Failing to look into the blind spot
Since the inauguration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), the national defense budget has plummeted. Taiwan’s arsenal is aging and defense capabilities are weakening, while China is spending more than 10 percent of its annual budget on defense every year. The cross-strait military imbalance is a clear concern for many countries, with even US and Japanese military experts shaking their heads in disbelief.
A cable from the US embassy in Bangkok recently released by WikiLeaks shows that former minister of foreign affairs Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊), in a conversation with AIT Chairman Raymond Burghardt on March 20, 2009, said that the Ma administration would make three commitments to the US: Taiwan would not request that the US sell specific weapons systems to Taiwan simply to prove that the US would do so; Taiwan would not request any special transit arrangements just to show that the US supports Taiwan, and Taiwan would not insist on the use of specific names based on political concerns.
The cable answers many questions. The Ma administration never intended to ask the US for advanced weapons; it has pinned its national security strategy on reconciliation with China — so long as Beijing does not attack Taiwan, it does not matter if this nation’s weapons are out of date because they will never be used anyway.
Peace talks are indeed one way to protect national security, but unilaterally suing for peace will, in the short run, only create a sense of false security and the mistaken impression that the current peaceful situation is sustainable. Unfortunately, the current reality is not necessarily so rosy. If China were dissatisfied with the progress of its unification attempts and decided to turn to a military solution, where would Taiwan turn for security if its military proved incapable of defending against even the first attack? The government’s blind pro-China policy is a sugarcoated poison pill.
The government might say in its own defense that Ma has called on the US to sell Taiwan F16C/D aircraft on several occasions, and that he did so again when meeting with Richard Bush, director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brooking Institution, on Wednesday.
However, Taiwan has been urging the US to sell fighter jets for seven years. The previous Democratic Progressive Party administration asked for a price quote three times without receiving a response. Ma blamed the US for his decision to refrain from asking for a price quote, implying that the US did not want Taiwan to ask for a quote.
Another look at the cable, however, shows the Ma administration’s requests were just feints to convince the public that the government feels strongly about national defense and to convince US experts and academics that Taiwan has not given up on self defense and will not join China, showing that there is no need for the US to change its view of Taiwan as an ally.
China has more than 1,000 missiles aimed at Taiwan, Taiwan is within reach of Chinese fighter jets and China’s first aircraft carrier is about to go into service. Regardless of whether a strong military is a defense necessity or a backup force in case peace talks go wrong, Taiwan is in urgent need of advanced weapons. As commander-in-chief responsible for the lives, property and safety of 23 million Taiwanese, Ma must understand that national security is not about talking big, but walking small.
Hong Kong’s visit scheme lessons
Chinese authorities have announced that individual visits to Taiwan by some of its citizens will be officially permitted from tomorrow. During the initial trial period, residents of Beijing, Shanghai and Xiamen will be able to visit Taiwan on their own.
This development is widely seen as a big chance to profit from exchanges across the Taiwan Strait, but some people take a more negative view, asking whether visitors might overstay, abscond or work illegally. In this regard, Hong Kong’s experience in implementing its Individual Visit Scheme would be a good reference point for understanding the possible benefits and risks.
Allowing Chinese visitors to travel independently is an important step in promoting two-way deregulation of cross-strait travel and creating a spillover effect that will benefit a wider range of businesses. The policy of allowing Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan was implemented three years ago, and Chinese tourists and businesspeople made 1.4 million visits to Taiwan last year.
However, the fact that these visitors have thus far been restricted to arriving and leaving in groups has meant that the benefits have been limited to travel agencies, tourist destinations and a fixed number of hotels and restaurants. These tour groups do all their shopping at outlets that have cooperative arrangements with travel agencies, while other businesses have not benefited.
Allowing Chinese visitors to travel independently will satisfy tourists’ desire to go where they please. It will increase the depth and breadth of tourism in Taiwan by Chinese tourists and expand their consumer spending, so that more small restaurants, cafes, retailers and transport businesses will benefit from the a spillover effect.
Looking at the Hong Kong experience, the Individual Visit Scheme, which was launched in 2003, had by December last year expanded to cover visitors from 49 Chinese cities. By that time, more than 60 million visits had been made to Hong Kong under the scheme, bringing considerable benefits to travel, retail and other businesses.
Be that as it may, quite a lot of disputes have arisen over the past few years involving Chinese travelers in Hong Kong, and there have been arguments and discussions about issues to do with Chinese visiting Hong Kong to shop, buy property, give birth to children and so on. Taiwan would do well to learn from this experience.
Last month, the Hong Kong Research Association conducted a survey of 1,080 people residing in the territory. Although 77 percent of respondents agreed that individual visits by people from other parts of China had had a “very big” or “quite big” effect in stimulating growth in Hong Kong’s retail sector, 46 percent of people surveyed had a worse impression of individual travel by Chinese compared to a year earlier, while only 8 percent had a better impression.
Seventy-two percent of respondents thought that shopping visits by people from other parts of China had “a very big influence” or “quite a big influence” on Hong Kong residents’ everyday shopping experience.
Fifty-six percent of people questioned in the survey thought individual travel by Chinese had had “a very big influence” or “quite a big influence” on their lives. The biggest influence quoted was “prices of goods and services have been driven up,” followed by “tight supply of goods and services” and then “crowded conditions at tourist and shopping spots.”
Taiwan’s lawmakers must pass refugee law
Monday last week was the UN’s annual World Refugee Day. According to data from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, there are currently 36 million refugees worldwide. Taiwan still lacks refugee legislation. The Chinese Association for Human Rights is calling on the government to pass the draft refugee law currently before the legislature, thereby realizing the ideals of a state built on human rights.
Since 1980, the association’s Taipei Overseas Peace Service (TOPS) has served in areas such as Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, Cambodia and the border area between Thailand and Myanmar, working to provide education, medical care and food, and so far helping more than 1 million people.
Take the TOPS team in Thailand for example: Despite limited private resources, it has helped improve teacher training, provided children with stationery and nutritious lunches and improved the general environment in refugee camps. Such teams are a physical representation of the humanitarian spirit of Taiwanese and their professional attitude is recognized and greatly valued by local governments and international organizations alike.
According to Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” Although Taiwan is neither a UN member state nor a signatory of the related international conventions, as a member of the international community it should not exclude itself from the refugee issue. It is therefore urgent that the government draft legislation to regulate standards for reviewing and recognizing refugees, as well as the provision of such basic rights such as legal advice, medical care, placement, shelter and other aid and assistance during their stay in Taiwan.
As a result of the lack of regulations, the authorities have sometimes found themselves unable to do anything when human rights activists apply for refugee status other than detain them or return them to their countries of origin. There are still Chinese dissidents in Taiwan who are legally homeless.
The Cabinet’s draft refugee law originally adopted a relatively narrow definition of the term, based on the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, restricting the right to apply for refugee status to those who are “being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
However, over the past few decades the international community has started to define refugee status differently. In this broader definition, “refugee” refers to those forced to leave their countries of birth or residence and seek asylum in other countries for reasons of political persecution, war or natural disaster.
This is the reason the association suggested the government should also include those whose freedom and lives are threatened by war or natural disasters as refugees in the draft, both at a 2009 seminar which called for the drafting of a refugee law and when participating in a meeting to revise the draft at the Ministry of the Interior earlier the same year.
The association’s suggestion was later incorporated into the new version of the draft. Unfortunately, that draft remains stuck in the legislature.
On World Refugee Day, the association called on the government to view and seek to resolve the refugee issue with an open mind. It should seek passage of the draft bill as soon as possible to realize the ideal of a state built on human rights and fulfill its international obligation to implement the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that it ratified into domestic law in 2009.
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