China Bestrides the World

Awesome article from Geoffrey York at the Globe and Mail on China's advancing world influence -- enormously helped by our totally incompetent President and his obsession with the Middle East. A taste:

MADANG, Papua New Guinea — When Chinese engineers landed in Papua New Guinea in 2006 to inspect their latest mineral acquisition, they faced an arduous journey through the tropical wilderness. They drove over crumbling roads to the Ramu River, then found natives with dugout canoes to paddle them upstream. Next, they hired another team of locals with machetes to slash a rough trail for eight hours through the steamy jungle, dodging poisonous snakes and malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

"It was terrible," recalls Wang Chun, the chief engineer. "You couldn't breathe."

Today, less than three years later, a series of small Chinatowns has emerged in the jungle — complete with Chinese food, Chinese satellite television channels and crews of Chinese migrant labourers living in cheap dormitory huts. Where once was wilderness, you find the workers of China Metallurgical Group Corp., toiling seven days a week and chattering about their families back home in Beijing and Sichuan.

It hasn't been easy. The state-owned mining company has dealt with violent clashes with local landowners, striking workers, attacks from the media and unfriendly police who arrested more than 200 Chinese technicians on charges of illegally entering the country. But today it is transforming the economy of Papua New Guinea. Its $1.4-billion nickel and cobalt mine (all figures U.S.), the biggest construction project in the country, will employ 4,000 people at its peak, adding at least 10 per cent to the national economy every year.

Lenthy, informative and wide-ranging, great work. China's interests in Papua...and Chen Shui-bian's diplomatic initiatives -- overlap. And the KMT is busy digging into the PNG initiative with the indictment of former Chen Administration official Chiu I-jen...

[Taiwan]

Papua New Guinea -- what was at stake? --UPDATE: PNG Officials DID meet with Taiwan scammers

UPDATE: The Australian reports that PNG officials did meet with the middlemen....

PNG's Post Courier newspaper said yesterday Mr Tiensten, who was trade and industry minister in 2006, had met the middlemen from Taiwan at a series of meetings in Port Moresby, while he was also acting foreign minister. Mr Tiensten said a PNG lawyer, Florian Gubon, "was helping (the Taiwanese) mission" to Port Moresby - where the Taiwan Government has a trade office. Dr Gubon accompanied Mr Bonga, then chairman of the Port Moresby City-owned water company Eda Ranu, to Taipei, also in 2006. Mr Bonga said he went there "to see how we could improve city sewerage, and about water bottling".

PNG's National newspaper yesterday ran a photo showing Mr Bonga, Dr Gubon, Mr Chiou and Mr Wu at a meeting together in Taipei in 2006.

More to come, I'm sure....

The Taiwan News editorializes on the PNG affair that has caused heads to roll....

The flap has already led to the resignations of ex- vice premier and perennial DPP strategist Chiou I-jen, former foreign minister James Huang and ex-deputy defense minister Ko Cheng-heng and the detention of Taiwan-Singaporean businessman and alleged con-man Wu Ssu-tsai and flight of Taiwan businessman Chin Chi-jiu and the disappearance of nearly US$30 million in confidential diplomatic funds.

...and rightly so. I think, like Taiwan News, that the Ministry will be cleared of criminal wrongdoing, but what the editorial really focuses on is the lost diplomatic opportunity:

The significance of this diplomatic failure is best understood not by obsession with alleged "scandals" or a focus on the PNG alone but with reference to the wider context of Taiwan's efforts to consolidate a cluster of comprehensive partnerships in the Pacific and expand the scope of this community in order to gain strategic influence and direct participation in the 14-nation Pacific Island Forum.

Indeed, just as Chiou and Huang were making their secret approach for ties with Port Moresby in the late summer of 2006, Taiwan had initiated a new approach in its management of relations with its six Pacific island allies which surfaced in the "First Taiwan - Pacific Island Allies Summit" held in Palau in September 2006 in which President Chen Shui-bian participated.

The Palau summit, followed by a Majuro Summit in August 2007, marked Taiwan's shift from a focus on defensive bilateral ties to a more proactive and comprehensive multilateral approach aimed at improving governance, grassroots health and education and economic development in the context of building a "democratic community" in implicit cooperation with the PIF's long-term "Pacific Plan."

The strength of this approach has been shown in the resiliency of Taiwan's ties with the Marshall Islands, Nauru and the Solomon Islands, all of which have had changes in government in the last year.

Through this example, Taiwan has also improved ties with Australia and New Zealand, especially in contrast with the PRC, which is playing the neighborhood "bad boy" by acting as the main prop for the military regime in Fuji and the repressive monarchy in Tonga, which has been under martial law for over 18 months.

Although Taiwan has full diplomatic ties with six PIF 14 members, Taipei remains excluded from all formal PIF activities and can only hold "informal" dialogue with the PIF members at their annual meetings and is excluded from the most important deliberations and planning processes of this organization, which is gradually evolving into a regional trade and security organization of strategic importance.

However, Taiwan only needs one or at most two more diplomatic allies to gain sufficient support within the PIF to upgrade its status into at least a full "dialogue partner" on an equal footing with the United States, Canada and the PRC itself or even direct membership.

Official affiliation with the PIF would have marked a huge strategic advance for Taiwan's international status and a major step in counteracting the PRC's global "full court press."

Too bad incompetence blew up this opportunity to move forward in an international forum.

Also on tap today: Taiwan's Minister of Health in the Vancouver Sun on WHO entry.

[Taiwan]

Islands in a Steam

Taiwan's dollar diplomacy in the South Seas is really part of a much larger pattern of cowboy activity that annoys lots of places that might otherwise be its friend. For example, there's cowboy fishing, which has been provoking Greenpeace lately,

GREENPEACE activists clashed with a Taiwanese long-line fishing boat in the Pacific Ocean today, painting the word "pirates'' on the side of the vessel and raiding its lines.

Greenpeace accused the vessel of hunting down precious marine species - including an endangered turtle - in international waters north-east of the Solomon Islands, which the green group wants declared as reserves.

According to Greenpeace, activists confronted the long-line vessel, called the Ho Tsai Fa 18, and began to free the fish, sharks and endangered turtle caught on its hooks.

They then took one of the vessel's radio beacons and a fishing line.

Activists claimed they won the battle, with the vessel agreeing to release the marine life and leave the area.

Greenpeace, politicians, and community leaders want to create marine reserves in those areas. One blogger in the Marianas commented:

Rescind your resolution against the proposed national marine park. I am dumbfounded at how our leaders could so quickly and recklessly come up with a resolution that slams the idea of a national marine monument for the CNMI. What I want to know is if it is really true that the resolution was written by a WESPAC lobbyist. Do you truly understand the ramifications of your resolution? Have you exhausted all efforts in understanding the pros and cons of the marine monument? Since when was conservation a bad thing? Why do you buy into propaganda and sensationalism? As far as our local fishermen are concerned, how many of our local fishermen travel three hundred-plus miles to go fishing? It is not economically feasible, especially given the high cost of fuel! (Maybe the legislators figure the fishermen will swim up and back.) Do you know who is fishing those waters right now? Illegal commercial fishing companies from Korea and Taiwan! And as we speak, the CNMI cannot do anything about it right now! Stop listening to lies and start listening to the voice of reason. I ask that you revisit your resolution and rescind it. There is nothing wrong with changing your mind if it means you are changing your mind for the right reasons.

In a region where Taiwan might be quietly building relationships as a counterweight to China, instead, the island is peeving its neighbors, with cowboy visits as Vietnam protests a planned ROC government official visit to the Spratlys:

Vietnam's government has asked Taiwan to call off a planned inspection tour of the disputed Spratly Islands, one of two archipelagos in the South China sea claimed by several countries in the region, local press reported Tuesday. "Vietnam resolutely objects to all activities violating its sovereignty over the two archipelagos," government spokesman Le Dung said.

Taiwanese Defence Minister Tsai Ming-hsien was scheduled to visit the Spratlys on Monday before postponing the trip due to bad weather.

Vietnam, Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei each claim all or part of the Spratlys and the nearby Paracels, and all but Brunei have a military presence on one or more of the atolls. Taiwan has built an airstrip on the largest of the islands, while Vietnam has stationed sailors on another.

The waters around the islands are believed to contain substantial petroleum reserves.

Conflict over the islands began heating up in November, when China established a new government district, called Sansha, to administer them. Vietnam officially protested the Chinese move, and Vietnamese students staged rare spontaneous protests in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City asserting Vietnamese sovereignty.

Apparently there were complaints from Philippine politicians as well, though nothing formal. And speaking of islands, how about Papua New Guinea? Our $30 million diplomatic scandal is news down there too as PNG claims They Never Knew:

PNG’s foreign affairs secretary Gabriel Pepson said yesterday that the Government was not aware of a secret offer, adding “we are all surprised at the media reports”.

He reiterated that PNG pursues the One-China policy, which recognises the sovereignty of mainland China over Taiwan.

Mr Pepson said PNG knew nothing about the secret offer, either at the official or political level.

The offer was revealed after Taiwan launched court proceedings in Singapore to recover the money given to two men to offer to their contacts in PNG.

The offer was abandoned after it was discovered that the PNG contacts did not represent the government. This happened in December 2006. But the two men did not return the money to Taiwan.

and of course, the 'request' by PNG officials to deposit the $$ in the Singapore account as a mark of sincerity was a scam:

The Straits Times newspaper in Singapore said at the weekend that unnamed representatives from PNG had in October 2006 asked for that amount – “intended as technical assistance” – to be transferred to an account in Singapore, as the condition for a switch of diplomatic recognition.

It later emerged that the PNG representatives were not officials but agents who had obtained letters from government officials.

However, in a Strait where the status of the islands isn't an issue, Taiwan and China can somehow bridge all that horrible tension generated by the crazed and provocative Chen Shui-bian, and begin oil exploration together in the waters off Taiwan:

Taiwan's state-run oil firm CPC Corp and China's CNOOC Ltd are set to resume joint exploration in the Taiwan Strait, after putting a venture on hold for more than a year now, the Economic Daily News reported, citing CPC Chairman Pan Wen-yen.

Perhaps that will enable to Taiwan to get in on the joint oil exploration in the Spratlys currently underway between China, Philippines, Vietnam, and a US oil firm....

[Taiwan]

"Papua? I thought he said Paypal!"

Taiwan's checkbook diplomacy was spotlighted this week with the revelation that the Taiwan government was giving out money in little brown bags from the back door to anyone who said they could buy a government.....

"I don't know if the money went to Papua New Guinea," Huang added.

Chiou said the affair began when an unidentified friend introduced him to Ching as the man who could deliver Papua New Guinea to the Taiwanese diplomatic column. He said that, after he introduced Ching to Huang, they decided to go ahead with efforts to try to persuade the Pacific nation to abandon Beijing.

Citing papers that the Taiwanese government filed last month in a Singapore court, Lianhe Zaobao reported that Taipei authorized Ching and Wu to act as intermediaries with the Papua New Guinea authorities in September 2006, and that it wired $29.8 million into an account they controlled.

Why $30 million? I'd have been willing to do it for $10 million....and just think, if he had handed back $25 million, he probably could have kept $5 million and said he had spread a few bribes around but nothing had come of it. Then nobody would be chasing him. And $30 million is a ridiculous sum -- you can buy a Pacific Island government for a third of that figure, I've heard.

Couple of observations. First, the KMT had been coming under scrutiny for the split in its ranks over the appointment of a TSU legislator as head of the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC). Suddenly all that public discussion of the party's dirty laundry has been blotted out by a new scandal about the DPP.

My, that's convenient timing. Especially since this little time bomb has been sitting around since September of 2006 -- through two cycles of legislative budget reviews, and nobody asked a single question?

Second, the stupidity of wiring $30 million to a private account with zero oversight or controls is replicated every day all over Taiwan, and elsewhere in the world, in perfectly ordinary scams where greed causes the mark to wire money to some account somewhere, where it disappears faster than you can say "Nigerian Scam." This is just an ordinary scam blown up to galactic scale, with the marks out there saying lamely "but I trusted him!"

As always, what's interesting is what isn't happening -- no oversight by the KMT-dominated legislature, no accountability in the DPP-led executive, and nobody in any high office there pointing out what an incredibly stupid idea it must have been. The Taipei Times, which had a long piece devoted to it today, observed:

In August 2006, the 56-year-old Wu, a Singaporean, and his partner, Ching, were commissioned by the ministry and then-National Security Council (NSC) secretary-general Chiou to act as intermediaries in attempts to help Taiwan forge diplomatic relations with Papua New Guinea.

Officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Security Council knew. Also in the know: the Accounting Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And I find it hard to believe that nobody in Accounting told their pal in the legislative office: "hey, ya know we just wired a bushel of green to some account in Singapore for some thing with PNG." The Taipei Times went on to report:

Meanwhile, ministry spokeswoman Phoebe Yeh (葉非比) said the ministry had agreed to set up the joint account in Ching and Wu;s name because the Papuan government had requested that the funds be wired via the joint account as a display of Taiwan’s “sincerity.”

Asked if it was legal for the ministry to wire money to such an account, Yang Te-chuan (楊德川), comptroller of the ministry’s accounting department, said his office could not reject or inquire about the ministry’s decision to remit money as long as the decision was approved by the minister.

Yeh said the ministry did not know how much money was left in the account because Wu’s answers to the ministry’s inquiries were inconsistent.

She said Wu had provided bank statements at the end of last July showing that all the funds remained in the account.

He made the same claim to the ministry earlier this year, Yeh said.

However, Wu gave the ministry an emergency notice in the middle of March, saying that there was only US$2,000 left in the account and admitting that he had surrendered his rights to the account to Ching in February last year, Yeh said.

I love the way Accounting said anything is legal if the Minister says it is legal! Don't look in here! Nobody here but us accountants....

And speaking of foreign relations success, how about those Taiwanese businessmen spying in China? The LA Times had a piece by Mark Magnier on how they've allegedly been hung out to dry by the Taiwan government.

Song learned that he had been one of 36 Taiwanese businessman "spies" arrested about the same time and sentenced to as long as 15 years in prison. The roundup apparently was aimed at humiliating Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, who in late 2003 had angered Beijing by introducing a referendum on whether China should remove its then-496 missiles aimed at Taiwan. The two sides split in 1949 during a civil war.

Once back in Taipei, Song met with an agent from the Military Intelligence Bureau, who advised him to keep quiet. The agent seemed sympathetic until Song brought up the issue of compensation, at which point the conversation ended.

Could've used that $30 million....

UPDATE: Mick rips me in the comments below:

You fail to mention that the DPP has less than a month left, is it not quite probable in the likelihood of a change of administration such an oversight of monies would eventually come out and that this was the precursor of events. Firstly, trying legally to require the money, then the Singapore media reporting on it, and finally the issue being discussed here.

Sorry man. No doubt I'm just paranoid. But I'm always curious why things come out at particular times, as opposed to others.

UPDATE II: Ma was briefed April 10, and the order to get the money back was given by Chen Shui-bian, according to James Huang in this CNA report.

[Taiwan]
Hat tip to my man Mark Forman for the title of the piece.