movie Miao Miao (渺渺), following the controversial withdrawal of the film from the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF).

“We feel deep regret that Fortissimo pulled the movie without informing Taiwan in advance,” said Frank Chen (陳志寬), director of the GIO’s Department of Motion Pictures.

Chen said the withdrawal had “hurt the image of Taiwan.”

The office was unclear about the name under which the movie was registered at the festival.

Chen said the GIO would seek reimbursement of a NT$4 million (US$123,000) subsidy it gave to Taiwan Jet Tone (台灣澤東公司) if the movie was not registered at the festival under the country’s name, as stipulated in the contract granting the funds in 2005.

Taiwan Jet Tone obtained the subsidy to co-produce the film, directed by Taiwanese director Cheng Hsiao-tse (程孝澤) and with mostly Taiwanese actors, with Hong Kong-based Jet Tone Film Ltd (香港澤東公司).

In protest at the festival’s refusal of a request from the Chinese Consulate in Australia not to air the documentary 10 Conditions of Love about exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer at the film festival, China withdrew its four films from the event late last month.

Miao Miao was also pulled, with the GIO and Taiwan Jet Tone offering different accounts of who made the decision and why.

The withdrawal has met with mounting criticism as it suggested not only that Miao Miao, a Taiwanese film, was categorized as a Chinese film in an international film festival, but also that Taiwan was siding with Beijing in the repression of Uighurs.

Chen Bau-shu (陳寶旭), the person in charge of Hong Kong Jet Tone Film’s business in Taiwan, denied yesterday that the withdrawal was inappropriate.

“I don’t think pulling the film was in violation of the funding contract [signed between the GIO and the company], which would lead to the [revocation of the funds],” Chen Bau-shu said before meeting GIO officials.

Chen Bau-shu said the film production and the distributor jointly decided to pull the film from the festival as “there was a weird ambiance going around the film festival.”

Repeatedly asked by reporters to specify what she meant by “weird ambiance,” Chen declined to elaborate, saying the festival was “politicized” and had lost the spirit a film festival should have.

“[We made the decision because of] the complexity of the festival’s atmosphere. There were many political issues involved … Initially we thought the film festival may be an opportunity to promote the film, but now we’d rather not get involved,” she said.

Chen Bau-shu said that it was only a “coincidence” that Miao Miao was pulled at the same time as the Chinese movies.

“I don’t agree with the criticism that we withdrew the movie to cater to China. The withdrawal of the movie has nothing to do with our plan to broadcast the movie in China,” she said, adding she did not know if China was suppressing Uighurs.

“It’s not my business,” she said.

Asked about the impact of the withdrawal on Taiwan’s image, Chen Bau-shu said: “I can only say I am very sorry for the damage the withdrawal did to Taiwan’s image.”

In an e-mail to the Taipei Times later yesterday, a representative from Jet Tone in Hong Kong wrote: “Regarding … the issue of [the] GIO subsidy [to the movie festival], our production Miao Miao has entered all the international film festivals so far as an entry of Taiwan/Hong Kong. Jet Tone Films is listed on all documents as the production company and this is in no conflict with any existing regulations. We have already explained this point to the Government Information Office Film Dept.”

“The withdrawal from the Melbourne Film Festival [was] made by the film owner who believes the current edition of the festival has become a hotbed of political ideas and jeopardize[d] any dialogue and exchange amongst creative people,” the firm wrote. “Thus we [took] the decision to withdraw from the festival. This is [not in] conflict with existing regulation and there is no external factor influencing our decisions. We hope you will all respect our decisions.”

“About the withdraw[al] from the Melbourne Film Festival, we regret that we did not have sufficient time to notify the Government Information Office. But we believe film art is above politics,” it said.

“The purpose of Taiwan’s Jet Tone Films is to groom the talents from Taiwan and support Taiwanese cinema,” it said. “Miao Miao was shot entirely in Taiwan using talents both in front and behind the camera.”

Jet Tone was founded by Hong Kong moviemaker Wang Kar-wai (王家衛), one of the three producers of Miao Miao. It has offices in Hong Kong, Taipei and Shanghai.

This article can be accessed on the Taipei Times Web site.

The language used by both Chen Bau-shu, the person in charge of Hong Kong Jet Tone Film’s business in Taiwan, and the communiqué sent me by Norman Wang at Jet Tone in Hong Kong is quite interesting. Chen’s purported ignorance regarding the repression of Uighurs by the Chinese state, her contention that the removal of the Chinese films and that from Taiwan was purely “coincidental” and her comments about the ambiance at the festival being “weird” all smack of Chinese propaganda.

Even worse was the communiqué, with its contention that “the current edition of the festival has become a hotbed of political ideas and jeopardize[d] any dialogue and exchange amongst creative people” and “film art is above politics,” which read like they were written by some propagandist back in Beijing (especially words like “hotbed.”

Since when are movies apolitical? Furthermore, if film are were above politics, as the communiqué states, the why would Chinese producers pull their movies over a political matter — the repression of Uighurs by China? Movie content will never be entirely apolitical. There is also a contradiction in the statement that a “hotbed of political ideas” is jeopardizing dialogue and exchange, which seems to be lost on the drafters of the memo.

Hopefully a price will be paid by those who made the decision to pull the movies from the festival, if only in bad publicity and diminishing sales at the box office. One can hope, too, that this will have served as a wake-up call for Taiwanese creative artists and government agencies such as the GIO that have pushed for cross-strait cooperation in the arts. One thing is sure: I’m never paying to see a movie directed, written or produced by Wang Kar-wai again. My Blueberry Nights, though cute, wasn’t all that great anyway.

TECO could still fund Melbourne Film Festival [UPDATED]

By Jenny W. Hsu and J. Michael Cole

STAFF REPORTERS

The Taipei Economic and Relations Office (TECO) in Australia said yesterday it had proposed to the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) that it resume its status as a “cultural partner” after sponsorship was annulled when a Taiwanese film was withdrawn by its Hong Kong production company last month. TECO’s Information Division Director Jerry Chuang (莊正安) told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview that his office had made the pitch to the organizer and was waiting for an answer.

Chuang said the sponsorship became void when feature film Miao Miao was pulled, but when it was pointed out that Taiwan still had two short films — Joyce Agape and The Pursuit of What Was —in the event, TECO decided the conditions of the sponsorship hadn’t changed.

“We are eager to resume our sponsorship to show our full support for the festival,” Chuang said.

The proposal came amid a China-initiated boycott of the festival surrounding the presentation of a documentary on the life of World Uighur Congress president Rebiya Kadeer and an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report on Saturday that said: “All Chinese-language films were withdrawn from the festival in protest, and Hong Kong and Taipei’s trade offices both pulled their sponsorship.”

Contacted by the Taipei Times on Monday for comment before the resumption of sponsorship idea had been floated, festival spokeswoman Louise Heseltine said: “We never said the Taiwan Trade Office withdrew funding.”

“The festival receives funding from both the Hong Kong Trade Office and TECO based on the festival screening films from those regions,” Heseltine said.

However, “if there are no Hong Kong or Taiwanese films screening at the festival, then the sponsorship agreement becomes void,” said Heseltine, who once lived in Taiwan.

Last week the festival announced that Miao Miao, by Taiwanese director Cheng Hsiao-tse (程孝澤), was among the seven Chinese-language films pulling out of the festival. The movie was produced by Wong Kar-Wai (王家衛), Jacky Pang (彭綺華) and Stanley Kwan Kam-pang (關錦鵬). Its distributors in Taiwan and Hong Kong are Golden Scene and Warner Bros International respectively. The international distributor is the Netherlands-based Fortissimo Films, which has a branch office in Hong Kong.

In an e-mail to the Taipei Times yesterday, Courtney Noble, director of Festivals and Markets at Fortissimo Films in Amsterdam, wrote: “We received a formal request from the producer/owners of the film [Miao Miao] that it be pulled. As we have a contractual obligation with them and all of our producers to follow their instructions, we proceeded to do so.”

“The Melbourne Festival with whom our company has a longstanding relationship was extremely gracious and cooperative in immediately agreeing to this request,” Noble said.

This article can be accessed on the Taipei Times Web site.

During my conversations with Ms Heseltine, she made it clear that TECO had not “withdrawn” its funding for the festival, but rather that as Taiwan would not be presenting any movies at the MIFF, agreements on financial contributions would be “void.” The key words here are “withdrawn” and “void,” are the first implies proactive and willful removal, while the latter is merely the result, however unfortunate, of abidance to a contract. “Withdrawal” could also have political undertones (e.g., Taiwan siding with Beijing on the Kadeer issue), while “void” does not have political connotations. The fact that TECO has sought to resume sponsorship, based on the fact that two shorts by Taiwanese are still participating at the festival, supports this argument.

What I also learned from my conversation with Fortissimo Film in the Netherlands is that the decision to respect contractual agreements with the producers and owners of the movie Miao Miao appears to have been made at company headquarters in Amsterdam rather than at the regional office in Hong Kong (which did not reply to my requests for comment). Ms Noble was noncommittal on the possibility of there being a rift between Amsterdam and Hong Kong on the removal of the film, and would not elaborate on whether headquarters disagreed with the turn of events.

I find it interesting that this would occur merely one week after the Government Information Office (GIO) announced that starting this month, Taiwan and China would be allowed to cooperate on TV production. In an editorial I produced on the GIO’s announcement, I wrote, perhaps presciently, given last week’s events: “The risk is that through a process of filtering, Taiwanese productions that refuse to have their artistic integrity muzzled will be unable to make it in the Chinese market, while those that do will reap the financial benefits.” Miao Miao is a clear example of the toxicity of cooperation with China in the artistic field, which beyond what I wrote in the editorial, extends to markets abroad. The moment a single dollar is invested by China in a movie production (and in future, this could also apply to literature and other forms of entertainment), Taiwanese artists will be held hostage to Chinese censorship and see their freedom of expression curtailed. Notwithstanding the realities of the markets and the difficulties Taiwanese producers are facing, it might not be a bad idea if they explored alternatives to cooperation in the arts, such as Japan, Australia, South Korea and the US. Of course, linguistic and cultural similarities make China a natural choice for cooperation, but when this comes at a cost of freedom of expression, any artist who is true to his calling should refuse to be muzzled.

It is no small irony that the producers who were ostensibly behind the decision to withdraw Miao Miao — Wong Kar-Wai, Jacky Pang and Stanley Kwan Kam-pang — all became famous thanks to the openness of the creative industry they now appear to have turned their backs on. Wong (dir. 2046, My Blueberry Nights), Pang (prod. Eros, 2046, My Blueberry Nights) and Kwan (dir. Rouge), seem to be following in the footsteps of Chinese director Zhang Yimou (張藝謀, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, To Live) in turning their backs on Western liberalism after becoming famous (and rich) because of it. As we know, Zhang is now the Chinese Communist Party’s unofficial state propagandist, having orchestrated the Beijing opening ceremonies and being in charge of the celebrations surrounding the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1. A worrying difference between Zhang and the three producers/directors named above is that while Zhang is clearly identified with China, Wong, Pang and Kwan are all from the Hong Kong film industry. Their decision on Miao Miao could be the result of two things: either Chinese ideology is making inroads in Hong Kong and is starting to undermine the more liberal ideological system that prevailed there, even after retrocession in 1997; or their own movie studios are under the financial control of elements in China proper, which then raises the possibility that they were pressured into making that decision. I have made inquiries in certain channels in Hong Kong to determine which of the three had a say in the decision, and what may have prompted them to make that choice. I don’t know if any answers are forthcoming.

Waging war on Chinese hackers

Cyber attacks by Chinese government agencies or citizens have become so rampant that, except when critical sectors such as the US defense establishment are targeted, the world can manage little more than a shrug, as if this were the natural state of things. The latest instance of Chinese hackers targeting Web sites abroad involves the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), which twice — last weekend and this — was attacked because of its organizers’ refusal to yield to pressure by Beijing not to screen 10 Conditions of Love, a documentary about exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, and Canberra’s granting Kadeer a visa so that she could attend the screening.

While the first attack only involved alterations to content of the festival’s Web site (displaying the Chinese flag and anti-Kadeer slogans, as well as spam), the second forced the managers of the Web site to shut down online ticket sales. Richard Moore, the director of the MIFF, said that as 65 percent of ticket sales are carried online, the attack would have serious financial repercussions on the festival.

At this point, it is impossible to determine whether the attacks were orchestrated by the Chinese security apparatus or ultranationalist Chinese, with or without state sanction. Irrespective of this, the latest attack — and many others before it — represent political and economic warfare, and China has a responsibility to protect the financial interests of other countries. While Beijing certainly retains the right to express its displeasure, via diplomatic channels, at the policy decisions of other states, it is unacceptable for it to engage in, or at minimum condone, economic warfare against market economies that have contributed to its economic boom.

In light of this, private companies and countries that have been targets of Chinese economic warfare should not only challenge Chinese authorities to prevent such attacks in future, but also take legal action against the perpetrators.

China is one of the 187 members of Interpol (it took over the ROC’s seat at the international law enforcement agency in September 1984). One of Interpol’s mandates is fighting financial and high-tech crimes, which include computer virus attacks and cyber-terrorism. As Beijing has openly admitted, China benefited tremendously from cooperation with Interpol during the Olympic Games last year, where the agency screened every visitor’s passport through its vast database. But membership in multilateral organizations does not just confer benefits upon its members; it also carries responsibilities. One such responsibility for Beijing is to punish perpetrators of cyber crime and prevent such attacks from recurring.

As it modernizes and continues to develop political and economic relations with the community of nations, China must demonstrate that it is a country run by rule of law, where the rights of individuals, governments and corporations are protected, both at home and abroad. Failing to do this, China will never be able to cultivate foreign confidence in its ability to address crime through rigorous law rather than the arbitrariness of ideology. Cyber crime would be a good area for Beijing to show its willingness to fight crime and fulfill its role as a member of Interpol and responsible global actor.

Whether we like it or not, Beijing has every right to use the appropriate channels to reprimand states that do not act according to its will, as it did by summoning Australia’s ambassador to China on the Kadeer visa. But to resort to disruptive economic warfare against private institutions or film festivals that present documentaries it disagrees with is not only childish — it goes against the very principles of global trade and, equally important, it undermines freedom of expression in other countries.

It’s about time the world stopped reacting with complacency to Chinese bullying, state-sanctioned or otherwise.

The unbearable ‘status quo’

I remember reading years ago an article by Victor D. Cha in International Security that strongly influenced my views on the assumption of rational actors in international relations. Cha’s piece,
“Hawk Engagement and Preventive Defense on the Korean Peninsula,” argued that North Korea’s apparent irrationality vis-à-vis South Korea and the US — which in the extreme could include “preemptive/preventive action and coercive bargaining” — could be explained by Pyongyang assessing that the “status quo” in the Korean Peninsula had become unbearable. Shaking that “status quo,” therefore, was better than doing nothing, as any outcome would be preferable the status quo ante. Published in 2002, Cha’s article was visionary, as it helps explain Kim Jong-il’s brinkmanship since then, from missile launches to nuclear tests.

What I derived from this also had an impact on how I have come to assess another “status quo” in the region — that in the Taiwan Strait. For years, the “status quo” in the Strait has meant (a) no attempt by China to annex Taiwan by force, and (b) no move by Taipei to create formal independence, a balance of ambiguity that has been favored by the US, among others. While ensuring that a certain level of tension would remain, it was a non-outcome that did not have an overly negative impact for the players involved.

Ironically, however, status quos are inherently dynamic, meaning that while an impression of stasis or immobility is created, undercurrents are nevertheless shifting. One example of this is the deepening, despite the “status quo,” of Taiwanese identity and, conversely, the drop in identification as “Chinese” or “Chinese and Taiwanese” over time.

Since the election of Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to the presidency in May last year and the introduction, soon afterwards, of his China-friendly policies, the dynamics of the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait have seen a dramatic transformation. Here again, while both sides have vowed not to push for unification or independence during Ma’s first term, accelerating economic integration — in the form of a proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) and Chinese investment in various sectors of the Taiwanese economy — as well as growing party-to-party contact mean that while, on paper, the political “status quo” persists, time is now in China’s favor. The longer this integration continues, and the deeper it gets, the stronger will be the undercurrents provoking a drift toward unification.

Given this, added to the Ma administration’s apparent disregard for opposition to its China policies, the perception that the “status quo” is becoming unbearable — that is, that its continuation is having a negative impact on Taiwan — should be expected to grow within the pro-independence pan-green movement in Taiwan. Both for protectionist sentiment (among certain sectors of the Taiwanese economy that stand to lose from cross-strait economic liberalization) and political fears (loss of sovereignty), and absent regular outlets to voice apprehensions or effect change on government policy, opposition to Ma will likely become radicalized and “irrational” as oppositionists begin weighing pros and cons of radical action in a different light.

The implications are that should the “status quo” continue to drift in Beijing’s favor (and there is no indication that it won’t under the Ma administration), the negative cost of the “status quo” will increase, and with that, so will certain element’s evaluation of what is permissible to detract the “status quo” from its present course.

As North Korea demonstrated, Pyongyang’s cost-benefit analysis has been warped by the negative externalities — real or perceived — of the “status quo” in the Korean Peninsula, to such an extent that, from the outside, its actions appear to have become increasingly irrational, if not suicidal. But seen from the inside, if the “status quo” has become unbearable, any action that creates a departure from the status quo ante is better than stasis.

There is no reason why, at some point, certain elements in Taiwan would not reach a similar conclusion and adopt a course of action that departs from the norm and appears to be “irrational.” It is impossible to know what form this would take, or who it would target, but if things continue apace, and if the Ma administration remains as unresponsive to dissent as it is today, something will give eventually.

Two constituencies Ma can’t ignore (yet)

Perhaps as a result of my working on a book review of Scott Kastner’s excellent Political Conflict and Economic Interdependence Across the Taiwan Strait and Beyond, I have recently begun paying more attention to the role of domestic constituencies in political decisionmaking. While Kastner’s book focuses on the impact of “internationalist business interests” on cross-strait political decisionmaking — which I also address in my July 29 article “What’s behind Taiwan’s stock/media bias?” — another segment that historically has had substantial influence on Taipei’s policy choices is, for obvious reasons, the military establishment.

As is becoming increasingly evident, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration is bound and driven by big business and financial institutions to an extent that is probably unprecedented in the history of the party. Given the close relationship between big business, the banking sector, and the KMT, it is no surprise that Ma’s cross-strait policies have been greatly beneficial to those sectors, and that whatever friction may have existed under previous iterations of the party, such as under president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), has largely disappeared. This is largely the result of the leaders’ divergent assessments of the impact of cross-strait economic integration as well as on their respective stance on the question of Taiwanese independence.

For Lee, whose political views on Taiwanese sovereignty took precedence over business interests, cross-strait economic integration had negative externalities, which accounted for his efforts, especially after his re-election in 1996, to “go south” (i.e., diversify foreign investment destinations to minimize reliance on China) and proceed with caution.

The Ma administration, for its part, appears to be indentured to the business community, while it clearly sees cross-strait economic liberalization as less threatening. In fact, Ma and his aides see integration as a stabilizing force, a view that is thoroughly supported by the business community. Another important factor is the fact that while Ma has vowed not to achieve unification during his first term, this development remains a long-term objective of today’s KMT.

But while Ma can count on the corporate and financial sectors to back his policies, and while he can expect full backing — especially now that he is KMT chairman — of the legislature, of which the pan-blue camp controls three quarters of the seats, there are two constituencies, one domestic and one foreign, that he cannot afford to neglect: the military, and Washington.

Ma’s pronouncements on the military balance in the Taiwan Strait, added to his stated willingness to procure for the Taiwanese military the means to defend itself, have at times sounded paradoxical when contrasted with his public statements on political reconciliation with Beijing. In fact, his averred desire to purchase weapons from Washington cannot but have strained relations with Beijing — and yet, this is one sector where Ma has tended to sound like his predecessors.

It would be difficult to reconcile his public statements on defense appropriations with his political statements vis-à-vis Beijing and ostensible efforts to undermine defense (e.g., downgrading of Han Kuang military exercises) were it not for the fact that the military is probably the last remaining branch of government that has remained wary of Beijing’s intentions, as evidenced by its reaction to the Japan Defense Ministry’s White Paper released earlier this month. As such, the military probably represents the last domestic constituency challenge to Ma’s cross-strait policies, and one way to placate it and keep criticism to a minimum is to maintain weapons procurement and to keep military spending at a stable level. 

Ma has yet to consolidate his powerbase to such an extent that he can afford to ignore the apprehensions of the military, although purges, in the form of corruption probes, could soon change that by whittling away at the sectors of the military that remain resistant to unification — in other words, the pan-green elements within the armed forces.

When it comes to Washington, Ma has also been forced to edge against the possibility of abandonment at a time when uncertainty remains in the Taiwan Strait. Over the years, proof of political commitment and good relations with the US has largely come in the form of arms purchases. If Ma were to suddenly cut off the arms procurement spigot with the US, Washington could react either by increasing pressure on Taipei (especially by US constituents that fear a scenario in which Taiwan becomes part of the Chinese camp in East Asia) or abandon it altogether, which could have serious ramifications for Taiwan’s ability to defend itself should cross-strait rapprochement get derailed.

Ma cannot yet disregard the interests of the military establishment. The question is, as his powerbase grows and as the military is “cleansed” of what he sees as revisionist elements, will he become increasingly unresponsive to its appeals? One way to assess this will be to see how the military gets reorganized and the conclusions reached by the corruption probes. Another will be to look at Ma’s future pronouncements on military expenditure, and whether words are turned into action — in other words, whether the weapons are actually purchased and fielded.

What’s behind Taiwan’s stock/media bias?

Since Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) came into office in May last year, financial analysts have shown an alarming tendency to attribute rises on the Taiwanese stock market to “closer relations with China” or the signing of agreements between Taipei and Beijing, while drops on the local bourse have often been blamed on mass rallies organized by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). As I have argued before, those assessments — which are picked up by news wire agencies and newspapers for inclusion in their reporting — often ignore macroeconomic variables and regional trends that explain stock fluctuations far better than local political developments.

For example, a modest rise on the Taiwanese stock exchange on July 27 was far more likely to have resulted from global optimism about a financial recovery than the “election” the previous day of Ma as chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). And yet, news agencies — quoting or paraphrasing “dozens” of analysts from global financial institutions, both “local and international,” as a reporter at a major wire agency told me during a telephone interview on Wednesday — wrote that the 0.79 percent rise was the result of Ma’s election and a congratulatory missive from Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤). That very same day, every single market in Asia was up, not because of local developments in Taiwan or even warming ties across the Taiwan Strait, but because investor sentiment was turning optimistic, as a number of wire agencies reported.

This therefore begs the question: Why, all things being equal, are financial analysts and news agencies attributing fluctuations in the Taiwanese stock exchange on local-specific events rather than general macroeconomic trends?

Part of the answer probably lies in the general belief that Ma’s KMT is pro-business, while the DPP is against it (ironically, during his second term, President Lee Teng-hui [李登輝] of the KMT was far more radical in his opposition to cross-strait economic liberalization than Chen Shui-bian [陳水扁] of the DPP was during the first two years of his first term). Still, given the DPP’s pro-independence ideology, the perception that the pan-green camp is not “business friendly” — especially on cross-strait investment and integration — is almost universal, which invites the belief that its actions are aimed at derailing the efforts to increase cross-strait financial cooperation launched by the Ma administration.

But these perceptions alone do not explain why financial analysts would purposefully attribute stock exchange negatives on the DPP and positives on the KMT. Something else must be at play, such as institutional biases or self-interest.

Starting in the mid-1990s, the nature of Taiwanese investment in China changed dramatically after a revaluation of the New Taiwan dollar severely increased the cost of manufacturing domestically, forcing Taiwanese companies to increase their investment abroad. Cultural and linguistic affinities, along with cheap labor and investment incentives, made China a logical choice. Over the years, the size of the Taiwanese companies investing in China also increased dramatically, as did the nature of the products that were manufactured there. In recent years, powerful companies in the electronics and computer sectors, among others, have established a foothold in China.

At least part of the billions of dollars required by those companies to develop business operations in China likely came in the form of loans by financial institutions and other private investors, who have an interest in seeing those investments prosper. Anything that threatens the return on investment — such as tensions in the Taiwan Strait, the threat of embargos or war — is therefore unwelcome by banks and investors who have a stake in stability. Given, as we have seen, the DPP’s pro-independence mandate and Beijing’s claims on Taiwan, the DPP has therefore come to be seen as a “destabilizing” factor, while the KMT, which favors cross-strait economic integration and warmer ties with Beijing, is now perceived as a “stabilizing” force. For Taiwanese companies operating in China (many, though not all, are either pro-KMT or silent about their pan-green political inclination lest they be singled out by Chinese authorities, as has happened in the past), as well as their financial backers, the KMT is therefore seen as a far safer option when it comes to safeguarding their financial interests.

What this means, ultimately, is that the same financial institutions that lend money to Taiwanese companies operating in China will tend to produce, or develop intimate relations with, analysts who rather than being neutral, will politicize their assessments in a way that reflects the financial priorities of their masters. If this means portraying the KMT as business-friendly, or overemphasizing local developments in a way that favors the KMT as a means to explain fluctuations in the financial market, so be it.

Equally important is the fact that many Taiwanese firms, for reasons ranging from insuring their business interests to raising enough capital, have formed multinational corporations (MNCs) with other countries to operate in China. Usually on a bigger scale, those MNCs require huge amounts of capital that can only be obtained from major financial lenders (according to statistics, 400 of the Fortune 500 multinational companies have made direct investments in more than 2,000 projects in China). Given the stakes, those lenders will also seek to ensure that their investments are shielded from the possibly disruptive consequences of rising tensions in the Taiwan Strait. Consequently, MNCs and their international financial backers will tend to disparage the DPP while encouraging the KMT to consolidate stability by accelerating economic integration with China. (This view in part stems from the contentious theory in political science that increased trade between two entities will, over time, reduce the likelihood of conflict or war by rising the cost of conflict.) Maximizing investments and protecting financial interests register far more with those multinationals and financial institutions than the question of Taiwanese sovereignty, which is the raison d’etre of the DPP.

Lastly, we must turn to the convergence of the business sector and the rise of media conglomerates for possible conflicts of interest, which could also account for the bias against the DPP in news reporting. Over the past decade or so, the number of leading companies in the information sector has drastically narrowed. News organizations like Thomson Reuters, Dow Jones and Bloomberg have branched off into other sectors and bolstered their empires through mergers and acquisitions. Thomson Reuters, for example, which has more than 50,000 employees and operates in 93 countries, now operates in the scientific, tax, accounting, legal and media sectors, with revenues last year totaling US$13.4 billion. Like any other major company, Reuters Thomson has sought to expand in China, hoping to tap into the potential 1.3 billion customers there. One recent example of this is the Scientific business of Thomson Reuters, which in September last year formed a partnership with the Investment Promotion Agency of the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China (CIPA) to create a “World Innovation and Investment Promotion Platform” to boost the soft infrastructure of China’s high-tech zones, Xinhua/PRNewswire reported on Sept. 10.

As Mark Garlinghouse, vice president for Asia Pacific at the Scientific, Thomson Reuters, said: “The Scientific business of Thomson Reuters has long been a recognized information partner of top Chinese universities and government institutes such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China’s largest government research institute … We also provide patent, scientific and technical information to … well-known Chinese companies.”

This is just one example among many of media companies diversifying their business and entering lucrative markets with both the private and government sector in China. As incentives increase, and with the promise of lucrative contracts with the cash-heavy Chinese authorities always in the background, it is likely that pressure — subliminal or as the result of direct external persuasion — will eventually build for those companies to “adjust” the information they provide in their news coverage so that it dovetails with their business interest. Times Warner’s ownership of CNN, Disney’s of ABC and General Electric’s of NBC are all examples of conglomerates imposing added business pressures on news organizations.

It is quite possible that portraying the KMT-CCP dyad in a favorable light — at least on the financial front — while painting the DPP in negative terms is the latest iteration of this phenomenon.

As long as big business, MNCs and their financial backers see the DPP as a “destabilizing” threat in Taiwan Strait economic integration, we can expect that the media conglomerates that are increasingly beholden to (if not part of) those giant, multifaceted corporations will continue to disparage the DPP and favor the KMT via stock market analysis.

This article appeared in the Taipei Times on Aug. 7.

Lien Chan’s ‘Great Chinese Nation’

As if it wasn’t enough that the leader of an authoritarian regime would congratulate an increasingly all-powerful and undemocratic Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) over his “election” as chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the KMT’s honorary chairman, Lien Chan (連戰), was yet again home — that is, in Beijing — cavorting with his namesake and insulting the democratic spirit cultivated by Taiwanese over the decades.

Mutual trust based on opposition to “Taiwan independence” and adherence to the so-called “1992 consensus” was the driving force for progress in relations between China and Taiwan, National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Jia Qinglin (賈慶林) said while meeting Lien on Monday.

The development of relations between China and Taiwan, Jia said, need a “solid cultural hold” besides an economic basis. (Translation: Gradual annexation cannot only occur via economic integration, but also through cultural assimilation.)

For his part, Lien said the two sides of the Taiwan Strait should advance the relations in all fields while enhancing economic and cultural exchanges, adding that they (i.e., the KMT and the CCP) should work to help people in China and Taiwan strengthen their sense of identity to the Chinese nation, Chinese culture and history.

“I believe history sides with the revival of the Chinese nation,” said Lien, the same twice-failed presidential candidate who, just as Beijing enacted its “Anti-Secession Law” “legalizing” use of force against Taiwan in March 2005, was being wined and dined in Beijing. (Revival is a word we have been hearing quite a bit in recent days; though it is hard at this point to know exactly what its users mean by it, the term has worrying undertones of nationalism.)

Lien, who in the wake of the devastating 921 Earthquake in central Taiwan almost 10 years ago could not mask his aloofness toward ordinary Taiwanese during a visit near the epicenter, never represented Taiwanese. He is part of a conservative clique within the KMT that represents the interests of the 15 percent of Mainlanders who comprise the population of Taiwan (and even among them, only those who support unification), and the 1.3 billion Chinese. His comments on Monday were not only a denial of Taiwanese identity as separate from the “Chinese nation,” but paralleled increasing signs that Taiwan is on the brink of experiencing “identicide” — a concept advanced by my friend Sarah Jane Meharg in Canada, which consists of the willful erosion by a particular group (usually the dominant one) of the symbols of another group’s identity, including language, cultural icons, sense of place, landmarks and so on.

With news of increasing cooperation between Taiwan and China on TV productions and in the news industry, added to Chinese investment in newspapers in Taiwan, discriminatory ECFA cartoons and talks of finding a common denominator between the traditional Chinese used in Taiwan and the simplified form used in China — as I’ve argued, a “dumbing down” of traditional Chinese — there is ample evidence that Taiwanese culture is under assault and that this will only intensify. For the 85 percent or so of Taiwanese in Taiwan, “strengthening their sense of identity to the Chinese nation” can only mean one thing: the abandonment of who they are.

Lien, still an influential figure within the KMT and, despite his unelected status, in relations across the strait, has no problem with that.