Trump-Xi: Taiwan not even mentioned

The road to Duona.

Taiwan News has it:

As expected by some observers, nothing spectacular really happened during the Trump-Xi summit at Mar-a-Lago, and the meeting gave the Taiwan government some comfort as the island country was reportedly never mentioned during and after the talks, nor was a rumored “fourth communiqué” signed between the two leaders that would hurt the US-Taiwan relationship.

In fact, there is so much nothing here that there is nothing to say about it.

When you think about all the raging that went on beforehand...

He and Kushner will therefore sell off core national interests and investments at cut-rate prices.

...it's easy to see that many people lost the struggle to separate their hatred of Trump from their analysis of his actions.
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Daily Links:

• HBO with a new show about a psychic teenage girl in Taiwan. *sigh*
• Awesome: Was Ho Chi Minh a Taiwanese Hakka? Reddit explains.
• Documenting the Blacklist during the authoritarian era
• America can't leave Taiwan out of its China policy
• Excellent, detailed commentary on polling and Tsai. Basically says Tsai needs to get moving on the domestic front. I expect the DPP to get a strong check in 2018, at least if it stays on its current path.

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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!

Xi-Trump Meet: the Farrago in Mar-a-Lago

Camphor is of the same genus as Cinnamon.

So my wife comes home today and proudly wins high fives all around with some Quick Thinking in the face of a scammer:

As she is exiting an ATM at the post office across from police station, a woman comes up to her.
"Are the ATM machines broken?" the woman asks.
"Sure, they are fine, no problem," my wife says.
"Which one did you use?"
"The one on the left, it's fine."
The woman's brows turned mean. "I just took out money and I was short a $1000 NT bill. You must have it," she accused.
My wife rose to the occasion. "There was a woman there before me, I am sure she has it."
"Oh..."

I don't know what that has to do with Dictator Xi of China meeting President Trump of the US at Mar-a-Lago (Wiki), but I am sure your imaginations can make a connection. This meeting is set up for Thursday, and the world is on pins and needles, or perhaps Xanax, contemplating its possibilities.

Mar-a-Lago is a good choice. Xi will surely feel right at home in south Florida, where the population is geriatric, income inequality is high, and everyone lives in gated communities under constant surveillance.*

One thing that is different: the Obama Administration's deference to Beijing and its diffident, dilatory policies have been replaced by Trump's confident trolling. Roughly in tandem with the announcement of the meeting with Xi came the news that the US will announce a major arms sale to Taiwan in April. Trump then trolled China with the possibility of selling THAAD and F-35s to Taiwan (Japan Times). Trolling one's interlocutors with abusive announcements even as you are talking to them is a bog-standard Chinese tactic. I admit to being amused to see Trump hoist Beijing by its own rhetorical petard.

That said, everyone is quite nervous because the Chinese have realized that the need to cultivate the President's family, particularly his son-in-law, to make progress with the Trump Administration. Many articles on it this week -- this one from Josh Rogin is good -- and there's a collection of remarks from China/Taiwan waters at NBR if you are interested in political analysis as well as some fine remarks from Richard Bush -- but this remark pretty much summed it up:

It’s so great that the American political system resembles China’s political system enough for the Trump administration for have its very own princeling.

Drezner also noted:

But it is hard not to conclude that Trump and Kushner are spectacularly out of their depth on these issues. Worse, Trump displays no metacognition whatsoever: He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and probably never will. He and Kushner will therefore sell off core national interests and investments at cut-rate prices.

I don't believe Trump will sell off any fundamental American interests. What no one seems to have noticed about the deals that Trump makes is that he never pays. Trump's tactic is to troll some possibility, like THAAD for Taiwan, and use that as a vapor threat to extract concessions. He's not going to hand over assets when he can extract favors by trolling with them. After all, assets are only useful if you hold them.

Of course, China follows the exact same tactic. They troll and then don't pay. They don't give up assets, and they don't make deals that don't favor them. China follows agreements to the most minimal, stingy, letter of the law possible, if it follows them at all. If they make some investments in the US it will be purely cosmetic, and if they buy more exports it will go on loudly for a while until the program is quietly ended. The Middle Kingdom either fears you or accepts your submission, but it doesn't bargain with you, because in China, win-win means either way, I win.

Both sides are interested in appealing to domestic audiences, Xi to the CCP, Trump to his base. Thus, what will happen is that Trump will troll, Kushner's business interests will get quietly fed and watered by way of courtesy, nothing major will happen, China will sour on feeding the Trump family businesses sooner or later, and the quadrille of US-Japan-Taiwan-China relations will go on until China begins the war it is building toward. But at least the media has something to write about.

This point is made by a Chinese writer at the strongly pro-China East Asia Forum:

But the ecology surrounding the relationship between Beijing and Washington is still fragile. The past warns against predicting breakthroughs from the Florida summit. The number of times Xi met with Obama surpassed that of all their predecessors combined since 1971. While there is no evidence to conclude that bilateral ties worsened from those high-level meetings, there is still room for the relationship between China and the United States to improve.

This time round, ‘get tough on China’ is more the norm than the exception among US foreign policy protagonists. Many American pundits blame the Obama administration for having failed to ‘stand up to China’ on just about every issue area from trade and cyber security to North Korea and the South China Sea. Never mind the contrast between Obama’s declarations that ‘prosperity without freedom is just another form of poverty’ in philosophising a strategic ‘pivot to Asia’, and Xi wondering why foreigners view China as a threat when his country no longer exports ideology or poverty.

Trump is therefore challenged to prove that the United States can, after all, stand up to China. Another group of Americans encourages Trump to live up to his own tweets about China. So far Trump and his team have chosen to resist the pressure.

Asian nations are also looking at this, and you know that Trump and Abe of Japan exchanged a few words about it. There are many many pressures in the international system shaping outcomes.

Taiwan? The US has promised to brief Taipei before and after the talks. Seems like business as usual.

This piece at the National Interest raises an interesting and even worrisome point: it's too early for a summit...

Lastly, the Trump administration itself is not ready for the summit. The Department of State lacks necessary personnel across the board, including a deputy secretary and assistant secretaries. Even though the administration is claiming that it is considering every measure on the table with regard to North Korean nuclear weapons, it lacks the capability to craft and implement policy. The Pentagon is in a similar situation, and one can only expect that the National Security Council is also overwhelmed with a myriad of fast-moving crises around the world. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to Japan, Korea, and China has already proven that the upcoming presidential summit will not lead to any substantial accomplishment. In addition, messages from Trump and Tillerson conflict with one another.

The Trump Administration has been incredibly slow in getting people on board. Would be nice if some of those names that were mooted months ago finally made it on board.

*My Florida friend says wrong
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Daily Links:

• Liberty Times reports that the government plans to build an NT$500 million park at the mouth of the Lanyang River. Taiwan's developmentalist state philosophy is independent of the political party -- as my smart friend often remarks, according to this ethic, there is no place in Taiwan that can't use more concrete.
• From Thim and Liao: Taiwan's Missile Defense Dilemma. And congrats to Michal.  
• Documenting Taiwan's blacklisted dissidents.
• Public supports Tsai's cross-strait policies
• Brian H in News Lens: 22 Sunflowers found not guilty, judge cites civil disobediance.
• Using salami tactics to sell arms to Taiwan and Trump must boost arms sales to Taiwan now
• Fixed capital investment rises for sixth straight quarters.
• Tsai calls on people to tag their friends and invite them to visit Taiwan.
• Taipei Mayor goes to India, says it is a great market for Taiwan
• Taiwan Democracy Bulletin Number 2: the case of the missing activist in China
• Actual headline in Taipei Times: Young man treated for crabs after one-night stand
• It's 2017, and it is possible to write this stream of Orientalist hokum in a piece of analysis of China:
  

  First, to understand China today, we need to understand China’s recent past. This is a country whose leaders think in terms of decades- and centuries-long ideas, such as the ‘century of humiliation’ (百年国耻) and the ‘double century goals’ (两个一百年).

  The Century of Humiliation is purely expansionist propaganda. Really tired of seeing it in pieces by foreign commentators.
• Tourism to Taiwan from Asia is rising, offsetting the worthless Chinese group tourists...
• China, Taiwan, and the KMT's existential crisis
• Malaysian writer calls for China to recognize possibility of independent Taiwan
• OPPORTUNITY: Global Taiwan Institute announces its scholarship program. Apply for money now!

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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!

Xi-Hung Meeting = Big Nada

Preparing for a neighborhood event...

Brian Hioe at New Bloom summed it up...

THE FACT THAT Hung Hsiu-Chu’s meeting with Xi Jinping in Beijing has largely been a non-event in Taiwan probably attests to its futility. Given that Hung is already known for outlandishly extreme pro-unification views, Hung’s meeting with Xi probably does not really surprise the Taiwanese public, in the way that Eric Chu’s or Ma Ying-Jeou’s meetings with Xi Jinping in 2015 provoked stronger reactions. Hence the lack of any real public response. But does the Hung-Xi meeting indicate anything new?

Brian and I had a good laugh about the Xi-Hung meeting over drinks last night. The only people who really cared about the meeting were the international media.Beijing well understands how this ritual of the Beneficent Emperor presiding over a visit from an eager vassal looks to the media, which loves a good TAIWAN IS TENZ! story. Bloomberg's hilarious headline was China’s Xi, Taiwan opposition leader voice concern over tensions. Voice concern over tensions... they themselves caused, as a friend pointed out on Twitter.

Prior to the meeting J Michael Cole had wondered aloud over at CPI what agreements Hung might make with Xi. But Xi, meeting in his capacity as Party Chairman rather than Emperor of China, was never going to make any agreements with the isolated head of a fading, split party whose members he undoubtedly plans to use and then have shot when China comes over.

The issue highlighted what many of us have said for a while now, some for over a decade now, that China has no Taiwan strategy (Cole wrote on that this week as well). It is simply following the well-worn grooves of its reflexive actions of the part, supplying ceremonies to satisfy its domestic audience. AP reported that...

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Taiwan's opposition leader Tuesday, underscoring Beijing's message to the island's independence-leaning administration that it won't have access to the mainland's highest levels of power if it doesn't accept that Taiwan is part of China.

...but it could just as well written that Xi has no access to Taiwan's highest levels of power. Xi's refusal to deal with Tsai has not painted Tsai into a corner. Instead, it has forced the CCP to court a political party whose influence is fading, limiting the CCP's ability to affect Taiwan politics. Since it won't deal with DPP politicians it can't court, influence, or subvert them. It can't makes its case to pan-Green voters. As if to underscore that, the CCP even banned reporters from pro-Green papers from covering the meeting. This strategy could hardly be more self-defeating.

Fortunately the CCP is too ideologically blind to realize that. Indeed, the KMT once again reminded voters what its values are, which won't help it at the polls -- each kow-tow to the CCP reinforces the KMT's irrelevance for Taiwanese voters. As Brian H pointed out in his piece, even Ma Ying-jeou, whose China policy was one of the chief causes of the KMT's catastrophic 2014 and 2016 election losses, realizes this.

The pro-KMT China Post reported that the chief difference between Hung's trip was that the KMT itself is split....

Lawmakers banded together and called for assurances, revealing a divide between party headquarters and the KMT rank and file. The legislators called on Hung to be sensitive to the KMT's current image problem, pleading for her to make "certain statements" at "appropriate settings."

The internal strife was clear in reports that Hung and former President Ma Ying-jeou clashed over viewpoints on the "1992 Consensus."

Ma reportedly attempted to drive home the importance of its "different interpretations of one China" clause, while Hung showed a reluctance to be boxed in.

The ensuing public spats between Central Policy Committee Director Alex Tsai and the aides of former President Ma offered few reassurances that consensus within KMT existed before Hung left for China.

It was under these two sources of pressure that Hung promised a no-frills encounter with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. A perfunctory checklist would indicate that Hung did what was advised and has managed to stay out of trouble. Barring last-minute contingencies, her trip has not derailed the KMT in any dramatic fashion.

Behind closed doors, certain media reported Xi said Taiwan independence would destroy the CCP. Thanks for supplying another incentive for Taiwan independence.

The Cross-Strait Peace Agreement that Hung keeps touting is hugely vague on the details. It will never work -- if peace is institutionalized across the Strait Taiwan will move further towards independence -- only the CCP threat to murder Taiwanese keeps the island from declaring independence. Beijing understands this, which is why Xi was cold to the idea. Institutionalized peace institutionalizes Taiwan as a de facto independent state.

Surely the KMT must realize this. The Party is not pursuing it on behalf of Taiwan, but on behalf of the ROC, a virtual state which must, whether China comes over or Taiwan becomes independent, be swallowed up by history. Institutionalized peace institutionalizes the continued existence of the ROC and the KMT's umbilical connection to it -- it institutionalizes the possibility of a continued future for the KMT.
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Daily Links:

• Thomas Shattuck: Taiwan is not made in China summarizing recent, pathetic moves by Beijing.
• Another call for deepened Japan-Taiwan security ties
• The amazing Julia F in The National Interest on Manila-Tokyo-Seoul-Taipei get together on China.
• Turnabout is fair play: Salami-slice weapons sales to Taiwan
• The US-Philippines alliance is stronger than you think
• Latest Global Taiwan Brief

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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!

馬習團: Xi Dada meets Ma

Such a lovely day! Who wants to come home and write about the 馬習團 after ten hours riding in this?

l'll talk to this Humungus! He's a reasonable man, open to negotiation.

Well, it's all over but the commentary. Lots of good stuff all over, but I'd like to highlight this piece from Gwenyth Wang at Ketagalan Media:

As the world watches today’s “Ma-Xi Meeting,” I expect to see the results reinforce the significance of the 1992 Consensus. However, by holding such an unprecedented meeting under the international spotlight, Ma has opened up a Pandora’s Box, and unleashed Taiwan’s dynamic and strong civil society, which has taken root in a democratic soil. They will demand democratic scrutiny of the meeting and will not tolerate any unilateral decision to define the “status quo.” Welcome to democracy, Xi Dada.

A lot of people were wrong about the 1992 Consensus, thinking it would be front and center. This was a case of media stupidity -- there is no other word -- because most of the major media and internet outlets incorrectly asserted that the 1992 Consensus is an agreement between Taiwan and China. Wrong! China has never accepted it, and that was never made clearer than at "LegacyWhore in Singapore 2015", when Ma repeatedly raised the 1992C, and was repeatedly ignored by Xi Dada. Naturally all that was deleted from the official transcript. Naturally you won't see any corrections in the Establishment media, either.

Chieh-ting Yeh rammed this point home:

Right now, the attention is on the fact that Ma’s opening statement neglected to mention the second part of the 1992 Consensus that Taiwan had insisted on—that Taiwan can interpret “China” to mean the government in Taiwan. For Taiwan, that is the only part of the 1992 Consensus that keeps it palatable, that the government in Taiwan still has any leverage to claim its existence. Since the Chinese side made no comment on this line whatsoever, in effect China had just denied Taiwan’s political existence to Taiwan’s face.

As a tool of diplomatic ambiguity, the 1992 Consensus is now dead to the Taiwanese people. There is nothing ambiguous about it anymore. We have officially ended the era of the 1992 Consensus, and entered a new era—where China thinks there is no more room left for Taiwan.

I think Yeh underestimates the plodding insistence of the KMT, which will simply ignore the fact that China was silent, and continue to insist the 1992C governs relations.

Wang put her sharp, elegant finger on the most important point, the ghost in the machination: Taiwan's democracy. Even as the 馬習團 was launching from the MaXipad at the Shangri-La in Singapore, Taiwan's democracy was already clutching Ma in its eagle-clawed grip: he couldn't do anything because his party has to get elected, and Taiwan's civil society won't stand for his Big Man style of rule and secrecy. Lots of people didn't have faith in Taiwan's democracy, while I was wishing Ma and Xi could meet every day. In the end it was the party not present, our robust democracy, that won that meeting. Hands down. UPDATE: Don't miss Sullivan's remarks.

As DPP Presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen observed....

"A president should represent and execute the will of the people. However, President Ma’s handling of yesterday’s Ma-Xi meeting left many disappointed, if not furious. In the eyes of the Taiwanese people, the only “historic record” set on the international arena by the Ma-Xi meeting was President Ma’s giddy handshake. Left out of the entire process were Taiwan’s democracy and any sign of the Republic of China’s existence.

Frozen Garlic tried to be positive for Ma:

I think Ma will probably experience a small bump in his popularity, but any positive effects in the legislative races will be offset by the negative effects of nationalizing the race. Ma and the KMT are still overwhelmingly unpopular, and the election has now been reframed in terms of high politics. Given that the KMT’s best chance of surviving January is the local popularity (based on things like intensive constituency service) of their 40 incumbents, forcing voters to think about national issues (ie: vote for the party, not the individual) is perhaps not the wisest strategy. In the presidential polls, Tsai is so far ahead that there is almost no chance that the Ma-Xi meeting will affect the outcome. (Before this all broke, most polls had her ahead by around 20%, and the gap was widening. Historically, a 20% gap in polls has usually meant something around a 20% margin in the final vote. So I wouldn’t be shocked if the roughly 45-23% gap ends up as a 58-36% victory.) Ma has tried to argue to voters that Tsai can’t conduct relations with China since she won’t accept the 92 Consensus. According to hundreds of polls, the voters haven’t bought that message so far. I didn’t see anything this weekend that would make them change their minds en masse.

Many of us observed that Ma's 1992 Consensus statements lacked the "two interpretations" part that KMT True Believers have always insisted on, which made them more or less equal to Hung's "One China, One interpretation" craziness. Hung herself treated the meeting as a vindication of her ideas.

There's really not much more to say. Ma said that Xi said the hundreds of missiles facing us aren't targeted at Taiwan. Of course that is absurd, and everyone will laugh. Everyone knows that Ma did this only for himself and for his personal legacy in history. The meeting was completely vapid, as I expected, and nothing concrete came out of it. If this does not hurt Ma and the KMT, it is only because their standing can't sink any lower.

There's lots of commentary out there... good luck hunting it down. This event will quickly pass into history, with KMT candidate Eric Chu off to the US to assure the US that the KMT isn't actually a party in rapid decline, and the election should move back to front and center here.
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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!

馬習團 Round Up

Somewhere on the East Coast, all is calm. But not anywhere else in Taiwan today.

Since this Ma-Xi circus stormed through late last night, I can't remember the last time I enjoyed my Twitter feed so much. For a politics junkie, Twitter is basically intravenous heroin.

As everyone not living in a rift valley on Pluto knows, Tuesday night the news leaked that President Ma of the Republic of China on Taiwan and President Xi of the People's Republic of China are meeting on Saturday in Singapore. The outside media has been all over the "historic" meeting of the two leaders of the two "rivals". BBC, which is likely to become even more pro-China now that the United Kingdom has become a Chinese state-owned enterprise, announces: Taiwan and China to hold historic summit in Singapore. Reuters did a much better job, with an article of some depth. The Guardian had a strong piece with good quotes from J Michael Cole.

No one in the international media is willing to say the truth, that this is a meeting between leaders of two expansionist Chinese parties, not between rival governments, and any "reconciliation" between them can only take place over the dead body of Taiwan's democracy.

While the world media was talking about a historic meeting, all us local observers were LMAO. My man from Seattle put it best in a laconic comment in my message box: "It's nice of Ma to stump for Tsai Ing-wen". But all of us, myself, Frozen Garlic, Solidarity.tw, and many others all had the same reaction: this will hurt the KMT. Frozen Garlic had an insta-reaction which was quoted in the international media...

What is more likely is that this trip will create a strong backlash in Taiwanese society. Many people will be very uneasy at the prospect of an unpopular lame duck president trying to fundamentally change the status quo in the last few months of his presidency. Ma simply does not have any popular mandate for cross-straits negotiations right now. The more he tries to accomplish, the larger the backlash will be. Ma might assume that a picture of him shaking hands with Xi will be a powerful image for KMT campaign ads, but I suspect he is misjudging the electorate. I would not be at all surprised if that photo does not show up more frequently in anti-KMT ads, facebook posts, youtube videos, and tweets. Instead of symbolizing the success of the KMT’s strategy for dealing with China, I believe that photo will come to symbolize Ma’s insistence on putting his personal interests (ie: his legacy) ahead of the national interests.

Another long time observer remarked on my Facebook:

We have to remember that this party has failed miserably for years and never learns from those mistakes. I see no reason not to believe that Ma believes this meeting will help the KMT in the coming elections. He lives in a bubble and knows in his heart he has done right by Taiwanese;only they just don't know it. There is no 3-dimensional chess strategy here. Neither Ma nor Xi understand the public but operate on opaque principles known mostly to themselves.

A longtime resident remarked to me that "Ma had single-handedly refocused the election on China" -- at a time when it was becoming increasingly local. Frozen Garlic called this Nationalizing the Elections and opined that it will hurt nationalist candidates in the elections, since the KMT had been working on localizing its legislative candidates to increase their chances of victory.

Ko Wen-je, the Mayor of Taipei, said that such a meeting should have been the result of a social consensus in all of Taiwan society. Ko has the entertaining habit of saying what many think, as he is in this case. What Ma's decision shows is a contempt for Taiwanese civil society and Taiwanese feelings, as well as democratic procedure -- the government is bound by its own laws to inform the legislature of major decisions like this, but the legislature was kept in the dark. Taiwanese have incorporated democracy into their social identity, and do not like it when their democracy is threatened or belittled. They won't like this.

The news has two other effects I'd like to highlight -- one is that it pushes news of KMT Chairman and Presidential candidate Eric Chu's visit to the US beginning Nov. 10th into the background. The other is that it has now wiped news of the KMT's increasingly nasty internal divisions, the latest news of which has Legislative Speaker and KMT heavyweight Wang Jin-pyng, unofficial leader of the Taiwanese KMT, promising to campaign only for his people in the legislature. The Ma camp was allegedly upset with Eric Chu, who is looking increasingly Machiavellian. Was Chu informed that his president was meeting with Xi? I think not, for Wang Jin-pyng already said he heard it on the news.

Note that in certain sectors of the KMT, those most supportive of former KMT candidate Hung Hsiu-chu and thus currently disaffected, a Ma-Xi meeting would be strongly supported. Ensconced in his ideological bubble and eager for a legacy moment, Ma seems to have ignored the wider implications for the elections... From outsiders I often hear how incompetent KMT elites are because the choices they've made recently made little sense for the upcoming elections. But for the crowd at the top of the KMT, you can explain many of their seemingly inexplicable actions if you recall that the prize in this game of thrones isn't the Presidency or even the Legislature, but control of the KMT itself, the Church of the Mainlander Identity, in their eyes the real ROC.

The stock market rose and business groups were of course happy to see Ma and Xi in a dance. Everyone knows that the cross-strait agreements have been good for big firms (and organized crime), and immediately government spokespeople began making noises about the services pact, which is good for the DPP since the public hates it.

Meanwhile the internet is already filling with responses, some parodic, some serious. President Ma has been promising, since he was candidate Ma, that he would never meet the President of China -- the videos of him saying it again and again all went viral, as reported by the pro-KMT UDN (video of 2011 Candidate Ma making that promise, with subtitles). All promises now broken. The Presidential Office has promised it will make no joint statements or similar, but many are expecting that Ma and Xi will make some noise about the 1992 Consensus. Let's not forget -- because the media will never report it -- that the basis for KMT-CCP relations is not the 1992 Consensus but China's desire to annex Taiwan to China. The 1992C was invented to imprison the DPP. Longtime US Taiwan expert Shirley Kan explains how the differences over the 1992C can be reconciled here.

US State Department briefing on this is below, but it seems intuitively obvious that the US was caught by surprise and thus, made the usual noises -- which as a longtime observer noted, give the appearance of endorsing the meeting. Some on the net are saying this was actually initiated by Xi Jin-ping, not Ma, because Xi is concerned about the KMT's losing position in the elections. UPDATE: US was informed of whole process, not caught by surprise.

LINKS-N-STUFF ON THIS DEBACLE

• Tumin, a Taiwanese from Singapore, explains Why Singapore?
• Government denies Ma-Xi meeting is a political maneuver.
• Presidential Office official statement on Ma-Xi meet up
• Polls cast doubt on optimistic Ma-Xi narrative
• DPP Chairman Tsai urges Ma not to limit Taiwan's future.
• Soong says MaXiMeet in line with his party's policy.
• Wuer Kaixi in Storm Media on the meeting in Chinese

STATE DEPARTMENT BRIEFING

QUESTION: Can I change the topic, Taiwan?

MS TRUDEAU: Of course I’ll go to Taiwan.

QUESTION: Yes, that the president of Taiwan, President Ma, and the Chinese president, President Xi, will have a meeting in Singapore this Saturday. Do you have any comment on it regarding the peace and stability in region?

MS TRUDEAU: Okay. We welcome the steps both sides of the Taiwan Strait have taken in recent years to reduce tensions and improve cross-strait relations. The United States has a deep and abiding interest in peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. The benefits that stable and positive cross-strait ties have brought to both sides of the Taiwan Strait, the United States, and the region have been enormous. We encourage authorities in Beijing and Taipei to continue their constructive dialogue on the basis of dignity and respect.

QUESTION: Are you aware of it in advance?

MS TRUDEAU: I’m sorry?

QUESTION: Are you aware --

MS TRUDEAU: We’re aware of those reports. I’m not going to speak specifically of those reports, but I will say that we are – we welcome --

QUESTION: So, I mean, are you aware of it before the news release or you just --

MS TRUDEAU: I’m not going to discuss sort of our political dialogue on that.

QUESTION: So what are the expectations or concerns that United States might have out of the meeting?

MS TRUDEAU: We believe cross-strait issues should be resolved peacefully in a manner, pace, and scope acceptable to people on both sides of the strait. We have welcomed the steps both sides of the Taiwan Strait have taken in recent years. I’m not going to speculate in advance of this. We’ve seen the reports. We’d welcome all steps.

QUESTION: So is it good timing from U.S. perspect – is it good timing for --

MS TRUDEAU: Well, we welcome all steps, so it’s always good timing.

Go ahead.

QUESTION: Is it going to have any impact on the U.S. arms sales to Taiwan?

MS TRUDEAU: I’m not going to speak on that. The U.S. has a very strong unofficial relationship with Taiwan in terms of military matters. I’m going to refer you to the Department of Defense.

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Daily Links:

• Universities to be closed
• Dengue fever cases reach 30,000
• Taiwan's south sea headache.

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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!

Chu goes there?

To some, those red polka dot balls are "art." I must be getting old...

Well well. The meeting of Eric Chu, KMT Chairman, and Xi Jin-ping, President of China was on May 4th, a day fraught with symbolism in Chinese history. Yeah, remember when Chu denied May 4 was the meeting day?

Since nothing important happened or was agreed on (Cole at Thinking Taiwan) at this utterly routine meeting, one more in roughly two decades of contact between the two longtime anti-democracy foes, the big news was the spat between Eric Chu, the KMT, and the CCP on one side, and poor AP on the other. Chu had said

"兩岸同屬一中"

...which means that both sides belong to one China. This is boilerplate. The Taipei Times then reported on the ensuing storm, which was as artificial as snow at a California ski resort:

Chu also said the KMT has “expressed a stern protest against and demanded the retraction of” a report by The Associated Press (AP) that said Chu “reaffirmed the party’s support for eventual unification with the mainland” when meeting Xi.

In the article, which AP ran under the headline: “In China, Taiwan party leader calls for more global access,” Chu was reported to have “affirmed his party’s support for eventual unification with the mainland,” according to the KMT.

WantWant described:

Describing the report on Chu's comments as non-factual and fabricated, Lin Yi-hua, head of the KMT's Culture and Communications Committee, said Chu did not broach the topic of unification with China during his recent visit to China.

AP of course retracted. The reason AP retracted is simple: the writer of the piece was Chris Bodeen and Bodeen is based in Beijing. Moreover, unlike a long line of Beijing-based reporters I could name, Bodeen seems to dedicated to getting things right on Taiwan, which surely must have pissed off two anti-democracy parties I'm familiar with. Since Beijing had leverage -- goodbye, Bodeen's visa -- AP had no choice but to take it down.

One takeaway: Taiwanese are so anti-annexation that Chu's apparent affirmation of it had to be swiftly obfuscated clarified lest it hurt the KMT's (and perhaps Chu's) election prospects any further. Chu even got the nice bonus of playing the victim. Ben Goren of the Letters from Taiwan and I were chatting that evening before about the cataract of clarifications the KMT was going to issue on the morrow, and Ben neatly nailed the actual text of the "clarification" the KMT. It was all very predictable. Too bad AP got blindsided.

Hau Lung-bin, the former mayor of Taipei who is now in charge of much of the day-to-day running of the KMT, did his kow-tow to Beijing quietly in April. This means that both the major mainlander princes have now given fealty to the Emperor and received his blessings.

China again promised political talks with Taiwan as an equal, provided the One China principle was accepted. Typical.

 NYTimes' Austin Ramzy, in otherwise excellent piece on the Chu-Xi lovefest, says:

Taiwan’s opposition Democratic Progressive Party has been critical of the consensus and denies the two sides reached any such understanding.

Su Chi, the KMT heavyweight publicly stated that there was no 1992 Consensus (in 2006, almost a decade ago), and so has Lee Teng-hui, who was president at the time and who ought to know. As the Wiki page notes, which I had forgotten, so has AIT head Burghardt. Indeed, on this topic, 1992 Ma Ying-jeou says 2015 Ma Ying-jeou is wrong. The 1992 Consensus as we know it today was coinage of later date as a cage for future DPP cross-strait policy-making, legitimated by casting it back into the past, like Chinese claims to South Sea Islands (here's a google search on the term in English for 1993-1999: no hits). A key point is that China has never accepted the 1992 Consensus, it merely insists that Taiwan politicians do so. Frozen Garlic harrumphed on the 1992 Consensus today:

I’m pretty fed up with claims that the 92 Consensus is historically based and claims that it is a fiction invented a decade later. Personally, I think the important point is that the KMT and CCP have found an idea they can agree on; whether or not it is based on something that happened in 1992 is not that critical. They could call it the “Super Awesome Neato Arrangement Sponsored by Samsung and Coca-Cola” for all I care. Diplomatic-speak makes me yearn for the relatively straightforward and honest rhetoric of election campaigns.

Froze's idea of "the important point" is incomplete. The KMT and CCP do not need an idea they can agree on to talk, they can talk any time they like and do. It's not like Chu and Xi sit down and an aged cleric walks out with a copy of the Lun Yu and then Xi and Chu both take an oath on it to adhere to the 1992 Consensus before they talk. Neither gives a flying f@ck in a rolling donut about the 1992 Consensus. Like all legal ideas put forth by Leninist authority organizations like the KMT or CCP, the rules cage others; they don't apply to the Party itself. It's always important to keep in mind when thinking about the KMT that it is not a political party but the political organization of a colonial ruling class. Hence, the key point from the KMT-CCP view is that it is a cage that both Chinese parties can use to imprison the DPP's policy makers, since each insist the DPP must adhere to it if it wants to talk to China. Wiki has a review of the history.

And yes, each time it is mentioned, I will note that it never occurred and that its importance lies in the way it is used to cage the DPP.

At Forbes Ralph Jennings correctly identifies one real goal of the talk -- Chu is probably seeking some practical help against the pro-Taiwan side, which looks like it is going to do well in the 2016 election.

Kerry Brown's magnificent tweet boner....

...is a reminder of another media problem: inability of the media to use "Chinese" when referring to the KMT. Not to pick on anyone, since the problem is widespread, but in this UPI piece, for example, the fact that the party regards itself as Chinese and that its ideology of Chineseness is a driver of its goal of annexing Taiwan to China, simply vanishes. Instead, Chu is the head of Taiwanese party.

More ominous than the entirely predictable moves of Chu was the Chinese decision to punish a Taiwan scholar for taking a stance Beijing didn't like. Solidarity.tw reports and translates:

Today’s edition of Hong Kong’s China Review 中評社 contained a column called “Talking with Beijing” in which the author stated that several scholars in Taiwan are coming out to help the Democratic Progressive Party by libeling KMT chair Eric Chu 朱立倫 and labeling him red, and these scholars provide “seemingly objective and neutral” analysis that misreads policy and misleads the electorate, said the author.

More directly, the author called out National Chengchi University Professor Tung Chen-yuan 童振源, saying that because of his twisted words, mainland China has stopped him from leading a delegation to visit there.

"Looks like the DPP's strongest election opponent this cycle will be the Communist Party," he concludes.

And watch out for the self-[CENSORED].

UPDATE: Commenter below says 1992 Consensus appears in two late 1999 pieces behind paywall. Re-searched adding the term Taiwan. Only five hits, none before 2000. The 1992 Consensus only became important with the first Chen Administration. See the opening paragraph of Cabestan's 2002 piece at Jamestown. May give fuller treatment later if I have time.

UPDATE 2: As this sarcastic image observes, although Chu insisted AP change its reporting that Chu accepted eventual annexation of Taiwan to China, there is no similar insistence that Chinese media change theirs.

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Daily Links:

• Newsweek piece on CFR report calling for new China policy. A bonus: this is the first time I've seen a major mainstream article refer to the pro-China crowd in the State Department, which all sides in the Taiwan debate assures me is a major problem for Taiwan. The CFR report also said that the US needs to fix its economy. It can do that very simply: (1) raise minimum wage to $20 to help restore US consumption so we can help out our friends by importing their goods -- of course they seek other markets since our elites have destroyed our middle class; (2) institute universal health insurance; and (3) terminate our stupid, wasteful, fossil fuel driven wars in the Middle East. But none of that will happen....
• Taiwan This Week podcast from ICRT featuring central Taiwan's Courtney Donovan Smith and Jane Rickards, who writes on Taiwan for the Economist.
• Ben on how Ma poisoned the well
• Taiwan government urged to investigate when it is discovered that Taiwanese backpackers on work holidays in Australia are treated just like foreign laborers in Taiwan.
• Scholars from Soochow U and other universities say that if young people in Taiwan don't have culture, Taiwan will become like the Philippines. Yes, you can really say stuff that stupid in public in Taiwan. 
• Central bank intervening to slow the Taiwan dollar's rise.
• Lessons for the Gulf states from... Taiwan.

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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!

Xi and the Politics of Resentment

A ladybug poses for me.

A post highlighting the resentment of Chinese toward Hong Kong made the rounds of the intertubes and was even mentioned in Foreign Policy mag online... It translated a portion of a post in Chinese that noted:

Part One – Let’s take a look at what the mother country has done for Hong Kong:

1. With respect to politics, China has strictly implemented the ‘one country, two systems’ policy, and resolutely stuck to it. Also China has not implemented any of its national law in Hong Kong, meaning Hong Kong has enjoyed high autonomy, an independent judiciary system and the right to self-govern.

2. With regards to public finance, Hong Kong does not need to pay any taxes to the central government. Although a part of China, Hong Kong has never paid one cent in tax. Hong Kong people are free to spend the money they earn, and use it for Hong Kong’s own development. Poorer provinces suffering hardship in the motherland don’t look to it for financial assistance, much to the envy of high tax paying provinces such as neighbouring Guangdong.

3. Safeguarding Hong Kong’s development. The central government has helped protect Hong Kong’s historic superiority in international finance by suppressing development of its mainland competition including Shanghai’s deep port, free-trade zone, financial centre and even a Disney park.

4. Duty-free trade. The mainland market is open to Hong Kong goods, for example there are 273 important product categories which are exempt from import duties. This sort of favourable treatment is definitely the envy of surrounding countries.

5. In terms of tourism, the whole nation provides support. The central government always encourages mainlanders to travel to Hong Kong, and the main activity is shopping. Usually mainlanders are loathe to part with their cash, but in Hong Kong they spend loads, which helps Hong Kong’s economic development.

6. Economic support from behind the scenes. As China grows into an economic power, many economic systems are now dependent on it, Hong Kong being no exception. Hong Kong enjoys special investment privileges in the mainland, so it can be said that the mainland has been a key supporter for Hong Kong in times of economic crisis.

7. People’s livelihood. Hong Kong is a small mountainous area with little in the way of land suitable for farming. As such, Hong Kong is dependent on the mainland for food and water. Everyday the mainland’s freshest and highest quality meat, vegetables, eggs and milk are delivered to Hong Kong. The mainland has always been generous in ensuring supplies of water, electricity, and gas to Hong Kong, a situation which has never been in doubt.

8. Respect on the international stage. Internationally Hong Kong’s local government is given a high degree of respect and special privileges. Hong Kong is allowed to represent itself in global affairs such as economic alliances and global sports events, participating alongside the central government.

The rightness or wrongness of these claims is not the issue. The issue is that when Xi made his offer of One Country, Two Systems for Taiwan even as the protests in Hong Kong were being attacked by the police (and knowing what would happen a few days later), he was playing to this resentment, which I've discussed before. That resentment in turn helps lay the foundation for popular support for harsh measures against Hong Kong and of course... Taiwan.
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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!

Ma-Xi Meet Up and Other Xit

A curve on the Hsinchu 60. There used to be a giant statue of an aboriginal warrior on that platform above the road, but it toppled off.

By pounding on Hong Kong, Xi is losing Taiwan says a piece at The American Interest today.

But their stance on Hong Kong has already had a significant knock-on effect in another area of concern for China: Taiwan. Though Taiwan’s current president, Ma Ying-jeou, was seen as gingerly steering his country towards gradual and eventual unification with the mainland, recent events in Hong Kong have created a political consensus that reunification is just not going to work.

Recent events did not create this consensus. Taiwanese have been anti-annexation for as long as there have been credible polls (preference for status quo always meant that, and now polls routinely show majority support for independence). Ma is just making noise -- everyone knows he wants to annex the island to China. Nevertheless, the main point is correct: the crackdown on Hong Kong is further strengthening Taiwan's desire to avoid annexation to China. Indeed, there were solidarity protests in Taiwan yesterday.

No, the real signal China is sending in its crackdown on Hong Kong is that it has given up any pretense that "one country, two systems" is meaningful. That is why China's president Xi reiterated it to Taiwan even as Beijing was preparing its response to its betrayal of its promises for Hong Kong: that reiteration in that context demonstrated its emptiness. It springs from the same well of sociopathology under which Beijing makes the families of executed individuals pay for their own bullets, or commits border infractions with a country it is negotiating with. Beijing knows perfectly well that 1C2S is unacceptable to Taiwan.

No, what we should be reading from this is that Xi is no longer trying to seriously put forth this policy. In that case, what will the real policy be? What else can it be but war....?

In a Le Figaro interview this week Ma said that he hopes to meet Xi of China in November. If so, it will be pure political theater, a distraction from all the pro-annexation moves he's made over the last seven years: ECFA, the tourism increases, the attempts to get Chinese labor over here, the indifference to Chinese overstaying visas in Taiwan, the tolerance for pro-annexation gang activity and gangsters, the drive to integrate Taiwan with China financially, and others. The international media will of course go apexit over it, ignoring all the really important stuff. But at present there's no hint that Ma will ever pay his respects to the Dragon Throne while President of the ROC.
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Daily Links:

• Apple Daily Hong Kong Live Feed
• Another roaring ECFA success: Chinese investment in Taiwan, already minuscule, falls 25%.
• Another splinter party is founded by activists. Yawn. If I had a nickel for every time I've seen this, I'd be vacationing in Tuscany every year. 
• J Bosco: China's deadly miscalculation. Thinking it can win Taiwan without a fight.
• DPP's Tsai: Taiwan's future is for its people to decide
• About.com page Is Taiwan a Country? says US recognizes Taiwan as part of China. Contact Rosenberg to politely explain that this is wrong at geography@aboutguide.com.
• DO NOT MISS: Absolutely fascinating post on Paul Barclay's East Asia Image Collection blog on Japanese postcard imagery in contemporary Taiwan
• Carrie Kellenberger: Ten Things that Taiwan does right. Health care for sure, but temples? I'm not a fan of night markets either, they're all more or less the same.
• National Geographic on Taiwan's food scene.

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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!

Ma-Xi Meetup???

It's a common pattern for Ma to float ideas like a meet up with President Xi of China in the foreign press -- in this case a Hong Kong paper -- and then "explain" them to the home media. TT says:

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday defended the possibility of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at next year’s APEC meeting in Beijing, insisting that such a meeting would only be held if supported by Taiwanese and if national dignity can be maintained.

The Mainland Affairs Council said that a Ma-Xi Mating would not be on the agenda for discussion with the Taiwan Affairs Office of Beijing.

Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦), chairman of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), is expected to meet with his counterpart, Zhang Zhijun (張志軍), director of the Mainland's Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), after the Chinese Lunar New Year's holidays (Jan. 30 – Feb. 4) on the Mainland. An MAC official pointed out that both sides were still proposing topics for discussion during the meeting, but a meeting between President Ma and his Mainland counterpart Xi Jinping was not on the agenda. According to the MAC official, our side would not take the initiative to bring up the possibility of a Ma-Xi meeting. However, if the TAO should bring up the possibility of such a meeting, the MAC would consider it.

Ma always raises the issue of a meeting, which he obviously desperately wants, in the context of denying that Taiwan is ready for a meeting. FocusTW reports on Ma's eagerness and appears to suggest that Ma might be willing to accept going to the meeting with a title other than President. In fact the day before Christmas Ma admitted China has already ruled out such a meeting....
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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!