Mirror, mirror

The AP interviews President Ma...

Any political union, he said, would require Beijing to adopt democracy and respect for human rights, under special scrutiny following the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed China democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo. Because of such concerns, Ma did not cite any timetable for the process, saying it would be a "long historical" transition....

In between the poles of union and separation, Ma said his government is prepared to discuss political agreements, including security issues, as soon as the priority economic issues are dealt with. He suggested that those political talks could start as early as a second four-year term if he wins re-election in 2012.

"We are not intentionally delaying the talks on political issues. Certainly the economic ones are more important to people here. People also support the idea (of) economy first, politics later," said Ma. Asked if he would move to political talks in a second term once economic issues are dealt with, Ma said "it depends on how fast we move." Political issues, he said, "will come after all the major economic issues are resolved."

Among the crucial economic agreements that first need to be tackled, Ma said, are those on investment guarantees, ways to resolve disputes and tariff and other barriers to the two sides more than US$100 billion in trade.

There's nothing new or particularly surprising in this interview, yet the Ma administration came out to emphasize there is no time table for political talks, that they will not necessarily occur during his second term, and that economic issues come first.

Ma nearly accuses the AP of putting words in his mouth about the negotiations, because all the focus was on the prospect of political talks. Really, it's just that international news outlets chose the juicy bits about political talks for their edited versions of the AP article, and this created a sort of backlash after Taiwan media saw and yelled, "Look what Ma said to the AP!"

How does this keep sailing under the radar?

President Ma Ying-jeou just reiterated, without mincing words, the KMT position that Taiwan and "the mainland" are both part of the same country, the ROC. This is in line with the Chinese position that Taiwan and "the mainland"belong to the same "One China."

Ma stated that the first set of ROC constitutional amendments defined the relationship as "the free area" (Taiwan) and "the mainland area," and that this definition remains the one the KMT is constitutionally obligated to respect.

What is remarkable is how Ma's archaic definition of an ROC encompassing both Taiwan and China would be wildly unpopular if people knew about it, yet despite repeated public statements and subsequent newspaper articles, the KMT position continues to escape most people's attention.

And yet we see with every passing day that the nebulous status quo is increasingly defined as the "One China" framework and all the agreements that rest on it.

The Flag

That old battle is raging again: who loves the ROC flag the most?

Typically, as elections approach, the ROC flag becomes a symbol of the KMT campaign; this year, however, we had a Chinese basketball team panic when they saw a bunch of ROC flags that had been strategically placed by some Green-style nationalist leaning students.

And that means that while the Green camp is berating the KMT for hiding national flags in Taiwan to please China, the presidential office is mocking the DPP, saying they should really love the flag.

If this comedy didn't repeat itself so often, you might think it was all a big joke.

Sounds about right to me

中廣新聞網╱戴瑞芬 2010-10-06 10:04

調整字級：

(戴瑞芬報導)

... 根據主計處「薪資與生產力統計年報」調查，台灣員工「平均週工時」僅次於新加坡與香港。在台灣，「上班打卡制、下班責任制」的工作形式，儼然成為現代的職場文化。

根據1111人力銀行進行職場「責任加班」調查，高達7成8的上班族被要求「責任制」需要無償加班，且平均每月的責任加班有32.92小時。

...According to the results of a statistical survey, the "Annual Statistics on Salary and Production Strength," Taiwan workers spend more time on the job than people in any other country in the world excepting Singapore and Hongkong....

According to the survey's, commissioned by the 1111 employment services website, Over 78% of people reported working overtime in a salaried position, and thus ineligible for over time pay. The monthly hours of unpaid overtime at work averaged 32.92 hours per week.

Tsai Ing-wen's Apple Daily interview

There's much less buzz about it in the bloglosphere than I expected! First, an article about the interview and later related remarks:

On Friday last week, she suggested in an interview with the Chinese-language Apple Daily that the DPP would most likely continue Ma’s cross-strait policies and that any changes would have to be supported by public consensus and legislative approval.

In a previous meeting with the international press in May, she also insisted the DPP had learned from its eight years in office and would work on a more predictable China policy. She has said that stable cross-strait relations would form a key component of the DPP’s 10-year policy guidelines....

While she acknowledged that, compared with the Ma administration, there was a general expectation the DPP needed to be firmer on sovereignty and national security-related issues in the face of growing Chinese pressure, she said the issues could be overcome through greater cross-strait interaction.

However, she maintained increasing cross-strait exchanges would not be conducted at the expense of Taiwan’s ties with the rest of the world.

“This is distinct from the KMT government approach, which embraces China as a [corridor] to the world,” she said.

The Presidential Office has responded by saying DPP cross-strait policy is opportunistic, inconsistent and disingenuous; after all, they say, if the DPP intends to keep the ECFA and other policies in place, why are they attacking the KMT policy? China's Taiwan Affairs Office has shrugged, claiming they don't know if this is simply election language or a sincere change of course.

I have to agree with the criticism of Tsai's remarks, although I sense she's responding to the tendency of the ever-important moderate voter; I also note she wasn't terribly specific. But if the only difference she wants to highlight between DPP and KMT policy is that last paragraph in the quote above, I have to say that's not much of a distinction. Mostly rhetorical.

My question for Tsai would be: would the DPP continue to negotiate with China under the "one China" framework currently in place?

If the answer is yes, isn't the battle for Taiwan's independence essentially over? If the answer is no, will the DPP stand a chance at the polls in 2012?

GG Caijing

For a clearly pro-China but reasonably well measured analysis of the Senkaku dispute, see this Caijing article. Its ultimate conclusion is that neither China nor Japan have much room to back down on the dispute, but this makes negotiations and cool heads all the more critical, especially now that setting aside the dispute is becoming a less realistic option.

There you go

Some time ago, I advised the DPP to head Howard Dean's example (the 50 states strategy). It seems the GOP has beat them to the punch.

Hmm...

I'm going to ask you to take an absolutely wild fucking guess here. http://n.yam.com/tlt/politics/201009/20100906001101.html

Do you think the Executive Yuan's Referendum Committee, with a set of appointees all chosen by Taiwan's current president, will reject or allow the TSU-backed referendum which aims to "eliminate the Referendum Committee?"

Typical

This article [ZH], a China Times editorial, shows just how completely out of touch the China Times is -- and why they're clearly going for the role of official Chinese propaganda machine ($$$$$. They can't get it from sales).

It's a short one, so I've decided to give it to you nearly in full and without further comment.

On the day memorializing the sixty-fifth anniversary of the war against Japan [WWII], The Chinese Communist Party's organ, the People's Daily, carried an editorial talking about the victory over the Japanese, saying "the Communist party lead and pushed" [the fight]. Our Presidential Office and Defense Ministry responded strongly, saying these statements were "not in accordance with reality." It appears that even as cross-strait relations are warming up, the government has no choice but to struggle to clarify historical truths.

In reality, although KMT policies such as martial law and the lack of implementation of democracy created controversy, historical researches within the country [in Taiwan] conclude that in the eight years of struggle before victory over the Japanese, the main fighting force was the ROC army under the lead of President Chiang Kai-shek. Even on the sixtieth anniversary of that struggle, the Chinese Communist leader Hu Jin-tao acknowledged the KMT's contribution to the war against the Japanese....

The funny thing is, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has never agreed to recognize the Republic of China, and as a result has not accepted this part of history. But the green [DPP] legislators are still eager to take advantage of Ma Ying-jeou, mocking the Presidential Office for an inadequate response [to Chinese claims]. The Presidential office responded by saying the DPP is simply opposed to anything that China does. In reality, they are opposed to anything that Ma does. The DPP does not care a lick about this part of history; it is simply using the opportunity to attack Ma Ying-jeou.

The problem is, although the KMT and CCP have been opposed to each other for so long, they must still make peace in the end, and therefore they must resolve questions of how history is to be explained; in contrast, despite the DPP having been in power and having participated in the electoral system, [that party] still refuse to acknowledge the ROC. The DPP's rejection of the history of the Battle Against Japan causes them to be unable to reconcile their historical memory with the masses'.

Due to the influence of politics, it is always difficult to make an accurate reading of history. But this is not simply a KMT problem. It is a problem also for the largest opposition party, the DPP, which must face the ROC's history.

China: not nearly as capitalist as you think.

Special Political Zone, with vague details

From the "press release" version of the political reform announcement

不仅要推进经济体制改革，还要推进政治体制改革。没有政治体制改革的保障，经济体制改革的成果就会得而复失，现代化建设的目标就不可能实现。要保障人民的民主权利和合法权益；要最广泛地动员和组织人民依法管理国家事务和经济、社会、文化事务；要从制度上解决权力过分集中又得不到制约的问题，创造条件让人民批评和监督政府，坚决惩治贪污腐败；要建设一个公平正义的社会，特别是要保障司法公正，重视保护和帮助弱势群体，使人们在生活中有安全感，对国家的发展有信心。

Not only must we continue reforming the economic system, we must also engage in reform of the political system. Without the security brought about by political reforms, the fruits of the economic reforms [of the last three decades] will slip through our hands and the goal of achieving modernization will be impossible to reach.

We must protect the people's right to democracy and their legal rights & interests; we must, on the largest scale, mobilize and organize the people to manage the country's affairs and economic, social and cultural development, in accordance with the law; we must solve the systematic problem of overly-concentrated, unrestricted power; we must create [a space] for people to, with certain restrictions, criticize and oversee the government, in order to resolutely punish & control corruption; we must build a fair and just society, and must especially protect the impartiality of the justice system; we must place importance on protecting and helping the disadvantaged; We must provide the people with a sense of safety in their lives, and they will have confidence in the country's development.

I also learned that these reforms will include elections for candidates in senior political positions, but the nominating process will of course be dominated by the Party, and the actually voting will be done by the municipal party committee after nominees have been vetted by the powerful organization department (also a wing of the party, not the government).

Special Political Zone

Word has it that Beijing intends to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Shenzhen's "Special Economic Zone" status by turning it into a "Special Political Zone" (Reuters article here).

What does that entail? Most articles I found were short on specifics, but "like Singapore, like Hong Kong" is a common refrain. It seems the idea is to figure out how to get a more effective and less corrupt administration rolling.

The article above takes as an example a 2003 Shenzhen policy of dividing responsibilities for formulating policy, executing it and maintaining oversight among three different groups [update: that plan was abandoned because the press "misunderstood" it as a checks and balances system]. The reforms seem likely to focus on this "practical" end of improving policy execution without too greatly increasing public oversight or elections.

This seems to be part of an overall pattern of stepping up "intra-party democracy" and "Chinese style democracy" slogans.

We'll see what, if anything, actually happens. But I would like to speak to the general wisdom of undergoing political reforms from a position of strength. I hope for the best.

Rumors abound

I won't go into the rumors circulating within the local and Chinese media about the odds of an unexpectedly early "withdrawal" of Chinese missiles aimed at Taiwan. Someone else can cover that.

I'll even leave the fascinating possibility of unification of Chinese character education in Taiwan and China to someone else.

What I really want to focus on today is Vice Chair of ARATS, Zhang Mingqing (張銘清), who is apparently in Taiwan again with much less fan fair than his first visit (video below).

In any case, on this visit to Taiwan, Zhang was a speaker at the 15th Conference on Chinese Scientific Modernization (中國現代化學術研討會). The conference is hosted by the very pro-"Greater China" Academic Foundation for Advancing Chinese Modernization (促進中國現代化學術研究基金會).

Zhang spoke words he meant to show brotherly affection but which, in my mind, mask a threat. As he put it, the two sides of the Strait have in the past two years already forged a common destiny based on blood ties. The ECFA, he said, is aimed at promoting the common interest of the Zhonghua Minzu, and the next and most urgent step is to establish a feeling of recognition about Taiwan and China's common destiny.

==============

Probably three or four years ago a business savvy, light-blue voter I knew (with a family business in China) sat through a less-than-sober rant of mine about the importance of preventing Taiwan from becoming overly economically intertwined with China. Otherwise, I railed, Taiwan would have great trouble maintaining its de facto political independence.

She listened politely and responded quietly and much more soberly. "It is probably already too late to do anything about that," she said, and those words shook me then, because they forced me to consider a possibility I had always preferred to ignore or dismiss.

Zhang's words shake me now.

Warp Zone

For some reason, I occasionally find myself reading editorials in the KMT's mouthpiece, the Central Daily News. Perhaps it's because the paper sometimes says what the Ma administration won't announce from the podium. Here is the article I read today.

The editorial mocks DPP positions on the ECFA; denigrates Lee Teng-hui's "two countries" and Chen Shui-bian's "one side, one country" formulations as "not only completely unworkable but bound to bring about disastrous consequences;" and finally notes that shooting for de jure independence is sure to bring economic ruin and war.

But what really caught my eye was the final paragraph, where the writer throws a curve ball:

Up to this point, the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have had the wisdom to define their relations as a unique, non-international and non-domestic relationship. Thus agreements have been signed on the principles of equality and mutual respect by [Taiwan's] Straits Affairs Foundation [SEF] and [China's] Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits [ARATS]. The agreements have been mutually beneficial and won the praise of the international community, just as the ECFA has. Taiwan independence supporters, though, continue to blow hot air about dealing [with "the mainland"] on a nation-to-nation basis. The Taiwanese people have already experienced the tangible benefits of setting aside political differences, fostering warm economic relations, and reducing the danger of a military conflict. If the independence supporters keep mouthing the same old platitudes, they will not win any hearts or minds.

　兩岸如今都有智慧把雙方關係定位為非國際、亦非國內的特殊關係，故以海基、海協兩會來進行協商簽署，合乎對等、尊嚴原則，互蒙其利，亦獲國際社 會讚賞，ＥＣＦＡ也是一樣。獨派卻仍鼓吹以國與國來處理兩岸關係。台灣人民已體驗到了兩岸政治上擱置爭議、經濟上合作互惠、軍事上化解危機的實際利益，獨 派再唱其陳腔濫調，是不會有市場的。

It is obviously and pointedly false to suggest that China views relations with Taiwan as anything other than domestic, unless you ignore everything they say about the subject.

But far more baffling is when the CDN tries to suggest the KMT defines relations [with China] as a unique, non-international and non-domestic relationship.

When was that the definition? Certainly not in 2008 when Ma drew a firestorm of criticism for saying relations were "a non-international, special relationship." Certainly not today, when fantasies of China recognizing a "shared sovereignty" situation are the domain of deluded academics. In fact, there's not a peep about "non-domestic" anywhere.

To prove the point, go search for the Chinese phrase "non-domestic special relationship" (非國內的特殊關係). That search turns up only this CDN article. Even when broken up into two phrases,"non-domestic" and "special relationship," we see nothing else about this topic on the internet. This terminology is newly minted, not official policy, and certainly not the policy of both China and Taiwan.

Why would the official KMT mouthpiece make up one definition of a policy -- one where nuance in phrasing matters a lot -- when the KMT has a different official policy? Is the editor simply living in la-la land? Does he have access to insider information about progress in negotiations with China? Is he making an effort to fool the public in Taiwan (presumably because people don't actually have the stomach to accept relations with China as "domestic" yet)? Or what?

Vaguely Familiar

It seems the Legislature has figured out what we long knew. It's amazing how the timing works out -- this report about the ECFA comes out soon after the ECFA's signing, meaning the negative results would not be in the news to influence the legislative vote. But on to the meat of the post...

This week, a report out of the Legislative Yuan's think tank-like organization, called in Chinese the Lifayuan Fazhiju ji yusuan zhongxin (立院法制局及預算中心), said that China will strictly adhere to a "One China" policy (imagine that) and block Taiwan efforts to sign other FTAs.

The report ominously concludes that "in the future, it is possible that Taiwan's survival and development will require walking the road to integration with China."「將可能使台灣生存與發展僅先有一條與中國大陸結合之路」。

Back in Nov. 2008, I said:

"I also think [Ma's] policies will lead Taiwan not directly into unification, but to a point of no return, where economic and political relations are at a point where China will be have even such enormous leverage in both the cross-strait and international sphere that the CCP will be able to push for a unification time table of its own choosing and Taiwanese leaders will have few options but to comply and negotiate for minimal concessions."

Obviously, my prediction was somewhat more descriptive and uses KMT taboo words like "unification." But it is clear that the Ma administration's policy may well put Taiwan in a position where unification is the only peaceful option.

Some would say that the point of no return has already come. There are certainly plenty of people positioning themselves for that time, even if it is not here yet.