Democracy can’t Buy People

I have no strong doubts that America will “only” be the second or third largest economy within two to four decades. In the meantime, while the trends will be suggesting that, many people elsewhere in the world, including Westerners who are focused on economic power alone, will start placing their political bets on China, too. In the views of many, a society where human rights only rank second or third and where democracy is deemed an unnecessary luxury will appear to be more efficient than a democratic model. Many will easily forget or push aside all evidence that democracy may be an essential human right, or an important practise to avoid untenable living conditions of the “ordinary people”, and therefore, in the end, a stablilizing rather than a destabilizing factor in the life of a country. Many people won’t see either that even under an undemocratic – i. e. inefficient – form of government, peoples’ livelihoods can still hardly drop in China. Quite naturally, the only likely direction is upwards anyway, at least for some time to come, as long as most Chinese citizens are living close to the bottom of their individual potentials.

Radio Canada International QSL, 1988

I got this feeling when I looked at the German press online yesterday. An article by Niall Ferguson, first published by Britain’s Financial Times (now only accessible for registered readers) on December 27, has since been published in German by the weekly Stern, the weekly Der Spiegel, the daily Die Welt, and probably a number of regional newspapers, too.

Niall Ferguson’s article doesn’t look wrong to me, but it can encourage short-sighted views of the future when it comes to the benefits that political concepts, rather than civilizations, can offer, or the drawbacks they can cause. The main factors which play a role in Ferguson’s article are money (American current account accounts, public expenditure and revenue) and military power (Afghanistan and Iraq). Even if democracy never becomes something most Chinese people would appreciate and fight for – and among many of them, national power may be viewed as a sufficient substitute for leading a full life individually -, China won’t be an attractive model for most other nations. A country or empire may be powerful – but it won’t be attractive elsewhere unless the citizens can live their lives to their full potentials.

That said, Taiwan before all other countries will be in a difficult position, unless a majority of its people actually like the idea of being “re-united” with China. Their window of opportunity to have their sovereignty internationally recognized – if the opportunity still exists at all -, has begun to shrink. Will the Taiwanese test their opportunities and risk to codify their sovereignty internationally? And how far will the rest of the world – most crucially America – be willing to support and help to defend them?

For those of us who live in democratic countries, China’s growing weight poses questions which would have seemed unimportant only a few years ago. It is unlikely that the average Chinese citizen will enjoy our standards of living in the foreseeable future. And besides, it is unlikely that our standards of living will remain as high as they are. We will need to save more, and to spend less – not only in America. There are ecological reasons for that, and economical reasons. Rises in productivity can’t be endless, as long as we are confined to this planet. Democracy stabilizes society when its promises are sustainable. But democracy may stop doing so if the promises made by its political class – in order to secure their election or reelection – become unsustainable. This question about sustainability has always been an issue, but it must become a central issue in our societies. Democracy isn’t here because Westerners were better people than the Chinese. And the matter of sustainability isn’t at all lofty. While China’s social insurance programs are facing huge challenges, they are only promising comparatively small benefits to the Chinese people. Our welfare systems are much less challenged than theirs, but the promises of our welfare systems to their clientele have become a great burden for every regular employee. If democracy shall stay, we must ask ourselves who we want to be, rather than what we want to own. Democracy can’t buy people. Democracy is either wanted, or it will go away.

Freedom is not a matter of where we live, and it is no matter of nationality or race. But it is, of course, a question about who governs us, which economic and political system we have, and into which direction we want to develop. As China is a totalitarian country, led by a “Communist” party which wants to stay in power (no matter if that will require Communist, Socialist or Confucian colors), its growing influence will require us to be vigorous competitors in terms of political concepts, and to some extent, in terms of power.

It doesn’t really matter how powerful the West’s position will be in the future. But there need to be democratic societies which are able to defend themselves, and which can convince the global public that people only live full rights in the light of human rights.

Once China is a country with a p0litical class that works to heal, rather than to cultivate the mortifications of its people, it can – and maybe should – lead the world. Otherwise, it shouldn’t get into that position.

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Related:
How to Corrupt an Open Society, Aug. 29, 2009
The American Era isn’t over, October 30, 2008

No Global Governance as “Old Pain” lingers

“One World” – instead of “first, second, and third world” – used to be an unalienable piece of vocabulary in every do-gooder’s wordpool, at least from Western countries. German weekly Die Zeit, not really a bunch of treehuggers, but a paper usually giving responsible opinion and unhurried advice, is re-assessing the one-world concept in an online article. Yes, in London and Pittsburgh, the governments of the world did write new rules for the financial markets. In Geneva, they held another round of  negotiations about a new trade system. They will be back in Davos again soon, to perambulate all the global problems in their totality. They tried to save global climate in Copenhagen. But they are forgetting the financial crisis, the further we seem to leave it behind us. The more remote the memory, the smaller chances are to write global rules that would be globally effective.

And they failed in Copenhagen – “Every country has its own dirty taboo”. Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Gerhard Schröder liked the idea of global governance, writes Die Zeit. In the end, they hoped, negotiated agreements and international organizations – NGO’s and corporations included – would lead to some kind of substitute for a desirable, but still unachievable global government. Liberals and left-leaning people in general seemed to support the concept.

But global emergency management has proved to be the maximum of what global governance could achieve together. There is no common concept of tomorrow’s world, writes Die Zeit. Both Europeans and Asians had gained a new self-confidence vis-à-vis America. Europe’s economic and social systems had shown a remarkable resistance against the effects of the economic crisis, and India and China put economic development before climate protection. “In India, you can’t see the climate problem eye-to-eye with Europe or the USA”, the paper quotes Shyam Saran, an advisor to India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh. On a global scale, Europe’s concept of political integration appears to be a  rather singular one.

Europe should get prepared for a world with a patchwork of powers which go it alone, like China, India, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa, and clusters of global governance like ASEAN or the EU, Die Zeit quotes a study by the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation.

Die Zeit lists liberals and left-leaning people who actually start to like the idea of such a world – and of nationalists who had always been skeptical of any kind of global governance anyway.

The article’s author actually confuses China’s party and state chairman Hu Jintao with the country’s chief councillor Wen Jiabao. And in other ways, the author also still seems to underestimate the distance between East (arguably excluding several countries such as India, Vietnam, and possibly Japan and South Korea) on the one hand, and Western countries on the other. There isn’t really much reason to believe that a common view of the world will emerge any time soon. Jonathan Spence, in a Reith Lecture in Liverpool, broadcast by the BBC on June 10th 2009 June 10th 2008,  suggested that the issue of the Opium Wars

is now no longer a real one in any important sense and to harp on it now is not something the Chinese have to do. It’s something they can do if they wish to keep an old pain alive.

You can be pretty sure that China’s government does want to keep the old pain alive. “To remember the bitter past to cherish the happy present tense” is a tradition that either came into being or was revived by the CCP during the Chinese Communists’ early days in power – and it is still an efficient way to keep the Chinese public sufficiently afraid or distrustful of foreigners to disapprove of “foreign concepts”. Even otherwise highly open-minded Chinese people often cling to these “open accounts from history”.

At hindsight, at the end of the 20th century or at the end of the 21rst century’s first decade, one may probably say that it was naive to believe that world governance could be an option. You can’t do business with a totalitarian regime, unless you are ready to do business at its terms.

The Zeit article, as flawed as I believe it to be in one or another detail, caught me by surprise. I’m left-leaning myself, and until today, I have felt that my re-orientation towards regional solutions, rather than global ones, was something not too many others of my political color would share. But there seems to be a general trend towards regional action. Elinor Ostrom, an American economist, argues that people may actually commit to the common, rather than the individual use of resources, so long as they succeed in organizing the use and maintenance of such resources. A single system of rules for rather large international fishing zones was likely to fail, she suggests. Polycentric solutions – or regional ones – might work. Experimenting with different ideas in different places could amount to a competition of different ideas., which would either convince bystanders, or leave them unenthused.

And even steps deemed small by its actual practitioners might convince visitors from overseas.

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Related:
Mark Lynas: “How China wrecked the Copenhagen Deal”, December 24, 2009

CRI: Developed Countries’ Copenhagen Positions Inconsistent with Previous Agreements

The Copenhagen Accord is not the end, and the whole world should take responsibilities on a long road to come, writes Chen Tian (陈天), a commenter with China Radio International (CRI). Although all countries acknowledged the existence of climate change and the urgency of reacting to it, the duties of burden-sharing had remained an unbridged gap between developed and developing countries. In that sense, Copenhagen should be seen as a starting point. Chen points out that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had called on the developed countries to take the lead, while developing countries should follow in taking appropriate action (“我呼吁出席本次会议的所有发达国家领导人率先采取行动，这样的话，其他国家也将随之采取相应的行动”).

China had, as the world’s largest developing country and emerging economy, made practical contributions, he writes. China’s state and party chairman Hu Jintao (胡锦涛), during the UN Climate Summit, had said that China took responsibility to its own people and the people of the world to make concrete efforts. Chen quotes the chairman: “China has defined a national climate program and has clearly stated that it would reduce energy consumption and emissions per GDP unit, and that it would increase forest cover, and the share of renewable energy, as binding national targets. In the future, China will, step by step, include measures against climate change into its economic and social development plans, and continue to take effective measures.” On November 26, China’s government had also declared that by 2020 the national carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP than in 2005 dropped 40% to 45%. These efforts had earned international acclaim, writes Chen -  Danish prime minister Lars Rasmussen had expressed his admiration.

Chen on the other hand expresses disappointment that the developed countries had been lacking sincerity in reducing emissions, even though they were mainly responsible for climate change:

America announced ahead of Copenhagen that until 2020, it would reduce greenhouse emissions by 17 per cent, compared with 2005, compared with 1990s, this would only be a reduction of four per cent. Although Japan had announced a reduction by 25 per cent, it demanded that all major emitting countries should take part in the reduction, which was clearly not in line with The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and with the Kyoto Protocol, which had established common, but differentiated, responsibilities^*), and even the European Union, which was most active in the negotiations, only committed to a 20 per cent or 30 per cent reduction target – while the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that developed countries would need to reduce their emissions by 25 to 40 per cent, based on 1990 as a reference year to avoid a devastating global impact.

Chen ends his article by quoting some words of encouragement, from a statement by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon after the conclusion of the Copenhagen Summit. In short: a success, and a beginning.

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*) The paragraph about differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities can be found on the UNFCCC’s website, within the Framework Convention’s prelude:

Acknowledging that the global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible  cooperation by all countries and their participation in an effective and appropriate  international response, in accordance with their common but differentiated   responsibilities and respective capabilities and their social and economic conditions, [...]

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Related:
Copenhagen Summit: Make it, or Fuck it Up, but Stop Bitching, December 18, 2009
“International Law Traded in for Big-Power politics”, Earth Institute, Dec 22, 2009

Copenhagen Summit: Make it, or Fuck it Up, but Stop Bitching

The UN Climate summit in Copenhagen isn’t over yet, and it’s too early to call it a failure. Then again, it’s probably also too late to turn it into a real success. That may have to wait until next year – and why not. Even no deal at all would still be better than a lousy one. Not only the poorest and the developing countries can walk out. So can the OECD countries, and in certain situations, our negotiators should. In the end, we in the so-called developed world, won’t be those to be first and worst affected if climate change should lead to a dramatic increase in natural disasters. Never join negotiations without the preparedness to walk out again. That much for the basics of negotiations. But before walking out, one has to do ones best to contribute to a success. And above all, we – negotiators or spectators – shouldn’t bitch around.

Next to the “poor countries”, there is a block of developing countries which have come a long way during the recent years or decades: Brazil, China, and India. South Africa joined their climate faction. During a preparatory meeting in Beijing on November 28, the four governments agreed on The Four Non-Negotiables.

Refusing even to discuss legally binding emission cuts or (unsupported?) international measurement isn’t a promising approach. But then, if international measurement and arbitration is wanted, who should carry it out? I haven’t heard OECD countries spelling out their suggestions yet – and I don’t believe that international arbitration will necessarily be accurate either. The UN Human Rights Council is no encouraging sample for such arbitration anyway.

Anyway, The Atlantic has words of praise for the American delegation:

At a press conference on Wednesday, I asked China’s chief climate negotiator Su Wei if it were possible for China and the United States to reach an accommodation on the verification issue. He responded with a long—a very long—answer. He started by accusing developed nations of trying to “evade their historic responsibilities with various excuses [and] the fundamental excuse is that [China and other emerging developing countries] have not taken steps to address climate change.” Su, however, contended that China’s energy efficiency efforts “have broken their lies.” He declared that China “always followed a principle of openness and transparency.” And then he asserted: “I don’t see the necessity of others to worry about the sincerity of China’s efforts to address climate change.” In other words, get lost.

In other words: bad China!

On the other hand, there is a force for good, of course. Also from The Atlantic:

Then came Hillary. On Thursday morning, moments after the African nations complained that the negotiations were going nowhere, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared in a crowded press briefing room at the summit and announced that the United States would contribute to a $100 billion international fund starting in 2020—as long as “all major nations” commit their emissions reductions to a binding agreement and submit those reductions to transparent verification. And by “all major nations,” she meant China.

Cool. The U.S. Defense Department’s base budget for 2009 alone was at US-$ 515.4 billion this year. And, mind you, Hillary Clinton’s pledge didn’t stem from funding the U.S. would contribute on its own: America would only contribute to the amount.

In my books, the Obama administration has taken a constructive approach. I don’t expect it to play Papa Christmas in Copenhagen. But I’m not exactly in awe of the U.S. negotiating line yet either. And when looking at the constraints on the American federal government – not from the global community, but from home -, it doesn’t make America look better either. It only explains why even a pretty good-willed U.S. administration can’t do better than it is doing.

But that doesn’t really disturb or anger me. Lobbying – from either side – is tough business, and to make the right arguments win takes time. What pisses me off is some of the coverage here in Europe, in the United States, or by a number of Westerners around the globe who are singling China out as the usual suspect when something is going wrong. I’m not panda-hugger. That’s exactly why I find it disturbing when some mainstream media (and blogs)  from the West become as predictable in their findings and comments as the China Global Times or other CCP mouthpieces – only from the opposite direction.

Take this piece from the Christian Science Monitor (quoted by Stuart on his blog  Found in China here):

The world will hardly know if global warming is being curbed if the largest emitter of carbon – China – isn’t releasing accurate data about its pollution.
That’s why it was correct for the United States to insist Thursday at the climate-change talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, that Beijing must be transparent about any claims of success in reducing greenhouse gases.
Without outside verification of carbon cuts in big polluting nations such as China and India, the US Senate is unlikely to pass a tough bill that would force Americans to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels.
And any international pact that sets hard targets for emissions reduction will mean nothing if there are suspicions of cheating or if some countries don’t pull their own weight.
The problem in China is that the ruling Communist Party has a long history of issuing false or at least unreliable data about its economy – as do many one-party regimes driven by ideology and that are often rife with corruption. Lower-level officials often cook official reports – or “add water,” as the Chinese say – to meet quotas set by Beijing or to protect their turf.

Stupid me! It’s China’s dictatorship! And I thought it was lobbyism which kept the U.S. Senate from moving!

I have no clear-cut opinion as to how far we should wait for China or India to commit themselves before becoming more dedicated ourselves. And I don’t need to. After all, I’m only a spectator. I can form my opinion once the stuff is completed either way, and in substance, I can understand misgivings like the ones voiced by the Christian Science Monitor. But my opinion is clear on one matter: it’s too early to single China out as a saboteur. And it is too early to act like if our countries, the OECD members, were saints in this matter.

But that’s how a number of op-eds, comments, and posts, are coming across. If I were a Chinese national, I would find the case they are making about as attractive as a post-religious sunday school, which is to say, as uncool as athlete’s foot.  If we want to make a case, we should stop preaching. Dogmas are the opposites good points. Yes, China or India may add water to meet quotas set by Beijing or to protect their turf. China or India may also simply refuse to commit themselves to any goals if we insist on whatever kind of international control. And in that case we will have to think about the best strategies that would remain: continuing to negotiate closer to their terms, or walking out ourselves.

The latter doesn’t necessarily look like the worst choice to me – it would open the door for other choices: going it alone – developing technologies to do our share in carbon dioxide reduction and becoming global market leaders in that technology, for example. It will be badly needed very soon.

We may, in such a case, have to rethink not only our individual ways of life (that’s inevitable anyway), but also where we should buy from. It would make no sense to have our daily needs produced where they cause the most carbon dioxide. In many ways, the ball will simply be in our court, not in China’s or India’s.

Many of our countries can also use controlled immigration – OECD countries, as a rule, are greying societies. Many people around the globe will need a new home if the United Nations work for climate control fails, and it’s OK to be choosy in choosing the right migrants, if we should be in that position.

And if our governments then  succeed in convincing the world that China and India could have done much better than they have (or will have), so much the better. As far as that’s concerned, Mrs Clinton has shown great – and perfectly legitimate – skills in Copenhagen already.

For one, she wasn’t bitching.

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Related:

Climate Change Control: Who should Foot the Bill, December 15, 2009

Climate Change Control: Who should Foot the Bill?

The worst thing that can happen to the Copenhagen summit would be a blame game, based on different ideological concepts. I thought I wouldn’t start a discussion about it yet, but I joined one on another blog. So if you want to know JR’s temporary unconsolidated findings and those of others on who should or might foot which share of the bill for climate change control, you might take a look at the commenter thread there.

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Related
China and one of its biggest threats team up for Copenhagen, Dec 12, 2009

Obituary: Paul Samuelson, 1915 – 2009

He was no friend of Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction. He advocated the rule of law – capitalism needed rules, he said. In an interview with Der Spiegel a few years ago, he accused America of being a society of “Me, me, me, and now”, not taking tomorrow and other people into consideration. Maybe one out of ten students among young students of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were actually born in America – he blamed television. In general, he ovserved, there were too many distractions for young people from training their intelligence.

Paul Samuelson, a renowned American economist, died on Sunday after a brief illness, aged 94.

Weekender: What’s Wrong with Overcapacity?

The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China (EUCCC) has warned that Beijing’s stimulus spending had fuelled massive overexpansion in steel and other industries that could force companies to boost exports, thus igniting protectionist backlashes abroad. China’s leaders themselves also appear to be worried, and the EUCCC’s findings were reported by China’s overseas radio service CRI in November.

just as if it wanted to satisfy the hunger of the whole world...

But not everyone is that worried.

In an article for Phoenix Television’s website, Hu Yuexiao (胡月晓), an analyst with Shanghai Securities (上海证券研究所), reasons that worries about China’s production overcapacities are going too far. Alan Wheatley, China Economics editor for Reuters, said pretty much the same, with similar arguments, in English some time earlier. Both Hu and Wheatley take the trouble of reminding us of what we once learned from our economic schoolbooks: that only some overcapacity will enable competition. Neither of them denies that there are structural challenges that need to be addressed, but they seem to find the current debate out of proportions.

Up to here, it all looks more or less familiar to me. A collection of articles on the other hand which puzzles me is several years older than the news above.

Henry C. K. Liu published a long series of articles on The Coming Trade War with the Asia Times in 2005. It’s an opulent lot of food for thought online, which I’d rather have expected to come as a book. In part 4 of his series, he dismisses the economic law of scarcity as a baseless myth, and blames man-made maldistribution rather than natural laws for scarcity. Apparently, his statement can only be true if peoples’ desire for material possessions is limited, rather than endless. Liu basically blames Western concepts for creating the idea of scarcity, but he also blames China for adopting the concept.

Overcapacity is not merely a temporary under-utilization of capacity; it is the systemic inability to achieve full or at least optimum utilization. Yet overcapacity is a structural condition in the world of scarcity economics, because excess capacity is the condition needed to prevent the emergence of shortages, which is another name for scarcity. But scarcity is needed to maintain economic value as expressed in market prices. Thus the market model of neo-classical economics must constantly be plagued with the curse of scarcity while simultaneously preventing scarcity with the more fatal disease of overcapacity. This contradiction is the internal paradox of neo-classical economics that traps the market economy in an arrangement of never being able to enjoy the full capacity of its productivity.

The insecurity generated by looming scarcity drives savings, which as investment add to overcapacity. And savings reduce current consumption, meaning lowering demand, which adds to overcapacity. The challenge of a market economy in an age of structural overcapacity then shifts from how to produce more to how to sell more. Marketing becomes the critical task of management. The answer for decades has been to use planned obsolescence to ensure recurring demand. Another answer was to lower prices to broaden the market. Advertising stimulates the desire for goods, but only rising income increases demand for goods.

The idolization of scarcity, Liu’s article suggests, is wanted both by the U.S.  – or OECD countries in general -, and China^*). But the illogical – or  outrageously preposterous -  thing, he writes, is that the U.S. in particular and the West in general keep blaming China for having maintained its overcapacity:

“It is not possible, let alone moral, for 4% of the world’s population to consume the full productive capacity of the world. For the global economy to grow to its full potential, the whole population of the world needs to be allowed to participate with its fair share of consumption.”

It’s an interesting read, and it’s probably no coincidence that I see myself in no position to actually assess the validity of Liu’s points. College and university taught me the basics of economics as written by the establishment, and the curriculum ended long before alternative models might have come into play.

But Liu’s idealism doesn’t really look trustworthy to me either. The main aim of his criticism is the West:

The small nations of the world, unlike Brazil, China, India and Russia, are too weak to resist oppressive policies foisted on them in the name of free trade by international trade and finance organizations controlled by the rich nations.

Yes, the small nations of the world are too weak. They will also be too weak to resist oppressive policies which will soon be foisted on them by a coalition of the West and Brazil, China, India, and Russia.

And another of Liu’s statements could come right from the desk of a tradititional Confucian scholar two-hundred years ago, living on the backs of miserable peasants (who were fortunate enough to have no jobs either, and only a bit of slave-work to do):

The job is the creation of the industrial revolution. Prior to that, under agricultural feudalism, people had livelihoods, doing what they excelled in and enjoyed. The job is a venue through which impersonal labor and time are sold for money at a rate that prevents the worker from buying and consuming all of what he or she produces so that the excessive production can be turned into profit, what Marx called surplus value.

Oh, innocent China!

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Footnote
^*) Liu differentiates between nations and elites, both in the West and in China. He believes if current terms of trade continue, much of the GDP in the newly rich nations would be owned and controlled by the currently rich nations:
… if current terms of trade continue, much of the GDP in the newly rich nations would be owned and controlled by the currently rich nations.
Yet there are signs that the rich economies are determined to resist this equalizing prospect by trying to co-opt the elite in these developing economies as a new comprador class to help perpetuate the historical dominance of the rich nations.

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Related:
Weekender – Politics and Science, August 15, 2009
Is AGOA good enough, August 5, 2009

Sovereignty is no mere Legal Issue

Many blogs help us to better understand Taiwan’s legal positions and its situation. They also help to question the CCP narrative (subscribed to at various degrees by the KMT, America, Japan, EU and other governments, and organizations, and individuals), according to which Taiwan were “part of China”.

The view from Taiwan is such a blog. It is a great mix of texts where Taiwanese people – both prominent and “in the streets” – are quoted, and beautiful photos from the beautiful island.

Echo Taiwan is another. No photos unfortunately, but thoughts and feelings from a Taiwanese heart. Right there, you can find a number of links to further Taiwan-related blogs.

All these blogs, along with Taiwan’s considerable press, some in English, help us not only to know that there is a Taiwanese public, but also to keep ourselves informed about where people stand on particular issues. Taiwan is a democratic and diverse society, and speaks to the world.

What may strike people who are in Taiwan for the first time, or collect information about Taiwan for the first time, is the China factor in many deliberations. But given the CCP’s concept that it is the legitimate ruler of Taiwan, and China’s determination to “reunify” Taiwan with the “motherland”, and given Taiwan’s very limited diplomatic status, this China factor, in Taiwan’s cultural, economic, and political debates is only natural.

Most pro-Taiwan blogs are highly critical of what they see as too much Taiwanese cooperation with China.

ECFA, the economic cooperation framework agreement, for example. President Ma Ying-jeou’s government believes that Taiwan can’t remain competitive without the ability to join some kinds of Free Trade Agreements (FTA). To build such economic relations is always feasible for countries whose sovereignty is globally recognized. Taiwan’s isn’t globally recognized, and its choices for economic cooperations are limited.

Taiwan’s economic minister Yiin Chii-ming said earlier this year that the government would continue to negotiate with opponents to the ECFA plan, so as to achieve consensus on the plan. On the Taiwan Advocates‘ forum, an official from the economic ministry argued that given the existing free trade agreement between ASEAN and China (to take full effect by 2010), Taiwan’s competitiveness vs ASEAN would suffer without signing ECFA, as customs to be paid by Taiwanese exporters to China would then be five to ten per cent above ASEAN exporters’.

And here is a crux. How can Taiwan hope to maintain its de-facto independence without staying economically competitive? Without economic clout, it can’t even develop state-of-the-art military equipment of its own. Ma may be making mistakes, and accepting the 92 Consensus may actually have been a fundamental mistake. But as much as one may criticize Ma Ying-jeou on many issues, his advocacy of ECFA doesn’t look wrong. Lee Teng-hui, one of his predecessors, said on May 16 this year that by signing the ECFA, Taipei was falling into China’s plot of hijacking Taiwan economically to force unification.

That is certainly one of Beijing’s motives. But what would Taiwan do by not signing ECFA?

Besides, Taiwan’s government is reforming the army. The ratio of volunteers to conscripts is currently at four to six, but is scheduled to become six to four in 2011, something which an American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) paper views as the first step in Taiwan’s gradual transition to a professional army.

The army reform makes a lot of sense. Consider this: many conscripts are looking for jobs (as employees) or orders and business (as business people and investors) in China. The way some or many of them show up at Beijing-orchestrated events suggests that they might be pretty harmonized. This is not meant as a blanket insult to all Taiwanese people who are doing business with China (and my apoligies if it sounds like it) – but the overall commitment of volunteers to defending their country should be higher than that of conscripts.

Again: given the CCP’s concept that it is the legitimate ruler of Taiwan, and China’s determination to “reunify” Taiwan with the “motherland”, and given Taiwan’s very limited diplomatic status, this China factor, in Taiwan’s cultural, economic, and political debates is only natural. Is it also natural that certain debates and polls are sensitive in Taiwan? Is it too idealistic to expect otherwise?

You may refer to the lack of information as to where the Taiwanese stand on the issue of declared independence as an export of Chinese censorship into a free (Taiwanese) society, and you may be right with that. There is another issue which is even less discussed, at least in the blogs I’m reading regularly. I never tried to think it through by myself before, because it is very unpleasant stuff.

Others have tried to think it through. Americans, for example. After all, outside Taiwan, they would be the first to be involved if war breaks out across the Taiwan Strait. That said, countries like Japan, the Philippines or Vietnam (very close to the hotspot) and Australia and New Zealand (also still uncannily close geographically) would be implicated to an uncertain degree. Most EU countries are also US allies. Let’s not act like if this was a mere problem of the Taiwanese.

Ted Galen Carpenter, in August 1998, described two general American approaches, concerning Beijing’s stance on Taiwan, at the time: the blundering accomodationist approach, and the reckless hawkish alternative. Carpenter points out that Taiwan’s officials seem uncertain about the willingness of the United States to risk war with Beijing to defend Taiwan. Aren’t we all?

I don’t want to be mistaken for an armchair general. I’m trying to think these matters through, because without doing so, much of the talk about the right of the Taiwanese people to determine their future by themselves would be empty talk. Much of it – not all of it. To create global awareness about Taiwan’s quandary, and the views of all of its people, is always useful. But in itself, it isn’t enough.

When Taiwanese people call on us to show solidarity, and if we want to show solidarity, we must do our best to understand the possible implications. We must understand that to a vast majority of China’s 1.something billion people, this is literally a matter of life and death. Yes, their view is pathetic – but pointing that out won’t make this factor go away. Chinese intellectual laziness on that particular matter may be very powerful in keeping such feelings of the Chinese people going: most Chinese people only know the CCP narrative of war. They don’t really know what war means, just as we don’t. Most of us in Taiwan or in the West only know the tales of our great-grandparents, or grandparents, or parents – if they were able to narrate them. Many of them were too traumatized to speak out. Some of us may still remember relatives who were mutilated by wars.

But if the Taiwanese should not be ready to pay the price internationally recognized independence from China may demand, Beijing is likely to see its plans for Taiwan through. Before the people of Taiwan can expect Americans to risk their lives,  limbs, or their physical and mental health, they must be ready to risk their own. As much as it may often appear as if the matter of Taiwanese sovereignty were a mere matter of moral or civil rights, it is not. China’s position on Taiwan is unjustified, but that won’t make China change its position. Further democratization of China would be desirable, but that wouldn’t make its threat against Taiwan go away either. It may actually turn China into an even more nationalistic country than what it is already.

Miracles may happen. But if the Taiwanese – or a majority among them – is determined to see their plans through, they have to be prepared for war as a last resort. If we want to support them, we must be prepared for war, too – be it as bystanders, be it as people who are involved themselves. Taiwan may turn out to be an actual nuclear power. America and China are nuclear powers for sure. So are some of America’s allies. That might amount to a lot of semi-automatic involvement.

I don’t believe that anyone has a turnkey solution to these problems. For now, I  believe that both appeasement and defense are legitimate options for the Taiwanese to choose. After all, they are China’s primary target. And if any of the Taiwanese possible choices constitutes trouble for us, let’s not blame Taiwan. They are not at fault. Neither the supporters of “eventual reunification with China”, nor the supporters of a Republic of China, nor the supporters of a Republic of Taiwan.

Sometimes I’m asking myself why the criticism of every big or small diplomatic step taken by the Ma government is frequently very bitter. It may not only be because many of the government’s domestic and foreign policies are questionable indeed. It makes no sense to doubt their readiness to defend Taiwan, if the critics themselves don’t answer the very same question explicitly.

I’m not suggesting that they are obliged to. Probably, only few of us would be blogging the way we are if we were “responsible politicians”. And noone of us has to consider Taiwan as a strategic issue, rather than a moral challenge that we have to answer. Robert Green, in a review of Ted Carpenter’s “America’s Coming War with China”, points out that although many Taiwanese do not believe it, the United States would be obligated to defend Taiwan if attacked in order not to preserve Taiwan’s independence but US supremacy in the waters of East Asia.

We may push our governments, in America, in Europe, Australia, and elsewhere, to do more for Taiwan because Taiwan deserves more. But above all, we – especially foreigners – shouldn’t accuse Taiwan’s current government of wanting to “sell Taiwan to Beijing”. After all, the government has shown some determination, in that it tackles the task of modernizing the army. That isn’t symbolism – it is a practical step.

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Related:
ECFA Negotiations, first formal round? – Taipei Times, Nov. 7, 2009
Lee Teng-hui: ECFA “Most Serious Mistake”, May 17, 2009
Taiwan was temporarily Part of China, June 16, 2008
Worried Dragon, Cato Institute / National Interest, June 6, 2008
Let Taiwan Defend Itself, Cato Institute, August 24, 1998