Taiwan
is too strident
in its opposition to China
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments to JonatPower@aol.com
April 5, 2006
LONDON - If the debate in Taiwan
about its political future has descended to the level of
birds and animals it must have some meaning. Perhaps it
is nothing more than an expression of impotence, although
an unnecessary one. This country, threatened and claimed
by China, corralled into submissive behaviour by the
United States, is forced to make its main point by any
means at hand - that it should be free to exert its own
will. "Taiwan has stood up," said President Chen
Shui-bian on the day of his first inauguration six years
ago and most people here believe that, even as they
differ as to how to put it into practice.
But how you fight this struggle
perhaps needs more nuance and restraint than Chen gives
it.
Two days ago the government
announced that it was refusing the gift of two pandas
offered by Beijing in a peace-making gesture. According
to the government this was because Taiwan has no suitable
place to put them. But a few days before, Chen, seemingly
contradictory, said that China should use its military
budget for panda conservation. If he were serious about
this, a modest step might have been to gracefully accept
the pandas. Not surprisingly, the issue has split the
nation.
Two days ago as well, the
government concluded a medical conference on avian flu-
Taiwan sits astride one the principal routes for bird
migration. The intent of this conference was also to poke
China in the eye, but this time more constructively than
is often the case. Why should Taiwan tolerate being
excluded, at China's insistence, from membership of the
World Health Organization? For many days at the onset of
the SARS crisis, which claimed over 180 Taiwanese lives,
the director-general of WHO, Gro Harlem Brundtland, ex
prime minister of Norway, refused to accept even a phone
call from the Taiwanese minister of health. As one senior
doctor told me, "the country became one big isolation
hospital. At the onset of the crisis, we had no help and
no outside expertise at all".
One of Taiwan's troubles is that it
too easily exaggerates its vulnerability. It is a great
moral and political wrong that Taiwan is excluded from
the WHO, indeed from the UN itself, from where it was
summarily ejected when President Richard Nixon made his
historic peace with Mao tse Tung. But Taiwan has also
carved out a great deal of economic and even political
space for itself. It has become, despite a population
less than half the size of Britain's, an industrial and
technological giant with over $130 billion of foreign
exports each year. The last few years it has grown faster
than South Korea. Its investments of capital, machinery
and personnel in China largely made possible China's own
technological revolution. Despite its isolation from the
WHO, it has a fine national health service, only second
in the world to Sweden's according to the Economist
Intelligence Unit.
Politically it becomes maturer by
the year. Its democracy appears to have put down deeper
roots than many much older ones. The human rights abuses
prevalent under the dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek and
his son are history. The press is sophisticated and the
NGO sector thrives. Justice is honest, if at times
erratic.
The political debate is essentially
three sided, although only two political parties really
count. There is perhaps 20% of the voting population who
would like to see Taiwan declare its full and legal
independence and seek admission to the UN. There is
perhaps 15% who want to see reunification with China. But
the vast majority, fairly evenly split between the two
parties, support the status quo. Each time I visit here I
find that sentiment growing stronger. After all the
status quo works, it keeps the peace, it allows great
material and personal advance and it doesn't stop
Taiwanese travelling (there were over 1.5 million flights
in and out of Taiwan last year including 6 million visits
of Taiwanese to China).
The Beijing dragon can and does
growl. But it wouldn't dare bite, despite China's arms
build up and its 800 missiles pointing at Taiwan. China
knows it could never swallow mighty Taiwan. And it knows
that the U.S. with its off shore submarines and 72 F-15s
based in nearby Okinawa would never let it
try.
So why play this game of poking and
provoking China, which Chen too often does? He should
save his fire for big issues like the- Beijing opposed-
planned rewrite of parts of Chiang Kai-shek's
constitution, which will be a useful step forward in the
quest for sovereignty. A less strident attitude would
suit Taiwan better.
Copyright © 2006 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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