Friday, July 02, 2010

SCMP hosts wonderful thinking on Taiwan

Compare this excellent missive, enriched with penetrating political insight and abundant local knowledge, to the piece of crap from WaPo below it. It appeared in today's SCMP.

+++++++++++++++++

Economic limits
Beijing is wrong to think that its trade pact with Taiwan will help its long-term political aims

Michael Fahey
Updated on Jul 02, 2010
As representatives from the mainland and Taiwan signed the historic Economic Co-operation Framework Agreement in Chongqing on Tuesday, pro-independence media outlets in Taiwan prominently ran a famous picture of a smiling Mao Zedong toasting a beaming Chiang Kai-shek during the 1945 peace talks between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Like this week's negotiations, those talks were also held in Chongqing, which served as the Republic of China's provisional capital during the dark days of the second world war. Four bloody years later, Chiang fled Sichuan for permanent exile in Taiwan.

While mainland and Taiwanese negotiators blandly denied any historical significance to the choice of Chongqing, those opposed to the agreement in Taiwan obsessed over the historical parallels. The lesson they drew is that history repeats itself: the KMT has once again been duped by the Communist Party.

They will be proved wrong. The agreement does not signal the end of Taiwanese democracy but, rather, the beginning of the end of Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou's somewhat one-sided love affair with the mainland. The real lesson that should be learned from the meetings in Chongqing this week and those 65 years ago is an old philosophical one: appearance does not always reflect reality. Especially in East Asian politics.

Much as the United States once believed that economics drove politics in China in the 1990s, the mainland now thinks the same about Taiwan. Beijing's strategy is to wait for the magical economic elixirs it has given Taiwan to take effect. Once the Taiwanese have tasted the benefits of direct flights, millions of mainland tourists in Taiwan, and the fruits of free investment and trade across the Taiwan Strait, Beijing is optimistic that a political accommodation with Taiwan can be reached through negotiations and patience. This betrays a fundamental lack of understanding about the arc of Taiwanese history over the past three decades and what matters to the Taiwanese now. During the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, a mass democracy movement forced the KMT to hold free elections, end military law and censorship, and normalise Taiwanese society. While Taiwan's politics are messy and its judiciary weak, Taiwan's vibrant civil society enjoys the same political freedoms as people in North America or Europe.

During Taiwan's struggle for political emancipation, however, it deferred the problems of economic and social inequality. By 2000, it had become clear that the economy in particular had serious long-term problems. Incomes stagnated and unemployment rose as the promised knowledge and service-oriented economy never materialised. To this day, Taiwan's economy remains overly reliant on low-margin contract manufacturing that is itself dependent on the exploitive and dehumanising labour practices seen in Foxconn's recent problems on the mainland. Taiwan's educated and ambitious people aspire to much more.

When the heroes of the democracy movement proved themselves to lack the imagination, interest and, most importantly, integrity to remake Taiwan's economy, the electorate decided, with considerable justification, to throw the bums out in 2008.

They put current president Ma Ying-jeou and the KMT back in power on the strength of promises that Taiwan's economy could be rebuilt by opening up to the mainland. And Ma has been largely successful in liberalising relations with the mainland as both sides have signed a series of agreements, culminating with the signing of the trade pact this week that reduces tariffs on more than 500 Taiwanese exports to the mainland and more than 200 mainland exports to Taiwan.

The problem for the mainland and its long-term political goals is that Ma has now hit the limits of his mandate to open up the economy and has expended most of his political capital in forcing through the agreement without a referendum, against the wishes of about a third of the population.

Like Japan, Taiwan is a society that prizes consensus. Unlike Japan, it is deeply divided as to its identity. Nonetheless, it is united in its determination to keep its hard-won political freedoms and the de facto but very real sovereignty that underpins its open society.

If Ma were to exceed his mandate by putting Taiwanese sovereignty on the bargaining table with Beijing, he would risk significant unrest that would damage his already unpopular administration even further.

He is politically vulnerable because, although Taiwan's economy has made a sparkling recovery in terms of gross domestic product and other conventional economic indicators, Taiwan's working people are waiting, with increasing impatience, for some of the benefits to trickle down to them.

They will be waiting for a long time since the main effect of Ma's mainland-oriented economic policies is that Taiwanese businessmen are being enabled to extend the life of their moribund business model even longer by relocating to the mainland to exploit its cheaper labour, instead of investing in new technologies and the service industry in Taiwan.

The ineffectual and now deeply unpopular Ma is also the last ethnic mainlander politician in Taiwan with national appeal. After he leaves office in 2012 or 2016, the KMT has no one electable who still shares the mainland's nationalist dreams. While it appears that all Beijing needs to do is to wait for Taiwan to rejoin the fold, the reality is that time is running out. It is probably in Taiwan's interest that Beijing chooses to continue to believe in the illusion that unity of the Chinese people is coming soon.

Michael Fahey is a Taiwan-based writer and political commentator

++++++++++++++++++++++

By "economics drove politics" Fahey is arguing that China is suffering from a delusion similar that which afflicted US foreign policy thinkers in the 1990s: that if we just made China rich and brought it into the international system, it would become more tractable, maybe even democratic. That has turned out to be a fantasy. Similarly, China is thinking that if it showers Taiwan with economic benefits, the Taiwanese will want to annex themselves to Beijing. Actually, as two decades of Taiwanese manufacturing in China have shown, Taiwanese who make money off Beijing do not develop any particular support for annexation. Beijing's policies will create islands of support in Taiwan by developing interests in favor of Chinese money. But there isn't going to be a sea-change, as interaction with Chinese generally leads Taiwanese to discover that they are a culturally different people.

I was having a conversation yesterday with a very dear Deep Blue friend, many years in the military, and steeped in KMT ideology and Chineseness, who identifies as Chinese. He remarked to me that he understood what the Taiwanese independence people mean. He went back to China for a visit this year and experienced it as "going home" and "being at home" among the people there. But in Taiwan, he experiences a cultural difference between himself and those who identify as Taiwanese.

Like myself, Fahey believes that ECFA is a status quo agreement that will enable Taiwan to continue to pursue its current type of manufacturing structure, the contract/ODM/OEM manufacturing, and thus defer the deep structural changes that island needs. Because ECFA is about maintaining the current system with its rising income inequality and wage stagnation, it will not create broad political support because its benefits will not appear in the pockets of most people, who will come to associate ECFA with continuing income inequality and economic stagnation. Hence China will at some point become disappointed in its quest to use economic levers to move the Taiwanese world. What it will do at that point is anyone's guess....
_______________________
Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Which is what most commentators, and the KMT to some extent, have been saying all the time. ECFA is an economic/trade agreement only, not a political agreement.

Michael Turton said...

Nobody ever said ECFA was a political agreement. Merely that its political intention was obvious and clearly indicated by China.

David said...

I assume the repeated use of "mainland" is the work of the SCMP's editors. It makes it somewhat annoying to read an otherwise excellent piece of writing.

Anonymous said...

ECFA is simply the candy.
China is the stranger in the van.

Dixteel said...

Although the analysis has good points, I still fear the economic policies will influence political decision to some extend...and at worst China could actually succeed to some extend. Here is why (the worst scenario):

1. China is an example in which economic enrichment does not help in changing political position. However, Hong Kong is a perfect example in which economic influence political decision. The returning of Hong Kong to China in 1997 is based largely on economic, not just political elements. While people in Hong Kong have different culture than people in China, the annexation was unavoidable. People were forced to except it, gladly or not, or immigrate to other places. This could happen to Taiwan if Taiwanese economy becomes very dependent on China.

2. While some Chinese living standards are getting better, large portion of China's economic wealth is currently controlled by very few groups of people and many with very good tie with CCP. With CCP controlling both guns and butter, it has absolute rule. That is why the political situation won't change. Currently Taiwan's situation is a bit different, obviously, but what if China can help in turning Taiwan into something like China economically. IE, put wealth in the hands of pro-KMT and pro-CCP people and eliminate the middle class. Then, with control once again firmly in KMT's hand, annexation is not that far fetched. Even if in name there is no annexation, practically CCP will have very good control over Taiwan.

3. At this point, many would realize Taiwan has lost its sovereignty, but it would be too late. Any protests or even armed revolution would be for nothing. We can look at Tibet and Hong Kong as examples. Furthermore, many Taiwanese at least point would probably accept the outcome even though unwillingly. Those that want and can afford to do so will probably immigrate out.

Of course this is the worst case scenario and I can be very pessimistic at times. Just some thoughts.

Sage said...

I enjoyed Fahey's insightful article.

But ... is it possible for people to NOT to refer to China as the "mainland"?

Richard said...

Interesting take on ECFA. Haven't seen many positive takes on it from the standpoint of the "green" side.

To add to your comment about the cultural difference... while I have not experienced it myself (having never been to China), but I have a few Taiwanese friends who are politically probably light greens light blues (center) who've told me about their time in China (studying abroad there or working there for a short period) who have basically said that they have a hard time "getting along" with the Chinese there. While I always viewed Taiwanese and Chinese as different, it was interesting to see that it's not simply a "pan-green" thing to say that Taiwanese and Chinese are different in more ways than one.

D said...

"Merely that its political intention was obvious and clearly indicated by China."
And according to this SCMP piece, those intentions are in vain. So doesn't that vitiate all the hand-wringing (not necessarily by you, but by others in this orbit) about ECFA being the doomsday kiss of death for Taiwan's democracy?
Interesting to wonder whether ECFA represents a "moribund business model".
Thanks for posting this great article.

Anonymous said...

I love how you glibly ignore the fact that Fahey's article states critics, including yourself, are wrong for emphasizing the KMT is likely to be "duped" by the Communists. You don't really care about the logic, all you value is that he shares your conclusion: Taiwanese sovereignty won't be compromised.

He, of course, is writing from the perspective of a typical American time-frame: "strategic" decisions are made on the basis of 4 year campaign cycles. If Ma doesn't have the ability to force some sort of political union during his term(s) in office, then obviously that's the end of the story.

That's an idiotic time frame for understanding this story. Beijing has no reason, no motivation for forcing any sort of political union for at least 50 years. The timeline for Hong Kong's reunification was 99 years, and political reform was 50 years. Taiwan's time frame will be at *least* 50 years.

The question of who will be in office in 2013 is a minor one. The important issue is: what will mainland China and Taiwan look like in 2060? It seems incredibly unlikely that any politician will jar Taiwan from the obvious orbit it's currently on: the Japanese-speaking octogenarians in Taiwan will die off, replaced by a (future) generation of Taiwanese who will grow up watching Chinese movies, listening to Chinese songs, working for Chinese companies, and attending Chinese universities.

Frankly, I can only hope that Americans persist with their myopic view of future events. The more you're obsessed with resolving today's problems, the more likely we'll be eating your lunch well into tomorrow.

Michael Turton said...

I love how you glibly ignore the fact that Fahey's article states critics, including yourself, are wrong for emphasizing the KMT is likely to be "duped" by the Communists. You don't really care about the logic, all you value is that he shares your conclusion: Taiwanese sovereignty won't be compromised.

I love the fact that at no time have I ever said the KMT was duped by the CCP. Ever. Stupid question: why don't anonymous loons learn to read?

Not a stupid question. Why can't trolls think? Then they could elevate themselves out of trolldom and into a world where they could say something meaningful.

Frankly, I can only hope that Americans persist with their myopic view of future events. The more you're obsessed with resolving today's problems, the more likely we'll be eating your lunch well into tomorrow.

Actually, Fahey and I discussed this piece in his kitchen yesterday morning. And one of his points was the long time frame of events that lay behind and beyond his analysis.

You've...totally misunderstood. Hardly a shock, considering that you're a submissive pro-China loser.

Yes, pro-China trolls: loony and clueless. It's why I let you guys post here.

Michael

Anonymous said...

The more you're obsessed with resolving today's problems, the more likely we'll be eating your lunch well into tomorrow.

Here's how the piece is subtitled:

"Beijing is wrong to think that its trade pact with Taiwan will help its long-term political aims"

You mean you didn't read the title? Or couldn't?

Michael Turton said...

And according to this SCMP piece, those intentions are in vain. So doesn't that vitiate all the hand-wringing (not necessarily by you, but by others in this orbit) about ECFA being the doomsday kiss of death for Taiwan's democracy?

I don't necessarily agree with Fahey's POV because I don't think political weakness will be a problem in term 2 for Ma; I just don't think he gives a shit about the nation or its opinions, except insofar as they may prevent him from winning again. Once he is in office again in 2012, the legislatures can be bribed/bought off, and party elites doing business with China arent going to want the gravy train to grind to a halt.

If Fahey is right about Ma's political weaknesses having a meaningful impact on term 2, then maybe we can escape the fate China has planned. It is hard to gauge the size of the backlash against Ma, though, because the Taiwanese are so silent. 2012 is sure going to be interesting.

Michael

D said...

@Anon: I hate it when MT devolves into name-calling, but what you're saying is really ridiculous. "...a (future) generation of Taiwanese who will grow up watching Chinese movies, listening to Chinese songs, working for Chinese companies, and attending Chinese universities"? And that's not a "myopic view of future events"?? The whole point is that in the long run (I agree with you here, except that "election cycles", or power transitions, do matter in China, as they do in every country; I wonder where you're from, Antarctica?) the terms "Taiwanese" and "Chinese" will shift, as will the nature of "East Asia", and we should be thinking about how to guide that shift. You're using 2010 goggles to imagine 2050.

Or maybe you're just trying to be antagonistic?

@MT: You say "I just don't think he [Ma] gives a shit about the nation or its opinions, except insofar as they may prevent him from winning again. Once he is in office again in 2012, the legislatures can be bribed/bought off, and party elites doing business with China arent going to want the gravy train to grind to a halt."
Is there some kind of virtual Zoloft I can prescribe to you over the internet? Sounds like you need a nice long bike ride....

I was just getting ready to ask for your take on the Alan Romberg article you posted in your most recent post, but now I wonder if your objection will simply be that his worldview isn't sufficiently dark and sinister.

Michael Turton said...

Is there some kind of virtual Zoloft I can prescribe to you over the internet? Sounds like you need a nice long bike ride....

Ha. Dead on. I'm trapped here at home during a succession of lovely days, unable to ride because of tendonitis. [sound of wailing and gnashing of teeth]. Can't even drink away the pain because I got no way to burn off the calories with a 120 km ride the next day! I think you might be right. But then I am emotional and dour and pessimistic by nature; it is why I like Fahey's sunny point of view and optimism so much. Not to mention that he sees deeply into Taiwan.

I liked the Romberg article as far as it went, not much to quibble with, a sturdy establishment presentation. That's why I linked to it without comment.

Also, I think I am suffering from ECFA fatigue. Really, I am just sick of the whole damn thing.

Finally I saved your long comment the other day for a blog post. Don't think you are being neglected.

Michael

Nuttyazn said...

Sage said...I enjoyed Fahey's insightful article.
But ... is it possible for people to NOT to refer to China as the "mainland"?

I always refer to that territory as the PRC

@Michael Turton
Reading your stuff for a long time. Great and Thanks.

Anonymous said...

what else other than "mainland"?

even if the guy in HK subscribe to your political view of "separate country". china will include HK and Macau.

a term is just a term, no need to insist everything has a political subtext.