China is a paper tiger

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From The Sunday Times
December 28, 2008
Stand firm, Mr Obama, China is a paper tiger
The new president should face down Beijing as its economy crumbles and workers press for democracy
Michael Sheridan

Any day now Barack Obama will be handed the transition dossier on the most important relationship in the world, that between America and China. He will find there the wisdom of a generation of elite policy makers, still dominated by the statecraft of Henry Kissinger. He should tear it up.

For the first time since I watched a million demonstrators take control of the streets of Shanghai in June 1989, China is entering a period of dynamic political change driven from below – and Washing-ton needs to raise its game.

Last week three Nobel laureates – Seamus Heaney, Nadine Gordimer and Wole Soyinka – spoke in support of 300 Chinese signatories to the bravest document to emerge from the people’s republic since that bloodstained summer. Charter 08 is a manifesto for democracy, justice, a free market and a federal republic of China.

“The era of emperors and warlords is on the way out,” it proclaims, “the time is arriving everywhere for citizens to be masters of states.”

The minions of state security have already started arresting the charter’s supporters. Yet it is spreading online, defeating an army of website censors.

This is China, almost 20 years after Tiananmen Square. Viral politics is infecting the system. A staggering 253m people get their news from the internet. Chat rooms have become a Chinese agora, seething with profanity and rage against the powerful. A civic movement known as weiquan, taking its name from a Chinese character that can mean “rights” as well as “power”, is growing among victims of the system – the evicted; the cheated; the bereaved parents of babies who drank poisoned milk, and of schoolchildren killed in the collapsing classrooms during the Sichuan earthquake last spring.

The world crisis means that the Communist party’s economic miracle – if it ever deserved the term – is fading. Founded on cheap exports to credit-junkie American consumers, it is in deep trouble. Party officials are trying to reverse a stock market crash, a property slump and thousands of factory closures. The security forces are trying to suppress myriad worker protests against layoffs and unpaid wages.

Sporadic, incoherent yet unmistakable, a new China is coming to life online and on the street, liberating itself by stealth from the “new China” falsely proclaimed by Mao Tse-tung in 1949. That regime is now old China. How will Obama deal with this transformation? Will his China policy be one of continuity or of change?

The presence among his advisers of Jeffrey Bader and Susan Shirk is not encouraging. Bader is a former US diplomat in China who also serves as senior vice-presi-dent of Stonebridge, a firm that helps corporate clients to do business with Beijing. Guess what? He advocates private persuasion, not “negative soundbites”, as the best way to convince the Chinese regime to improve its conduct. Shirk served in the Clinton administration on east Asia and is also an advocate of the conventional wisdom that pragmatism usually equals silence.

Then there is the business lobby, dutifully lining up to caricature anyone promising change as a China basher or worse a protectionist. I doubt that Obama’s voters elected him to keep the world safe for out-sourcing by the Fortune 500. He can do better than this.

The fact is, whatever foreigners do, change is coming in China through the Chinese people. The risk for America is that if it relies on traditional emissaries cocooned in protocol and five-star hotels, it will miss a huge opportunity.

Instead of business as usual, Obama should exploit the Obama factor. How will ordinary Chinese feel when the charismatic young American president stands alongside their own leaders, so well described by the Prince of Wales as ghastly old waxworks? The waxworks will struggle to explain recent American events to their people, who have always been told that America is (a) racist (b) ruled by dynasties named Clinton or Bush and (c) run by a cabal of white men on Wall Street.

Don’t forget: millions of people in China genuinely see America as in its Chinese name – mei guo, the “beautiful country” – a haven for their ancestors or relatives and an inspiration to China’s republican revolutionaries of 1911.

To reach them, the new president must discard two myths perpetuated by Kissinger and his disciples. The first is that China is so powerful that its imperious leaders must always be placated on democracy and human rights. The second is that only privileged interlocutors – like Bader, employed by consulting firms when not in government – can deal with the Chinese elite.

These self-serving fables have given a club of cynical pragmatists a paralysing grip on China policy in the endless turf wars between America’s bureaucrats, spies and soldiers.

Obama is promising change. Where better to start than here where there is a mind-set that has not changed since Kissinger prepared the way for Richard Nixon to go to China in 1972. Thanks to recent scholarship, we now know that Mao courted Nixon only out of fear that the Soviet Union planned to strike against his economically ruined agrarian nation.

Mao and his silkworm, Zhou Enlai, spun a web of diplomacy that lured Kissinger and Nixon to come as tribute-bearers in the mistaken hope that the Chinese would help them win “peace with honour” in Viet-nam. “The relationship was established on the basis of the US being the supplicant,” says Roderick MacFarquhar of Harvard University. The Chinese have cleverly kept it that way for 36 years.

Yet the reality is that China is a poor agricultural country. It may have the world’s fourth biggest economy but its population of 1.3 billion means that in terms of wealth per capita it does not even rank in the top 100 nations. China’s rivers and lakes are ruined. Its air is poisonous. The one-child policy means that by mid-century it will face a crisis as fewer workers support more than 300m old people. The leadership is stale, the party split by factions and the armed forces are untested except by repression. This is not the next superpower. It isa paper tiger.

The American mandarins like to claim that China is too inscrutable and dangerous to offend. It isn’t. All the democracies have to do is to speak out consistently and in public for Chinese democrats, to support political prisoners and to refuse to break ranks when the regime tries to single out this or that country for punishment. The Chinese people will be watching.

Like Nixon, the next American president has a chance to “seize the hour”. Obama should take his cue from Charter 08 – not the memoirs of Kissinger.

Andrew Sullivan is away

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天光（G）

天光（G）

新聞報導 - 楊緒東專欄

作者 台灣大地文教基金會董事長 楊緒東

2008/12/26, Friday

古代的皇帝很專制 皆是因為發動戰爭贏來的成果 有許多人民為之參戰 成者為王 敗者為寇 剛登基會很仁慈，與民共處 時間久了，就會與狼共舞 一代一代的傳承老頭的血統，做皇帝 此乃法統傳人是也 換句話說 中華法統的觀念 必須是男性精子加上沙文的威望 精子在美國的政壇毫無作用 由白轉黑 Obama打破血統、法統 成為人民的正統 阿九 卻不容野草莓運動在台灣 他 純中國精子和純Ovum的結合 KMT長期培育的政治PhD 真正統也 History of Taiwan 1947 KMT軍隊攻台、佔台、殺台灣人－228和白色恐怖 Shit of Democracy’s Taiwan 有各種妖虐惑台 比軍隊還利害 透過法統、血統 眾妖囉為阿修羅拚命－Money and evil plots R.O.C.醬缸中 阿扁倒了 台灣的民主完了 古代的皇上復活 哈佛PhD被強姦 Shame on who? （撰於2008/12/18） 延伸閱讀： 天光（F） 天光（E） 天光（D） 天光（C） 天光（B） 天光（A） Hsutung's BLOG 楊緒東專欄

最後更新 ( 2008/12/26, Friday )

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hope

The death of de facto sovereignty

Published on Taipei Times http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2008/12/26/2003432121 The death of de facto sovereignty By Lin Cho-shui 林濁水 Friday, Dec 26, 2008, Page 8 Recently, two inconspicuous but contradictory news items appeared in the media. Last month, the Ministry of National Defense changed the title of “military attache” for Taiwan’s military representative organization in Washington to “secretary.” The second was a comment by Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrew Hsia (夏立言). In response to a question from a Democratic Progressive Party legislator, Hsia said the nation’s bid to join the WHO might succeed. The former represents a failure for Taiwan’s international participation, while the latter suggests a diplomatic breakthrough. If we look at these items in tandem with a string of surprising cross-strait and diplomatic policies under President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), the government’s strategy to orientate Taiwanese identity as a quasi-client state of China becomes clear. The title “military attache” can be used only when two countries have formal diplomatic ties. When Taiwan and the US severed diplomatic ties, China opposed Taiwan stationing a military attache in Washington, and it took Taiwan a lot of effort to convince the US to allow it to keep the posts. These posts and the diplomatic immunity given to US-based Taiwanese officials are symbolic remnants of Taiwan’s sovereignty. Unexpectedly, military attaches have now been downgraded to secretaries. Although this conforms to Ma’s cross-strait diplomatic truce, the move has drawn severe criticism from both ruling and opposition parties. As for the WHO bid, a majority of the public thinks it is just another irresponsible promise made by the government. Taken together, these contradictory developments suggest a form of cooperation between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in which Beijing holds the initiative. Regardless of how the international situation changes, the fact is that Taiwan is a de facto independent, sovereign state, but rarely recognized as a de jure independent country. Neither Taiwan nor China can change this state of affairs, although neither senior members of the KMT nor Beijing accept this view. It was not until after 1990 that former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) adopted a more pragmatic diplomatic approach and recognized the concept of “one China, with each side having its own interpretation,” a standpoint strongly opposed by China. Since then, China has not had a smooth ride in blocking Taiwan from taking part in international organizations. Taiwan has improved semi-official relations with other countries and has joined the WTO. As a result, since 2000, China has adopted a new strategy: oppose Taiwan’s de jure sovereignty while not denying de facto sovereignty. Ever since the KMT deprived Lee of his party membership, the party has leaned toward the principle of “one China.” Through consultation and negotiations with the CCP, the KMT has effectively abandoned support for “one China, with each side having its own interpretation.” From Ma’s perspective, China has emerged as a new political and economic power in the international community and will become the only supporter of Taiwan’s economy. It is impossible for Taiwan to pursue sovereignty, so the reasoning goes, but it won’t easily accept “one country, two systems.” Therefore, Ma has defined Taiwan as a local Chinese government; advocated a diplomatic truce that does not accept dual recognition but removes Taiwan from national symbols; given up pursuit of a UN seat in a bid to secure membership in special UN agencies; cracked down on the display of national flags during Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin’s (陳雲林) visit to Taipei; and inked agreements allowing direct sea and air transportation links defined as “special routes,” even though they are regarded as domestic routes. Now, after all this, the government has renamed its military attaches in the US to show that it is weakening military relations with Washington. Big steps backward in the international, cross-strait and domestic arenas have inflicted considerable harm on the nation’s sovereignty. Worse, the government is cooperating with a requirement in China’s “Anti-Secession” Law that Taiwan obtain approval from China before joining international organizations. This is most obvious in the case of Taiwan’s bid to join the WHO. Taiwan is already a member of the WTO, an organization far more important than the WHO. The international community therefore did not necessarily side with China’s block on WHO participation. Had former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) not raised his requirements for WHO membership, Taiwan would have been able to join the organization long before the transition of power. Instead, Chen passed the job to Ma, who is now asking China for permission to join the WHO. China is, of course, likely to exercise flexibility in regard to participation in order to advance its agenda of unification. Ma’s cross-strait diplomatic strategy can be analyzed thus: Taiwan’s status is above Hong Kong’s because the former still enjoys autonomy and elects its own president and legislature. But its status is beneath that of Belarus and Ukraine under the Soviet Union because Taiwan cannot be a member of the UN. Its status is also lower than imperial China’s tributary states — Korea, for example — because Taiwan has less diplomatic freedom. Taiwan has abandoned not only its de jure, but also its de facto sovereignty. Taiwan’s international status, as defined by the Ma administration, has more sovereignty than in “one country, two systems,” but a lot less than imperial client states. Taiwan has given up its claim of being an independent and sovereign state; it is now a quasi-client state. Under this definition, it is not surprising that Taiwan would ask for Chinese approval to join the WHO or downgrade its US-based military attaches. The question is if the Taiwanese public is prepared to accept this state of affairs without complaint. Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator. TRANSLATED BY TED YANG

Copyright © 1999-2008 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved.

原來彩色是裝潢用的

天光 （F）

新聞報導 - 楊緒東專欄

作者 台灣大地文教基金會董事長 楊緒東

2008/12/25, Thursday

奇怪！ 在台灣看不到彩色 老是灰濛濛 喔！ 原來彩色是裝潢用的 What is the truth? Who tells the lie? Go Holy Mountain do our way. （撰於2008/12/18） 延伸閱讀： 天光（E） 天光（D） 天光（C） 天光（B） 天光（A） 貓熊「囚禁」動物園? 保育人士痛心 民間社團抗議國共論壇不具民意基礎 KMT cannot be a substitute for government, DPP says Hsutung's BLOG 楊緒東專欄

最後更新 ( 2008/12/25, Thursday )

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補破網

補破網

新聞報導 - 楊緒東專欄

作者 台灣大地文教基金會董事長 楊緒東

2008/12/24, Wednesday

If people can’t organize to influence the government, then democracy is dead. 現在的台灣就是民間無法監督政府，慘！ 立法院成為中華帝制應聲蟲，少數的民進黨立法委員無計可施。 講民主、法治的學者出來講話，阿九沒反應。 少年郎出來扮野草莓，阿九沒看見。 教授絕食靜坐苦撐！阿九不見。 狼嚎犬吠有如街頭鞭炮聲，Human Rights 再也混不出什麼名堂。 檢、調、特、憲、警質變，Pro-Taiwan 的派滲入紅色血水。 臭老九的豆腐攤生意大好，嗜吃的中國人聞臭而來。 Democracy Ma 在Taiwan A-bian 的下台之後，立刻DNA突變為Vampire。 要生存、要自由，秀才遇到兵，只有戰鬥。 到聖山去淨化心靈，吃台灣的大鍋飯解解心愁。 （撰於2008/12/20） 延伸閱讀： 諷打壓人權 傀儡馬遊愛河 KMT, police accused of intimidation Hsutung's BLOG 楊緒東專欄

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聖山活動（A

聖山活動（A）

新聞報導 - 楊緒東專欄

作者 台灣大地文教基金會董事長 楊緒東

2008/12/23, Tuesday

進入時空隧道 柳暗花明 訪萬佛寺 遁跡921 中午 聖山開伙了 熱騰騰的台灣小吃 滿足小時候好味道 永遠不厭倦的故鄉夢 紫氣東來有仙山 Formosa的仙山 Holy Mountain 帶我們步步踏上建國之路 （撰於2008/12/22） 延伸閱讀： 大地照片走廊－12/21 理性與感性之旅一日遊 大地照片走廊－12/20 一日遊行前準備 12/21 一日遊活動預告

最後更新 ( 2008/12/23, Tuesday )

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