Tuesday, December 09, 2014

The Irritant Foreign Policy + Links

Had a great time banging around the hills of Miaoli on Sunday.Hope to get pics up tomorrow, but swamped.

I went to a conference on Saturday hosted by the Taiwan Brain Trust and Project 2049. Bruce Jacobs spoke, and remarked on how the Ma Administration's hysterical reaction to the Korean FTA was part of its strategy to isolate Taiwan from neighbors which might otherwise be in solidarity with it.

To that one could add so many other instances -- the Senkakus with Japan, the entire South China Sea, whose nations otherwise might be in solidarity with Taiwan, the poacher killed in the Philippines by the Coast Guard, and the beef issue with the US. Ma's whole foreign policy approach is based on isolating Taiwan in order to ensure the only answer to the foreign policy question of "Which nation is our friend?" is "China".
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Michael, you've done a lot of good work with your posts and links recently, but I feel you're very mistaken to attribute Taiwan's poor relations with neighboring countries to the Ma administration.
Taiwanese in general have a poor attitude to their neighbors such as rivalry with South Korea and arrogance towards Philippines and Southeast Asia. The DPP would have acted the same if they were in power with the Philippine coast guard killing incident.

That said you are mostly right in your consistent criticism of China and the internationl media coverage of Taiwan-China relations.

CP