Delicate dance

Sep 25th 2011, 16:09

(continued)

Many people may feel confused because Ma Ying-Jeou helps improve the cross-strait relations but still imports weapons from the United States. The only answer is that he cheats on Beijing’s Communist Party by playing whether the black or the white. On one side, he talked gaily about how “One China” can work to persuade this world to believe he wants to combine Taiwan island and mainland China; on the other side, he says that he should keep his sovereignty away from Beijing’s China. As he reported in Taipei’s presidential palace to Taiwanese, he sentenced “For the time being our policy is to well get along with mainland China next to Taiwan Strait and to be in the process of negotiating with them. However, for our safety we still need to strengthen defense so that we suggest the two cases of purchasing weapon to the United States. In this time, we take a list of weapon which is more numerous and bigger than any case of the two predecessor, Lee Tung-Hui and Chen Shui-Bian. We do consider the demand of all Taiwanese and feel sorrowful for the failure of this suggestion several days ago.”

After this incident, Taiwan is busy electing their new President independent from Beijing’s China. The three main parties, the blue Kuomintang, the green Democratic Progressive Party and the orange People’s First Party, prepare for their way to catching the chance of succeeding the Presidential seat. Recently, Ma Ying-Jeou appointed Jin Pu-Tsong as his associate hand while DPP will say the 25th “Happy Birthday” in Sep. 28 just after my birthday. Tonight, SETTV played the interview with Soong Tsu-Yu (James Soong) by anchorwoman Lu Hui-Min. Soong criticized Ma as the same as Chiang’s regime which is the only owner of Taiwan sovereignty, and called KMT “Jin-Ma authority” (meaning this just like Taiwan’s movie prize). Actually, few Taiwanese feel the importance of sovereignty and the fewer and fewer of them involve in Taiwan’s foreign affair or the outside development. Instead, Taiwanese talked about how to exercise these policies seen as beef a lot, seeking the autonomous lifestyles. Many Taiwanese even mistake Ma’s some agreement for the better choice of seeking the independent development. These agreement includes the last week’s Free Trade Agreement with Japan and the upcoming Singapore. But there is plenty of Ma’s supporter in Taiwan. As my rational preview and the experience in the past two election, I guess that Ma can get 5.6 million vote, Tsai can get nearly 6 million and Soong get 0.9 million.

Although Tsai shows more suspicious attitudes toward Beijing and the fourth generation of CCP intends to want Ma to be re-elected the next term, I still vote Tsai because she is the more honest one among these three. Apparently we can see the Jiang Bing-Quan and Chen Yuan-Lin meeting at least eight times and they seem to discuss only about economy; moreover, Wang Yi does very bad job in Beijing’s Taiwan Affair Office so that CCP has fewer room in Taiwan Issue and may be misled by Taipei’s authority. I hope that in the next year’s election Tunisia’s night occurs in Taipei City and Taiwanese becomes wiser or better men.

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這裡從一點回顧，就是這天在貼的時候三立新聞台正在播放呂惠敏訪問宋楚瑜，錄到其痛恨只會拍片搞金馬獎等級的金馬體制，要選民從馬的權力結構之違背公共利益突破，避免「馬天皇」的「一再囂張」。蔡的兩岸偏保守，不太能有所作為，宋在第一次選舉對蔡保守或說是模糊化兩岸政策無奈，但宋從2000年以來一直在選戰中演小丑的角色，越演也是越拙，沒有為台灣民主政治帶來什麼貢獻。最後筆者小埋怨王毅一番。「As my rational preview and the experience in the past two election, I guess that Ma can get 5.6 million vote, Tsai can get nearly 6 million and Soong get 0.9 million.」筆者曾先前預測2004年由於連戰和宋楚瑜的陣營偏茍合，和阿扁及呂秀蓮的水蓮配五五波因此有預見若為白熱化局勢阿扁有被暗殺的風險，及謝長廷在初選中勝出於2008年對陣馬英九，筆者當時在經濟學人討論區於是預測票數，由於馬第一任的民生政策不利，又遇八八水災劉兆玄下台及王金平之電話疑雲造成的馬王心結，政局仍有變數，會以30-40萬落敗，及蔡有挾前一年地方選舉的成長力道，應有600萬出頭票數左右。最後宋狡猾驕縱，棄宋保馬成功使馬連任。在台灣，民主政治的二三年來的演變是相對其他第三波民主化國家來講是有較高功利主義而不利公共利益及政治思想進步的，不過人民經濟自由度方面較這些國家地區來得大。

下面附一篇相關的新聞文章

Banyan

Where Asia left its heart

The curious durability of America’s Asian alliances

Sep 24th 2011 | from the print edition

SIXTY years ago this month, a set of agreements signed in San Francisco established the security architecture for Asia and the Pacific that, a few bouts of tinkering aside, is still fundamentally in place. The peace treaty that ended the second world war was accompanied by the formalising of alliances between America and its allies: Australia and New Zealand (the “ANZUS” treaty), Japan and the Philippines. In 1953-54, mutual-defence pacts with South Korea and Taiwan were added, and the ground rules for a Pax Americana in the Pacific were largely complete.

Where to begin enumerating how the world has changed? In September 1951 Chinese and American soldiers were fighting each other in the Korean war, China was “leaning to one side”—that of the Soviet Union—in the cold war, and its economy was largely closed to foreign trade and investment. Now it is the coming power, America’s biggest creditor and the largest trading partner for each of Australia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

So you might expect these countries to be reassessing their security ties. Yet rarely, if ever, has any set of countries been so integrated economically with one country, China, whileseeking defence guarantees from another, America. All perceive their main long-term threat to be China. This odd dichotomy was the premise of a symposium in Washington this month organised by the Lowy Institute, based in Sydney, Australia, on America’s “torn allies”. Lowy’s Michael Wesley says the rapid growth of ties with China might “usher in a period of quite agonising choices” for its regional partners. Yet so far there are few signs of conflicting loyalties. Satu Limaye, Washington director for Hawaii’s East-West Centre, a think-tank, argues that in fact “the demand for American security has never been higher”.

Indeed, this month Australia and America have been discussing—again in San Francisco—how to enhance their security ties. Japan’s new prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, has indicated that he will make a new attempt to remove the biggest obstacle in Japan’s military relations with America, a stalled agreement over relocating American marines in Okinawa. South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, is expected to enjoy a state dinner at the White House next month, adding symbolic weight to the importance of the alliance. As for Taiwan, a formal alliance lapsed after America recognised the government in Beijing in 1979. But this week’s row over arms sales has shown how even the most China-friendly administration in Taiwan since the civil war still cleaves to the informal American alliance.

Four main things explain America’s continuing strategic pull. The first is that, for all the fear of China’s rise, the United States remains the predominant military power in the Pacific. If you are buying security, it is the place to shop. Second is the weakness or even hostility of relations among its separate allies. Since a security pact signed in 2007, Australia and Japan have been quietly strengthening military ties. But Japan and South Korea remain testy neighbours. Third, efforts to build up regional security forums, mostly centred on the Association of South-East Asian Nations, have barely managed to starta serious conversation, let alone establish mechanisms for settling disputes.

Fourth, and most important, China has done little to convert its growing economic clout into strategic reassurance. On the contrary, over the past couple of years it has managed to alarm all its neighbours. The potentially placatory government of the Democratic Party of Japan was alienated by China’s aggressive behaviour after the detention of a Chinese trawler captain in disputed waters a year ago. South Korea was angered by China’s refusal to condemn North Korea for sinking a naval vessel and shelling civilians on one of its islands. Trade and tourism with Taiwan may be booming; but over 1,000 Chinese missiles are still trained on the island. Even countries once far from the American orbit, like Vietnam and India, are being driven closer to it by China’s aggressive assertion of territorial claims.

Some of China’s apparently inept diplomacy may be a result of poorly co-ordinated foreign policy. But it is also possible to see it as part of a steady and concerted push to assert regional dominance against America. Aaron Friedberg, an American scholar, argues in a new book (“A Contest for Supremacy: China, America and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia”) that China’s rulers want to constrict America’s military and diplomatic clout in the Western Pacific, “pushing it back and ultimately displacing it as the preponderant power in East Asia”. America, he argues, needs to find “a serious response” to China’s military build-up, partly to stiffen the spines of America’s friends who may “grow fearful of abandonment, perhaps eventually losing heart and succumbing to the temptations of appeasement.”

Be sure to wear flowers in your hair

Few seem tempted yet. But Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister, has written of a “nightmare scenario” in which policymakers “are forced to choose between their great economic dependence on China and their still-enormous military reliance on the US.” Unlike Mr Friedberg, he argues that “paradoxical as it might seem, the Asia/Pacific region’s stability could well be put more at risk by America’s continuing assertion of absolute primacy or dominance than by a more balanced distribution of conventional military power.” He quotes, admiringly, Bill Clinton, who once said that America should use its primacy “to create a world in which we will be comfortable living when we are no longer top dog on the global block.”

Top dogs, however, are rarely so prescient; nor are their challengers so accommodating. As a concept, “torn allies” may be somewhat premature. But the tension between celebrating the economic benefits of China’s rise and challenging some of its consequences is unlikely to leave the San Francisco arrangements so nearly intact for another 60 years.

from the print edition | Asia

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