A fisherman on a beach in western Taiwan
Quite often, the hardest thing to see is the thing that isn't there. And in this case, it's Taiwan.
Search DailyKos, Huffington Post, CommonDreams, or other Lefty sites for Taiwan, and what do you find? Other than occasional diaries by myself, Taonow, and Zenbowl, at DKos, there is very little out there. Similarly, for China, while there seems to be a great deal of reporting and commentary on whatever the problem du jour of the moment is, there does not seem to be anything like an overall strategic approach. Apparently Dems don't do strategy -- the very word conjures up images of neocons wrecking the Middle East. But China demands a more conscious, integrated approach. Conventionally portrayed as a rising power, and one likely to be at war with the US over a range of issues -- of which Taiwan is only the most obvious -- China will also demand a comprehensive Dem response on environmental, Third World economic, political, and social development, and human rights, all areas in which the US can be expected to confront Bejing over the next few decades.
Candles in the Wenwu Temple at Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan
At the same time, the deafening silence on the Left is mirrored on the Right by an almost fantastic flow of discourse. Books like Ross Terrill's The New Chinese Empire follow on each other's heels like children running out onto the playground for recess. When newspapers need commentary they turn to people like John Tkacik of Heritage or conservative Arthur Waldron at Penn. Nothing on the Left compares to this incredible range of material. And of all the silences on the Left, none is more amazing than the almost total neglect of Taiwan as both a place and an issue.
Another fascinating aspect of this silence is that there does not appear to be an easily identifiable reason for it. Over the years I've had the opportunity to speak with many on the Left with Taiwan experience about the neglect of Taiwan, and while all deplore it, none has a ready explanation for it.
Fisherman on Hoping Island in Keelung harbor, Taiwan.
Part of the answer lies in attitudes on the Left toward US foreign policy that treat US foreign policy as a mindless exercise in pure nefariousness. A good example of this kind of silliness is William Hartung's piece at Common Dreams in May of this year, sadly one of only a handful of pieces on Taiwan at that site. Hartung asserts:
The answer is one part ideology and one part greed. Hard-line elements within the administration and among its allies at the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing think tanks have been busily working to portray China as the ultimate "rogue state" — a more economically vibrant version of the old Soviet Union.
This threat mongering bears little resemblance to reality, but if deals can be struck with Iran and North Korea in the next five to ten years the U.S. will be "running out of enemies," as Colin Powell said at the end of the Cold War. Even if tensions with these two states linger, they are hardly adequate to justify a military budget that is approaching half a trillion dollars per year. Hence the need to puff up the Chinese "threat."
The ideological drive to demonize China conveniently coincides with the interests of the military-industrial complex. One day the war in Iraq will end, and arms makers and their allies in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill will be searching for new rationales to keep weapons factories running full speed ahead. An F-22 sale to Japan may help bail out Lockheed Martin, which has seen Air Force orders drop from an original target of 750 planes to 180 or less, even as the plane’s cost goes up and its performance goes down. Aircraft sales to South Korea and India could help Boeing and/or Lockheed Martin stretch production runs for their current generation fighter planes. And the controversial arms package for Taiwan will be a boon to U.S. ship and missile makers.
Untangling a mess like Hartung's is time consuming -- correcting error always takes more time than making it -- but this piece makes an excellent springboard for analysis of these stale, slanted views.
The piece is riddled with telling omissions. For example, Hartung writes that:
After Taiwan’s elected representatives recently turned down the package for the 70th time, they were roundly criticized by Stephen Young, the top U.S. official in Taipei.
What Hartung leaves out is that the "elected representatives" who blocked the arms deal all belong to the Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang (KMT) and its allies in the legislature (Hartung also does not appear to be aware that the package was blocked in committee, not on the floor). These parties have been coordinating strategy with China to suppress Taiwan independence. The pro-independence and pro-democracy parties have a minority in the legislature, and they strongly support the purchase of arms from US. Since Hartung is adamant that US is pushing weapons on Taiwan, he isn't going to tell you that the Administration has been blocking weapons sales to the island, and that the US has also taken other steps to prevent the current package from going through (The US-Taiwan Business Council recently complained about the US refusal to sell weapons to Taiwan). In other words, Hartung simply eliminates any facts that disagree with his slanted thesis.
The reality is simple. Far from arms sales to Taiwan being the act of neocons desperate for a new enemy, they are part and parcel of the longterm US commitment to the island, enacted into legislation in the form of the Taiwan Relations Act, and desired by the parties that support the island's independence and democracy.
Steamed buns in a Taiwan night market.
Hartung also adopts an attitude argues that "the China Threat" is an overblown invention of the Right. This is a common position, and it is worth exploring at some length.
Taiwan is not the only flashpoint around the Chinese border; it is merely the most obvious. In addition to claiming Taiwan, an island whose entirety no Chinese emperor ever ruled, last year the Chinese shocked India by claiming an entire Indian state. China has also claimed islands in the South Seas, including those whose ownership has long been settled. China expert June Tefel Dreyer noted:
In 1995 the government of the Philippines discovered that the PRC had constructed bunkers and radar installations on Mischief Reef, which Manila lays claim to, and also installed boundary markers fifty miles off the Philippines’ Palawan province to demarcate the limit of its exclusive economic zone. Beijing replied to Manila’s protests by saying that the structures were for the use of its fishing people. Then-president Fidel Ramos, a West Point graduate, escorted a tour of the structures for the press, pointing out to the militarily uninitiated that these were not installations for fishing folk. He also ordered the destruction of the boundary markers, prompting Beijing to accuse the Philippines of bullying the People’s Republic of China, warn it against involving the United States or the Association of Southeast Asian States (ASEAN) in the issue, and state that the restraint shown by the PRC shown over the Spratlys could not be permanent. This rhetoric was slightly softened when Beijing suggested talked on fishing rights.
A few weeks later, the government of Indonesia announced it had come into possession of a Chinese map showing the Natuna Islands as part of China’s exclusive economic zone. Since the Natunas, which contain rich gas deposits, have been under Indonesian jurisdiction, there was great concern in Jakarta. The foreign minister was sent to Beijing, where he was told that the Chinese government did not claim the islands. He was not, however, told how the map came to exist.
In addition to its territorial claims in the Himal, the Chinese also covet Central Asia, and a couple of years back, produced a biased history of Korea that basically said the nation was Chinese. China also disputes the Senkaku Islands with Japan (as does Taiwan) and recently the two nations have been bumping up against each other in the waters around Japan. Taiwan is not the only US ally whose territory China covets.
Anyone who has spent a few hours on discussion forums in Asia can recall Chinese, generally dismissed as nutcases, who dream of a land empire that stretches from the Caspian Sea to the Pacific, one that reconstitutes and exceeds the Tang empire from more than 1,000 years ago. They dismissed Mussolini as a nut too when he announced that modern Italy was going to have a new Roman empire to go with it, but the people he killed around the Mediterranean littoral didn't find it very amusing.
Note that while China loudly claims that it is a "divided country," few stop to think that it holds half of Mongolia and has split Tibet as well. Ross Terrill, one of the many conservatives who understands China as "an empire in search of a state," as Lucien Pye put it, wrote in The New Chinese Empire:
Why should the world's top power repeatedly recite, at Beijing's insistence, support for One China? We did not endorse the territorial integrity of the Soviet Union. On the contrary, we declined to accept the incorporation of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia into Moscow's realm. The Soviet leaders lived with that. Why, in the case of China, a comparable Communist empire, do we endorse its questionable view of its own boundaries?
Countries friendly to Indonesia do not speak of One Indonesia, when questions arise about the rights of the turbulent provinces of Aceh and West Irian. No global tears are shed for Mongolia as a "divided country," yet it is one; should there be a doctrine of One Mongolia, to match One China? But China is special. China must be treated like a Ming vase, in Chris Patten's phrase. All this benefits the new Chinese empire. Beijing can pretend to be an aggrieved former semicolony, rather than the only multinational empire to survive into the twenty-first century.(p279-80)
Terrill also alludes to another problem on both Left and Right: rampant double standards toward human rights violations and territorial expansion in Europe and Asia. While the West supported the independence of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithunia, and recently the US made Kosovo independent despite the strong protests of Russia, nothing comparable is done for Taiwan. Too Jim Mann observed in The China Fantasy that while Soviet dissidents were cool, Chinese democracy activists seem to lack their appeal for westerners.
In other words, it is wrong to understand Taiwan as part of China that has become unhinged somehow. Taiwan was never part of China. Rather, Taiwan has to be put into two historical perspectives. First, the drive by Communist China to instantiate itself in the borders of the old Manchu Empire, the Qing Empire, and to reconstruct those holdings as the "sacred national territory" of China. The second perspective is China's postwar drive to plant itself in territories no one had ever thought of as Chinese. Taiwan straddles both those lines -- prior to 1945 the Chinese never thought of it as "Chinese" -- one need only read the Ming generals complaining to their Qing masters when asked to invade Taiwan in the 17th century that the island lay outside China, or recall that when Chiang Kai-shek unified China in 1927, no one asked why Taiwan wasn't included. Taiwan is thus simultaneously a colony of the Qing that the Chinese are attempting to get everyone to accept as "sacred national territory" and a new territory it is desperately trying to incorporate.
This context also makes clear that Taiwan is not some putative "final piece of a puzzle." It is the first step among many, and a test to see how the west will react to China's expansionist dreams.
Fishing boats in a west coast harbor.
In recent weeks Taiwan has been in the news for its attempt to enter the UN, and the resulting repercussions for US, Taiwan, and China relations (see Taonow's excellent diary on the recent demonstrations). This issue, much too complex to go into here, does, however, present the stark contrast between Left and Right on China issues.
Meanwhile there has been a steady drumbeat of criticism from Bush Administration officials like Tom Christensen of Taiwan's UN referendum plan. These criticisms stirred up a firestorm in response -- entirely from the Right. Statements by Richard Armitage, Congresscritter Tom Tancredo, and Heritage analyst John Tkacik represent only a sample of the Right's response. Nor can this be dismissed as mere neocon warmongering -- many on the Right, like those on the Left, have longstanding personal connections to the island. Tkacik, for example, spent his boyhood here. Others like Armitage and John Bolton, have done business with the island's government These are not people for whom Taiwan is a small country, far away, of which little is known, but makes a great pawn in an anti-China policy.
By contrast, the Dem side of Congress, which houses the largest collection of invertebrates outside of the Smithsonian, was almost silent. Maybe people didn't know or didn't care (that's bad enough) or maybe it is because powerful Dems like Dianne Feinsten are heavily invested in China (her husband has tens of millions in investments there). While a bi-partisan group of Congressmen wrote a letter to the right-wing Washington Times, there was no similar response from newspapers on the center or left. The strong editorial in the Wall Street Journal attacking UN Sec-Gen Ban's rejection of Taiwan's application has no counterpart on the center or left -- it is as if the threat to Taiwan's democracy means nothing to the thousands of individuals and institutions that profess to be the most concerned with the democratic way of life. Taiwan, and implicitly, China, is thus left to the Right.
A spider hangs on a mountain ridge.
Leaving China and Taiwan policy to the Right is a bad idea, from almost any perspective. China may well become an important election issue, but the Dems seem to have no clear position on it -- yet the Right has a very clear and easily understood one. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the collection of elites that sets Establishment foreign policy goals, recently came out with a relatively rosy report that attempts to position China as a strategic partner of the United States. It was characteristic that dissent on the report came from the Right, in the person of longtime China and Taiwan specialist Arthur Waldron. The Dems have no position on that particular recommendation or on any other; they do not seem to recognize that Taiwan is a vital flashpoint that also touches on our relations with Japan, the Philippines, India, and other Asian nations; indeed, the very idea of a foreign policy "strategy" seems almost anathema. Yet the Dems will need to start thinking about it, and before they come to power in 2008. Next year the Dem candidate may well be grilled on China......
Nor can Dems claim to be the party of democratic, progressive politics when it ignores the claims of a vibrant, economically advanced, democracy like Taiwan, and are silent on China's aggressive military buildup, including more than 1,000 missiles pointed at Taiwan, the acquisition of a broad range of capabilities aimed at the island and at US dominance in the region, and widening regional influence, also aimed at Taiwan and rivals such as India (China is creating a large naval base in Burma). When the Right speaks on these issues, they are not inventing scary facts so they can sell weapons to Taiwan and Japan. They are responding to a burgeoning problem that the Dems have not begun to clearly grapple with.
A worker cleans a sand mold in an investment casting factory.
What should the Dems be doing? A Dem China policy should:
- Set as its long term goal the democratization of China and that nation's renunciation of its territorial claims on its neighbors. As Jim Mann points out in The China Fantasy, a succession of Presidents both democratic and republican have studiously avoided doing anything serious about democratization in China. Recognize that "the China problem" at bottom is the problem of China being an empire, not a democracy, and that China's bellicosity and expansionism are the root causes of the "Taiwan problem," not Taiwan's democracy.
- Set as its long term goal active support for democratic states in the region.
- Set as its short and medium term goal support of Taiwan's independence and democracy. Recognize reality: support for long-term independence is the mainstream political view in Taiwan, and it isn't going to go away.
- Set as its short and medium term goal the fostering of talks between China's leaders and Taiwan's. China has steadfastly refused to hold discussions with the pro-democracy leadership in Taiwan.
- Set as its medium and long-term goal the fostering of alliance systems that stretch from India to Japan. This would include
active opposition to Chinese diplomatic expansion in Asia
rebuilding of our frayed links to Korea
the resumption of high-level links with Taiwan, as Congress has long demanded but State long opposed (and since 2002, strangled), especially military links, and repair of our frayed relationship with the island
Fostering closer links with nations such as Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Burma that may feel threatened by China, or seek to fall into its orbit. The next Dem President should seriously consider state visits to those nations.
Of course, any strong US foreign policy is predicated on the termination of our criminal, and criminally stupid, invasion of Iraq. The US will be in no position military, politically, economically, or financially, to confront a rising China as long as it is in Iraq.
- Actively and aggressively engage with China on environmental and economic issues. The corollary to this is of course the switch to a non-fossil fuel economy in the US during the first administration of the next Dem president. US hypocrisy must stop.
- Reinvestment in the US base system in the Pacific, including permanent basing of F-22s in Japan and Guam, early deployment of the F-35 fighters, enhanced military contacts with Taiwan, Korea, and Japan, and investments in an expanded Pacific naval presence. Our broken military must be fixed, for it is the linchpin of any strong US foreign policy.
- Prepare for the dissolution and collapse of the Chinese Communist Party. As Arthur Waldron pointed out, US policymakers were totally unprepared for the collapse of Soviet Communism. Dem policy should be prepared for constructive engagement, for opposition to expansion, and for eventual collapse and disintegration. China is an empire trying to become a state; and any foreign policy that deals with it needs to recognize its inherent potential for collapse.
Diners at a typical lunch buffet in Taichung.
As a lifelong Dem, I am often asked whether I feel ashamed for lining up with the Right on the Taiwan issue. I always answer that, no, I feel ashamed that so few Dems have lined up on the right side of the issue.
Yesterday the center-right Japan Times noted in an editorial on the Taiwan UN issue:
[President] Chen certainly has political calculations in mind as he presses the U.N. campaign and proceeds with a referendum on U.N. membership that will be held at the same time as the presidential election in March. But to dismiss this entire phenomenon as a political scheme is wrong, too. Increasing numbers of people in Taiwan do not think of themselves as Chinese. They have made extraordinary progress in building a vibrant democracy and creating one of the world's economic powerhouses. They want credit for those accomplishments.
Ignoring this yearning will not make it go away. Beijing's merciless campaign to deny Taiwan international space is strengthening a collective sense of grievance and — yes — a separate identity. All nations must help find a middle ground that acknowledges the remarkable gains made by Taiwan without crossing the red lines that would provoke a crisis.
Respect for Taiwan, rather than fear of China, should be the guiding principles of cross-strait relations. It would pay dividends on both sides of the strait and for all nations of the region.
Taiwan and its growing sense of its own identity isn't going to go away. The "provocations" that the international press sensationally and wrongly assigns to the President are simply structural features of the island's politics, as the Japan Times realizes. The Dems need good policies now, so that later they do not have to face a shriveling US position in Asia, and the eternal condemnation of history......
"If you have sacrificed my nation to preserve the peace of the world, I will be the first to applaud you. But if not, gentlemen, God help your souls."
Looking north up the east coast rift valley in Taiwan
Diary by Michael Turton of The View from Taiwan
Selected Taiwan blogs in English with a pro-Democracy political flavor:
Jerome F. Keating's writings
That's Impossible: Politics from Taiwan
The Only Redhead in Taiwan
Taiwan Matters!
The Foreigner in Formosa
Rank
R.O.C. the Boat