2009 ELECTIONS: DPP must forge ahead: panel

Courtesy: taiwandc.org, Published on Taipei Times (taipeitimes.com) on 7th December 2009

By: Ko Shu-ling

Saturday’s local elections highlighted the power of the people and consolidated the leadership of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen, but many challenges remain for the DPP, which should adopt a more aggressive approach in future nominations, panelists attending an election forum said in Taipei yesterday.

DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling said the elections showed that Taiwanese still have faith in democracy and that “the ballots can talk.”

“The public knows how to use ballots to make the best possible choices and have their voices heard,” she said at a forum organized by Taiwan Thinktank, to look at Saturday’s three-in-one local elections. “When people have the power to chose, the administration should give them the right to hold referendums.”

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) clinched 12 of the 17 counties and cities in the election, but garnered 47.88 percent of the total votes, a drop of 2 percent from the 2005 elections. Although the DPP secured only four areas, it received 45.32 percent of the total ballots, a 7.2 percent increase.

Kuan said the DPP’s showing was on a par with the party’s very best performance in history in 2001, but cautioned that it was not enough to turn the DPP into a majority party at the local level.

The elections nevertheless consolidated Tsai’s leadership, she said, adding that the path of “Xiao Ing” (Tsai’s nickname) had proved effective and made the likelihood of infighting at the DPP unlikely in the near future.

Kuan said the party should adopt a more aggressive approach to nominating candidates in future elections, adding that it should not fear its KMT rivals.

Soochow University political science professor Lo Chih-cheng said the public must not overestimate the DPP’s performance in the elections by seeing it as a sign that it could win the next legislative and presidential elections.

Lo said the elections pitted a united DPP against a divided KMT, a group fighting a lone campaigner — President Ma Ying-jeou — and a DPP fighting for its survival against a complacent KMT.

“The result is a pivotal point allowing the DPP to bounce back, while the KMT goes from prosperity into decline,” he said. “The DPP is like a patient out of intensive care making a fresh start.”

The KMT’s setback could compel Ma to consider slowing down the pace of his cross-strait policies, Lo said, adding, however, that Beijing would seek ways to prevent him from doing so.

“Beijing will redouble its efforts to help Ma get re-elected in 2012 so it can resolve the Taiwan issue as soon as possible,” Lo said. “Taiwan is racing against time.”

The seven legislative by-­elections will be important for the DPP, Lo said, as they will decide whether the DPP can keep the Ma administration in check.

Tseng Chien-yuan , an assistant professor of public administration at Chung Hua University, said the elections showed there was room for improvement in terms of the electoral system. This includes whether public TV channels should allow candidates to promote their campaign platforms, whether future elections should be funded by the government and whether campaign subsidies should be issued before the elections.

He also proposed a decrease in the number of party representatives in local election committees from 50 percent to 40 percent.


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Taiwan’s DPP unhappy with Obama comment

News Courtesy: taiwandc.org and also published on Taipei Times, on 18th November 2009

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen yesterday expressed regret over US President Barack Obama’s remarks that the US respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China.


The remarks did not clarify the fact that Taiwan does not belong to China and disregarded the fact that the 23 million Taiwanese are under threat from the 1,400-odd missiles [deployed] by China. The result is regrettable Tsai said in a statement. Tsai’s remarks came after the US and China issued a joint statement in which Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao underscored the importance of the Taiwan issue in US-China relations.



Beijing emphasized that the Taiwan issue concerns China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. It said it hoped the US would honor its commitments and appreciate and support the Chinese side position on the matter.


The US said that it follows a one China policy and abides by the principles of the three US-China joint communiques. The US said it welcomes the peaceful development of relations across the Taiwan Strait and looks forward to efforts by both sides to increase dialogue and interactions in economic, political and other fields, as well as develop more positive and stable cross-strait relations.


The two countries reiterated that the fundamental principle of respect for each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity were at the core of the three US-China communiques that guide US-China relations. Neither side supports any attempts by any force to undermine this principle. The two sides also agreed that respecting each other’s core interests was important to ensure steady progress in US-China relations.


While the statement did not mention the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), Obama mentioned it in his statement to a press conference.

Saying that Obama’s mention of the TRA would help improve cross-strait relations and stability in the region, Tsai called on the US government to continue to provide Taiwan with the defensive weapons it needs to ensure its national security in accordance with the spirit of the TRA.

Taiwan is a sovereign and independent country. This is an undeniable fact¨ Tsai said.

Tsai said the DPP was happy to see the US and China establish healthy and cooperative relations and make efforts to ensure prosperity and stability in the region, especially in terms of the economy and trade, climate change, energy, human rights and religious freedom.

The DPP hopes that China’s human rights record and position on religious freedom will improve and that China will renounce the use of force against Taiwan to bring real peace and stability in the region, she said. President Ma Ying-jeou yesterday downplayed the omission of the TRA in the written statement and praised Obama for mentioning it during his conference with Hu.


Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) spokesman Lee Chien-jung said that although the TRA was not mentioned in the joint statement, Obama brought it up right in Hu's face.


This was the first time a US president mentioned the TRA over the past six years, Lee quoted Ma as saying. As the US and Chinese mainland develop their relationship, we don’t want to be a stumbling block, nor do we worry the US will sell us out because the triangle relationship between the mainland, Taiwan and the US is at its optimum stage in the past 60 years.


In fact, mutual trust between senior officials in Taipei and Washington has been fully restored, Lee quoted Ma as saying. Ma made the remarks during the KMT’s weekly meeting, which he chairs as KMT chairman.


Lee said that Ma hinted during the meeting that the administration had kept abreast of the US position¡¨ before the joint statement was made public. Last night, the DPP said it would have to double check to determine whether a US president had mentioned the TRA since 2003, adding that Ma had nevertheless missed the point.



Ma should worry about the omission of the TRA in the joint statement rather than being satisfied with Obama’s verbal reference at the press conference. The DPP urged the government to ask the US to clarify the omission because the US always mentions the three communiques and the TRA when it speaks about the Taiwan issue.


Meanwhile, former vice president Lien Chan said yesterday that despite the absence of references to the TRA in the joint statement, he did not think Washington would harm cross-strait interests simply over a single visit by Obama to China. Obama is in Beijing for a four-day state visit to China that started in Shanghai on Sunday night.


He did not mention the TRA during talks with Chinese youth in Shanghai on Monday, but mentioned it at his conference with Hu. Saying the relationship between the US and China would become closer, Lien yesterday added that Washington had on many occasions emphasized that its Republic of China [ROC] policy¨ would not change.


Such a framework began in 1979 and is clearly stated in the TRA and the three communiques signed with Beijing, he said. Lien made the remarks at Taipei Guest House yesterday morning after returning from the APEC forum in Singapore, where he served as Ma’s representative.


His comment came in response to a question by the Taipei Times on whether Taiwan’s interests would be compromised as Washington and Beijing develop a closer relationship.
Lien said that as US-China relations are complex and unique, many analysts suggested that Washington’s best strategy was to weigh [things] interest by interest.


They have common interests, but also have different ones, he said. The question is how to make the selection. Lien said the Ma administration must make it clear that the diplomatic interests of the ROC are best served not as a troublemaker, but rather as a promoter of common interests that will no longer make recourse to belligerent diplomacy or irresponsible and provocative acts.


What I say is not targeted at any particular party, he said. It is the national interest we are talking about. Since Ma took office in May last year, Lien said, Taiwan and China have inked nine agreements and reached one consensus, with the fourth round of high-level cross-strait talks scheduled to take place in Taichung next month.

It would be wrong to continue seeing Taiwan as a troublemaker, he said. We all have peaceful development at heart and nothing will change that.


On a cross-strait peace agreement, Lien said it would be a positive development to establish a framework to protect peace in the Taiwan Strait.

However, he conceded that the goal could not be attained overnight. It would be better if it materialized in decades, he said.

While the administration has insisted on tackling economic issues before moving to political ones, Lien said that some matters are not purely economics, such as the country’s participation in the World Health Assembly as an observer this year and accession to the Government Procurement Agreement.

On the possibility of a meeting between Ma and Hu, Lien said the timing was not ripe.

At the Presidential Office yesterday, Ma praised Lien for his excellent intelligence-gathering before the APEC summit and expressed his surprise at Lien’s relationship with Obama.

Lien and Obama’s great uncle, Charles Payne, attended the University of Chicago together and have been good friends since.

Obama’s first words to Lien when they met at the summit were:I know you.

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A response to China's Lincoln comparisons

Article Courtesy: phayul.com

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.”

– Abraham Lincoln

By: Josh Schrei

The Chinese Government’s most recent abomination — comparing Abraham Lincoln’s war on slavery to the PRC’s brutal invasion and occupation of Tibet (and wrapping it all up with a ‘you-should-understand-slavery-because-you’re-black’ message to President Obama) — is only worth commenting on because there may be those uninformed unfortunates that actually give pause to the PRC’s stance.

Fundamentally, there is no comparison. Yes, President Lincoln declared war on secessionists. He also strongly championed the values of individual liberty and freedom and took considerable political risks to ensure that all people were entitled to these freedoms. None of the freedoms that Lincoln championed are on display in Tibet or China. And drawing reference to one of the great champions of individual liberty from a government that has no interest in such liberty is — to any student of American history — insulting. Lincoln’s name should not even be mentioned in the same sentence as Beijing’s current cronies. Luckily, most thinking people know this.

President Obama, we will not insult your intelligence — as your current hosts have – by explaining to you why it is racist, colonialist, and utterly unfounded to make comparisons between the Confederate South and Tibet. I’m sure you are as shocked and outraged as we are, as is the entire world community.

What we do question is why the world community continues to legitimize, fund, and coddle a dictatorship that is so dangerously out of touch with the norms of modern society. The Chinese government is positioning itself as — and quickly becoming — the next great world superpower, and we are busily helping them. It is high time this stopped. You did not meet with the Dalai Lama before you left for China. But you can make a difference now. We urge you to publicly distance yourself from the Chinese Government’s recent statements and to push for immediate improvements in Tibet, where the people enjoy no freedom of speech and are still suffering the results of a brutal crackdown after last year’s March protests. As someone who respects Lincoln’s name and has an understanding of his politics, this is the least you can do.

The simple truth is that the people of China and Tibet have no freedom, and the fundamental issue is the right of people to determine their own future, which our President Lincoln was a champion of to the end. In the absence of that right — and in defense of the repression of it — mad minds make ludicrous claims. Comparing Lincoln to the current leadership in Beijing is a violation of all that we as Americans value. We trust that — as our President — you will respond accordingly.

Josh Schrei may be contacted at josh.schrei@gmail.com


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Pitfalls and possibilities in Obama’s Taiwan line

Article Courtesy: taiwandc.org as well as Taipei Times (published on 9th November, 2009)


By: Nat Bellocchi


As US President Barack Obama prepares for his visit to Japan, South Korea, China and Singapore, it is worthwhile to consider a number of issues that affect US-Taiwan-China relations.

On two of the three sides in this triangle, we have relatively new actors at the political helm: the Obama administration in the US and the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou.

Obama has the advantage of being at the start of a new chapter in relations with both Taiwan and China. He is relatively unburdened by the inhibitions of the past, and has the freedom to do some out-of-the-box thinking.

But there is already a tendency — similar to that seen in the administration of US president George W. Bush — that the US “needs” China to resolve major issues like global warming, pollution and the financial crisis.

While it is essential to engage China on these issues, we need to ensure that this is not done at the expense of a free and democratic Taiwan. During the past weeks, Chinese spokesmen have called on the US and other international partners to respect China’s so-called “core interests.” It would be good if Obama emphasized clearly that it is a core interest of the US that the future of Taiwan be resolved peacefully and with the express consent of the Taiwanese people.

Similarly, in his first year in office, Ma opened a new chapter and started rapprochement with China. While there is broad agreement that a reduction of tension in the Taiwan Strait is desirable, Ma has been criticized for moving too far, too fast and for allowing Taiwan’s drift into China’s sphere of influence to be accompanied by erosion of justice and a decline in press freedom.

The US’ Taiwan policy has traditionally swung back and forth between realism and idealism. The policies of president Richard Nixon and secretary of state Henry Kissinger in the 1970s, president Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s, president Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s and Bush in the period 2001-2004 are all testimony to the fact that the US made significant mid-course changes that were detrimental to Taiwan and that contributed to its international isolation, despite Washington’s statements that its policies were “unchanged” and contributed to “stability.”

From an international perspective, Taiwan is an example of a successful transition to democracy. The most rational and reasonable outcome of Taiwan’s normalization of relations with China would be acceptance of this young democracy in the international family of nations. This is a process that will need cooperation from all sides; for its part, China will need to see that it is in its own interests to come to terms with a small and democratic neighbor with which it can live in peace.

Taiwan can justifiably be proud of its achievements, economically and politically, but it needs to stay the course and strengthen its democracy, sovereignty and international relations so that it can be an equal partner in the international community.

Taiwan can also strengthen the fabric of its society by implementing judicial change, improving governance, protecting human rights and finding new niches in the international economy. All of these will enhance the nation’s acceptance and respect around the world.

The US can play a constructive role if Obama is willing to apply creative thinking and steer away from the pitfalls of the mantras that were recited in the past. The fundamental values of democracy and human rights, for which the US stands, mandate that we are more supportive of the dream of many Taiwanese that their country be accepted as a full and equal member of the international community. That would be change we can believe in.


(Nat Bellocchi is a former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan and a special adviser to the Liberty Times Group.)


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Don’t concede more on Taiwan

(Article Courtesy from taiwandc.org , also published in Taipei Times on 6th of November 2009)

By: Hisahiko Okazaki

For those who are concerned that democratic Taiwan should continue to have the freedom to choose its own future, US President Barack Obama’s upcoming visit to Beijing brings back the memory of a regrettable episode during former US president Bill Clinton’s visit to China in June 1998.

Early in the spring of that year there were signs that the US government would assure China that Washington would not defend Taiwan if it declared independence. On March 13, Joseph Nye proposed in a Washington Post op-ed piece to eliminate the ambiguity in the US position by stating that the US would not recognize or defend Taiwan if it were to declare independence.

I argued against such a policy in an op-ed piece in the Japan Times and directly to the US assistant secretary of state Stanley Roth in Tokyo when he was accompanying US secretary of state Madeline Albright on her way to Beijing to prepare for Clinton’s visit.

My argument was as follows: “Suppose Taiwan declared independence and China used forced, believing in the American statement of its position, I wonder whether the American public and the Congress would acquiesce in abandoning a free and democratic Taiwan to China. If not, it is tantamount to tricking China into a war. It would be similar to how the Korean War began. The United States declared that South Korea is outside its defense line, but intervened when the North launched an attack, having possibly believed in your words.”


I do not know whether my arguments had any influence, but there were no statements about not defending Taiwan then. On the eve of Clinton’s visit, however, stories began to circulate that he was going to state a “three nos” policy: The US would oppose Taiwan independence, oppose a “one China, one Taiwan” policy and oppose Taiwan’s formal membership in state-based international organizations.


Fortunately, there was no mention of “three nos” in Clinton’s joint press conference with the Chinese president Jiang Zeming (江澤民), nor in Clinton’s major policy speech at Peking University. Then the volte-face came. On a visit to Shanghai, Clinton announced the “three nos” during a dialogue with Chinese intellectuals on a TV show.


Although the US Congress quickly rejected Clinton’s commitment through resolutions of both Houses, China may still view his remarks as an official commitment of a US president and may quite likely expect Obama to reconfirm the three nos.

It is not difficult to suspect that there were some disgraceful deals behind the scenes. The date of Clinton’s visit, to start with, is believed to have been sought by the US to turn attention away from a domestic scandal, and that indebted the US to announce the three nos, while bypassing Japan and South Korea to make the longest trip Clinton paid to a single country. In addition, the topics of the Shanghai TV interview, which was originally scheduled to focus on cultural affairs, appeared to have been changed on short notice.

Through the 37-year history of US-China engagement, the US has consistently retreated in the war of semantics about Taiwan. The US has been unable to muster points against the steel wall of one-party dictatorship. It lost inch-by-inch every time. Each time, however, Washington reassured the US public that its position hadn’t changed.


How deceptively the US position had eroded can be seen in the comments made by Clinton. He began his remarks on the “three nos” by stating that he was reiterating US policy on Taiwan but not specifying the time of the previous remarks, whether it was during his meetings in Beijing or much earlier. Then national security adviser Sandy Berger said the US had simply repeated its basic position.


In fact, the US has consistently shifted its position. It started with an admirably objective statement by then national security adviser Henry Kissinger in 1972: “The US acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.”


This was cleverly phrased but would have become obsolete were Taiwan to declare independence. The retreat from this position began in 1983 by denying the intention of pursuing a policy of “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan.”


The word “pursuing” implies planning, working for and encouraging, but it does not prevent the US from accepting a fait accompli of Taiwan’s independence. However, there is a more clear implication in the term “not support” used during Clinton’s 1998 visit, which was well explained in Washington Post editorials as among the options that the Taiwanese eventually might choose.


The US assured Taiwan at the time that “not support” did not mean “oppose.” In fact, “oppose” was the term sought by China through former US president George W. Bush’s administration. China boasts domestically that it has won the commitment from the US, but there is no diplomatic record to testify to such a position.


As for Obama’s trip, it would be best not to go beyond the three joint communiques that have long defined US-China relations. The bottom line should be not to reconfirm the “three nos,” which were already denied by Congress. The Obama administration should never accept a change from “not support” to “oppose.”

Incidentally, the Japanese government, perhaps uncharacteristically, has never conceded an inch in the past 37 years from its stand to “understand and respect the Chinese position.”

(Hisahiko Okazaki has served as Japanese ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Thailand. He now runs the Okazaki Institute, a think tank in Tokyo. This piece was first published in ACFR NewsGroup No.1528, an e-mail publication of The American Committees on Foreign Relations, on Oct. 27)

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