Ma's Surprising Envoy to the US makes surprising remarks

I'm off on a bike vacation, but I've got my computer with me so I can combine both my addictions. No sooner do I leave than the new Big Man in Washington, King Pu-tsun, Ma's hatchet man, longtime personal friend, and personal appointment as the ROC/Taiwan emissary to the US, makes some surprising statements in a surprising interview with AFP:

We have our own pragmatic approach to survive," said the envoy who cannot call himself ambassador, as the United States broke formal ties with Taiwan in 1979 when it recognised China.

"We need strong support from the United States, but we also have to deal cautiously with mainland China because now they are the number one partner of Taiwan," he added.

"It is a very strategic ambiguity that we have. It is the best shield we have."

King's weird flow of verbiage is a good example of the way Taiwanese grab catch phrases from the vast pool of media commentary and redeploy them (a common one is 'win-win'). "Strategic ambiguity" has long been the phrase to describe the US' position on Taiwan. It reads as if King is signaling a new turn in which Taiwan (further) distances itself from the US. But King denied this and said that he was not translated properly -- a common tactic when Deep Blue politicians become too open about their goals and feelings. King's reverse of this went (Taipei Times)...

King said the “strategic ambiguity” to which AFP referred during the interview did not refer to the trilateral relationship among Taiwan, China and the US, but rather to only the relationship between Taiwan and China.

In a Washington-datelined report earlier in the day titled “Surprise Envoy Protects Taiwan’s ‘Shield’ of Ambiguity,” AFP said that during the interview, King highlighted the importance of the “strategic ambiguity” that Taiwan maintains with China on one side and its protector, the US, on the other.

In a statement, King said his “strategic ambiguity” refers to cross-strait relations, which are handled based on the so-called “1992 consensus” between Taiwan and China, according to which there is only one China, with each side free to interpret what the phrase means.

As the Taipei Times makes clear, he originally was referring to the US-China-Taiwan relationship. Of course, we all know which side Ma is allied with, so King's further distancing fits Ma's policy quite well. Note in the article King follows that with a comment on how Chen Shui-bian damaged US-Taiwan relations, which he is there to repair!

Looks like King was sending out a major trial balloon, which sank like a stone, but he is not. Rather, he's setting out the survey stakes to show where the road is going to go. Also note that he twice gets in the word pragmatic, a staple of the "I'm pragmatic, you're ideological" KMT propaganda campaign against the DPP and of course, another favorite catchword. There was nothing pragmatic about King's remarks. For more on King, see this 2009 post.

MEDIA: AFP positioned King's remarks as part of what appears to be a highly slanted presentation that represents an all-out attack on US support of Taiwan...such a slant appears to be par for the course for AFP. The article first claims that US arms sales hurt relations with China, a staple of Beijing propaganda:

That ambiguity does not help counter US observers who say Taiwan has become a "strategic liability" because of the harm that US arms sales to Taiwan -- about US$180 billion since 2008 -- does to relations with China.

...and then referring to Richard Bush's recent paper:

According to Richard Bush, a former head of the US mission in Taiwan and now director of the Brookings Institution's Centre for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, some US "observers believe that Taiwan has become a strategic liability" so the United States should stop arming Taiwan.

The doubters include Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter, and Bill Owens, a retired admiral who was a vice chairman of the US chiefs of staff.

"They echo Chinese diplomats who argue that our arms sales are the major obstacle to good US-China relations," Bush said in a policy paper for Brookings released last month.

Note that no names of individuals wishing to sustain strong US support of Taiwan are mentioned. Instead we get Bill Owens, the American spokesman for that disgusting Remains of the Day-style sellout called the Sanya Initiative (here), and Brzezinski -- I'll leave it to you to find his Beijing connection, but see this old post. AFP does the usual international media move of leaving out the context and instead presenting the two names as if they are neutral and informed commentators. Ah, media ethics, now just a quaint marker of an earlier, lost time, like those gigantic sideburns in civil war officer photos.
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King Pu-tsung is...new envoy to the US?

Ma appoints longtime hatchetman and political strategist King Pu-tsung as envoy to the US.  Say what? That's rather like Bush appointing Karl Rove as Ambassador to Russia.

Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) secretary-general King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) will take over the position from Jason Yuan (袁健生), who will assume the post of secretary-general of the National Security Council, following the resignation of council head Hu Wei-chen (胡為真).

.....

King, 57, has been one of Ma’s closest aides since joining his campaign team and helping him win the Taipei mayoral election in 1997. He promised not to take up any position in the Ma administration after helping Ma win the presidential election in 2008 and has only taken up different positions within the party. However, speculation that he will ultimately be trusted with a major position in the Ma administration has never subsided.
 
The Presidential Office and the KMT yesterday dismissed concern about King’s lack of experience in foreign affairs. Sources in the KMT said that as a top aide of Ma, King would be able to convey Ma’s policies more accurately and promote relations with the US more efficiently.

Who is King? Longtime right-hand man and a Ma man to the core. In the past Ma has used him to bring local KMT under control -- for example, in the South where many local KMT party organizations were grumbling under Ma.... I rounded up some stuff in 2009:

There has been much speculation about King in the media, where he was accused of being narcissistic, and also nicknamed "little dagger" for his role as Ma's hatchet man. Many KMTers not in the Ma faction lined up against King, while his supporters said that King is a man of integrity just like Ma....which should tell you something. Taiwan News noted:

The director of the party's Chiayi City department resigned as a protest against King's appointment, reports said yesterday. The official later told reporters he was leaving his post because he had completed his mission, the re-election of the city's KMT mayor in the election. Party officials said they would try to persuade him to stay on.
  
Media reported similar resignations of leading KMT officials in neighboring Chiayi County and in Yunlin County, allegedly as a reaction to King's appointment.
  
DPP lawmaker Lee Chun-yee said King was the wrong choice to head the party structure, because he would find it difficult to communicate with grassroots workers in Southern Taiwan.
 
Outspoken KMT lawmaker Chiu Yi described the new secretary-general as a "knife that is sharp, but not precise."
  
Li Keng Kuei-fang, a KMT member of the Taipei City Council, said King needed to work on his interpersonal relations.
 
Putting King in such a senior position in the party might bear risks, because if he failed, the failure would be associated with Ma, said KMT legislator Lee Ching-hua.

King was a "visiting scholar" at Brookings three years ago when he was plucked from there an elevated to KMT secretary general so is probably known to at least some in the US policy community. But Ma's appointment of a longtime insider and enforcer to a diplomatic post with Taiwan's most sensitive and important ally raises some pretty interesting questions. Does Ma feel that the ROC diplomatic corps, whose topmost people are almost all Deep Blue, is too independent of him? Does Ma feel that he needs more control over US relations? Does Ma want to put a political expert and intriguer at a distance? Is he rewarding a loyal subordinate with a plum post?

UPDATED: Smart comments below:
Are the coming years about the "peace accord" with China that Ma has promised and that the cabinet reshuffle was about yesterday? During the phase of smooth walk into "peace," will the US need to be "stalled" "charmed" and "satisfied" somehow by a political Tai-Chi veteran such as King?

Is it "all of above" as in the Chinese saying "a smart rabbit maintains three nests (i.e. just in case)"? 


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[Taiwan] 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! Delenda est, baby.