TAIWAN AND THE PHILIPPINES

TAIWANESE PROTEST KILLING OF FISHERMAN BY PHILIPPINES COAST GUARD IN DISPUTED WATERS

Associated Press

The Washington Post, May 13, 2013

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Some 200 Taiwanese gathered outside the Philippines representative office in Taipei on Monday to protest the killing of a Taiwanese fisherman by the Philippines coast guard in disputed waters.

Burning Philippines flags and waving banners with legends like “You can’t kill our people, you can’t insult our country,” the demonstrators demanded that the Philippines apologize for Thursday’s incident in the Bashi Strait, where Philippines coast guard personnel opened fire on a Taiwanese fishing vessel, killing 65-year-old Hung Shih-cheng. The strait is between Taiwan and the northern Philippines.

With upward of 75 police officers in attendance, Monday’s demonstration was peaceful.

President Ma Ying-jeou has given the Philippines until Tuesday to apologize for the incident and provide compensation to the dead man’s family. If the Philippines refuses, Ma has said he will order Taiwanese representatives in Manila back to Taipei and deny Filipinos permission to work in Taiwan.

Approximately 87,000 Filipinos are employed on the island, many in the manufacturing sector, where their English-language skills are seen as a boon to the island’s export-oriented high-tech industries.

The Philippines coast guard has admitted it fired the shots that killed the Taiwanese fisherman, but said it acted in self-defense because the Taiwanese vessel was about to ram it.

China has sought to make common cause with Taiwan against Manila, deploring the shooting in harsh rhetoric that threatened to spark another diplomatic tussle between Beijing and the Philippines, a key U.S. ally.

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JAPAN, THE US AND CHINA

NO FREE HAND GIVEN TO JAPANESE HAWK BY US

Ching Cheong

The China Post, March 3, 2013

BEIJING - Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has failed to get a blank check from his American ally to underwrite his hawkish policy over the disputed Senkaku (Diaoyu to the Chinese) islands.

At the joint press briefing during Abe's visit to Washington last week, U.S. President Barack Obama did not mention China or the disputed islands at all. What Japan wanted most from him — to openly reiterate that the islands fell within Japanese administration — was not delivered.

In fact, American reception of Abe was at best lukewarm. This is because mainstream views in the U.S. do not support Japanese claims over the islands.

For example, Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times wrote last September: “On balance, I find the evidence for Chinese sovereignty quite compelling. The most interesting evidence is emerging from old Japanese government documents and suggests that Japan in effect stole the islands from China in 1895 as booty of war.”

Even the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a U.S. think tank critical of China, urged Abe to exercise restraint. On the eve of the PM's U.S. visit, AEI scholar Michael Auslin, in an open letter, urged him to undertake that “Japan will never fire the first shot, nor endanger civilian life.”

(...) [article here]

ISLANDS AND ECONOMIES

CONFRONTATION MAY HURT ECONOMY

The Japan Times, September 27, 2012

As tension between Japan and China escalates over the ownership of the Senkaku Islands following the Japanese government's decision to purchase three of the five islets in the island group, there is the possibility that China will step up its confrontational attitude toward Japan.

This could cause difficulty on both political and economic fronts. Japan needs to carefully monitor Beijing's moves, ascertain the meaning behind those moves, and quickly take necessary steps to change the situation for the better.

It is important for Japan to take concrete action to resume constructive dialogue with China and thus it needs to mobilize all available means to that end. Neither repeating hawkish rhetoric toward its Asian neighbor nor taking a do-nothing attitude with unwarranted optimism will help end this difficult situation.

Symbolic of China's hard stance toward Japan is its decision to cancel celebrations scheduled to be held in Beijing marking the 40th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between Tokyo and Beijing. In view of the tense situation, the Japan-China Economic Association this week decided to postpone sending a delegation to China. The Japan-China Green Expo, which was to have begun last week in Shanghai, was also canceled.

China has tightened customs inspections of Japanese goods and slowed down the processing of visa applications by Japanese citizens. Chinese citizens are cancelling trips to Japan impacting the Japanese tourist industry such as hotels and inns. Grass-roots exchange events between Japan and China are also being canceled one after another.

(...) [article here]

CHINA SEEN FROM TAIWAN

CHINA’S COLLAPSE IS UNLIKELY: FORUM

Taipei Times, September 26, 2012

China’s economic growth is slowing down, but the country’s economy is unlikely to collapse in the near future, nor is the rising power likely to impose economic sanctions against Taiwan or Japan, experts said at a forum yesterday.

China’s economy would not collapse in the near future, because Chinese officials are very much aware of the problems they are facing and have sufficient policy tools and resources on hand to handle a possible crisis, the experts concluded.

For the third consecutive week, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) held a symposium on China affairs to improve its understanding of the country. Yesterday’s forum focused on China’s economy, following previous topics on social and political development.

Beijing understands very well that its rapid economic growth in the past decade could not be sustainable and it would have to tackle the three major issues of “imbalance, inconsistency and unsustainability,” National Chengchi University professor Tung Cheng-yuan (童振源) said.

In an analysis of China’s economic transformation to the audience, among them DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and Policy Research Committee executive director Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), Tung said China has been trying to slow down its export and domestic investment to transform its export-oriented economy to one with emphasis on domestic consumption.

(...) [article here]

SENKAKU OR DIAOYU?

JAPAN AND CHINA FAIL TO EASE TENSIONS OVER ISLAND DISPUTE

Bloomberg News

Bloomberg, September 25, 2012

Diplomats from China and Japan failed to ease tensions over a territorial dispute as the Japanese Coast Guard used water cannons to drive off Taiwanese vessels near the islands at the center of the spat.

Japan’s move this month to buy the islands was “blatantly illegal,” China’s Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun told Japanese counterpart Chikao Kawai today in Beijing, according to a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement. While the two sides agreed to more discussions, Kawai said no consensus was reached to hold a foreign ministers’ meeting this week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Kyodo News reported.

The meeting was the first since protests in China last week damaged operations for Japanese companies such as Toyota Motor Corp. (7203) and Aeon Co. Japan’s purchase of the islands, known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese, exacerbated the worst diplomatic crisis since 2005, which has threatened a $340 billion trade relationship between Asia’s two biggest economies.

About 50 Taiwanese fishing boats and patrol vessels left waters administered by Japan after the Japanese Coast Guard fired water cannons at them this morning, the Coast Guard said in a statement. Five Chinese government boats were also spotted in or near what Japan calls its “contiguous zone,” according to a separate statement.

(...) [article here]

THE DIAOYUS

THE DIAOYUS: TAIWAN'S, CHINA'S, OR JAPAN'S?

Nobody wants to ask an international court to find out

Cyril Pereira

Asia Sentinel, August 25, 2012

Considerable heat has been generated on the streets of Chinese cities recently with enraged mobs burning Japanese cars while a fishing boat load of purported heroes from Hong Kong planted China and Taiwan flags on the disputed Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea.

Apart from plentiful bluster and jingoism there is neither clarity nor consensus over the legal merits of the claims by Taiwan and China. Japan controls the island cluster which they refer to as the Senkakus.
Chinese Imperial maritime logbooks going back to the 1400s refer to the Diaoyu Islands as navigational landmarks. Imperial Japan formally incorporated the Senkaku Islands as national territory on 14 January 1895, converting their prior terra nullius (no man’s land) status.

After Japan’s WWII surrender to America, the Senkakus were administered as part of the Okinawa Prefecture under the United States Civil Administration of the Ryuku Islands from 1945 to 1972 when they reverted to Japan under the Okinawa Reversion Treaty ratified by the US Congress in 1971.

The UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) report of 1969 raised the potential of large oil reserves around the Senkaku/Daioyu archipelago. That energized the territorial claims between Taiwan, China and Japan, which continues unresolved.
Since 1972 the civic administration of the Senkaku Islands was placed under the mayor of Ishigaki but he is not permitted to develop them or initiate commercial activity without clearance from the central government.

(...) [artículo aquí]

RISKS IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

US SEES RISK OF WAR OVER SOUTH CHINA SEA

Peter Hartcher

The Sydney Morning Herald, July 21, 2012

THE White House has warned of the rising risk of accidental war in the South China Sea and called for countries in the region urgently to agree to a code of conduct.

China resists such a code as it jostles for ownership of resource-rich seabeds claimed by six south-east Asian nations. But the top Asia policy official in the White House has said a recent two-month maritime standoff between China and the Philippines ''threatened to escalate'' and created ''a scenario of grave concern to all countries in the region''. The standoff ended only when a hurricane sent the Philippine vessels back to port.

Analysts say the South China Sea is the new flashpoint of Asia. Most world shipping - and Australian exports - pass through it. ''A code of conduct, in our view, is a matter of commonsense,'' the National Security Council's senior director for Asia, Danny Russell, said. In a call implicitly aimed at China, Mr Russell said 10 years ago China had agreed to negotiate such a code of conduct. It has repeatedly said it will agree to discussions ''when the time is ripe''. A Pentagon official with responsibility for US defence policy in Asia, Vikram Singh, said: ''The time is ripe now''.

China has said the US is meddling in the region's affairs by encouraging a code of conduct. The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, responded: ''The US is a resident Pacific power''.

(...) [artículo aquí]

CHINA AND THE US IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION

RISING CHINA MUST TREAD CAREFULLY

Frank Ching

The China Post, February 1, 2012

The United States has recently, and repeatedly, made clear that its new defense policy is to put greater emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region, with a view to playing a leadership role in Asia, to China's evident discomfiture.

U.S. President Barack Obama personally proposed a “leaner” military strategy, with almost half a trillion dollars in spending cuts over the next 10 years, while calling for a larger U.S. military presence in Asia.

The new policy was embodied in a “Defense Strategic Guidance” report issued by the Pentagon.

It said, in part, that “over the long term, China's emergence as a regional power will have the potential to affect the U.S. economy and our security in a variety of ways.”

(...) [artículo aquí]

MA YING-JEOU AND CHINA

MA BALANCES TAIWAN’S CONCERNS ABOUT AUTONOMY WHILE BACKING TIES WITH CHINA

Michael Forsythe and Tim Culpan

Bloomberg, January 16, 2012

Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou was re-elected emphasizing his success easing tensions with China. Now comes the hard part: building on those gains in his final four-year term without diluting the island’s autonomy.

After signing economic deals in his first term, Ma will face more difficult issues such as China’s military buildup and Taiwan’s political status with the mainland, which claims sovereignty over the island, said Abe Denmark, a former China desk officer at the U.S. Defense Department.

“There is some concern that the progress between the mainland and Taiwan has been low-hanging fruit,” said Denmark, now with the Washington-based National Bureau of Asian Research. Addressing the military buildup and Taiwan’s status “will be harder for both Taiwan and Beijing.”

Continued success in building links with the mainland keeps the relationship from infecting ties between the U.S. and China, the world’s two biggest economies, and may bolster financial markets as improved relations draw investors. Ma must balance that progress against concerns voiced by the Taiwanese opposition that many of the island’s 23 million people don’t want cooperation with the mainland to infringe on their sovereignty and economy.

(...) [artículo aquí]

TAIWAN’S ELECTIONS

EXCITING TIMES FOR TAIWAN

Joe Thomas Karackattu

Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses , January 13, 2012

Taiwan President Dr. Ma Ying-jeou is seeking a second four-year team and is running against his main opponent DPP Chairperson Dr. Tsai Ing-wen. Even though the polls post a three-way contest, it is largely a two-way one as the PFP candidate, Dr. James Soong, would likely be engaged in a tug-of-war with the KMT electoral base (pulling away a lot of undecided voters), rather than hurting the decidedly DPP-camp voter. Ma Ying-jeou’s campaign is largely driven on the plank of economic gains promised to the people of Taiwan, chiefly through the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) in July 2010 (tariff reductions beginning w.e.f. January 2011) between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan. It is true that Taiwan, like many other countries, has faced the double-dip recession in the US and Europe with creditable success, and the ECFA was responsible for some of this economic gain. Taiwan’s real GDP grew by 10.72 per cent in 2010 (believed to be the highest GDP growth rate since 1987), and the growth rate for the first half of 2011 was 5.54 per cent. Steps such as permits to Mainland tourists brought in over $2 billion into Taiwan in tourism alone. Despite lagging global recovery, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics projects the economic growth forecast for 2012 at 4.19 per cent, with per capita GDP at $20,472.

However, the implementation of the ECFA early harvest programme in the last year has included only a limited set of products, and the real effects of the agreement would only be realised in the second stage which commences this year (tariffs on 94.5 per cent of listed items would be reduced to zero by the end of the year involving 437 of the 500 Taiwan product categories). Also, the 2010 growth figures belie the low baseline of the 2009 growth statistics from a post-recession year and hence should not be overhyped. Recent surveys such as the one by Commonwealth Magazine indicate that 45.5 per cent of Taiwan’s top 1000 CEOs surveyed believe that the ECFA has not yet had any influence on Taiwanese companies but is expected to help in the future; 34.9 per cent said ECFA has had no impact on gains for Taiwan. With or without the ECFA, there have been no noticeable gains on gathering more economic and political space internationally - relations with ASEAN, and with other countries outside the region have been in the ‘business as usual’ mode.

(...) [artículo aquí]

TAIWAN AND CROSS-STRAIT RELATIONS

TAIWAN’S MA STAKES RE-ELECTION ON CHINA TIES

Janet Ong and Robyn Meredith

Bloomberg, December 28, 2011

Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou said his rapprochement with China will encourage other nations to strengthen trade with the island and make it less dependent on the mainland, rebutting opposition criticism that he’s left the economy more vulnerable.

“Taiwan has transformed its role from a troublemaker to a peacemaker,” Ma, vying for a second four-year term in Jan. 14 elections, said in an interview in his Taipei office. “We’re seeing more windows and doors being opened for Taiwan because of improved cross-strait relations. They have lowered their concerns in developing relations with us, the logic being: If Beijing can develop better relations with Taiwan, why can’t we?”

Ma’s lead with voters has narrowed as slower growth in the export-reliant economy deepens concern over a wealth gap the opposition blames in part on Taiwanese jobs going to the mainland. Victory at the polls may turn on how close Taiwanese want China ties to be, said Alexander Huang, a professor of strategy and war-gaming at Tamkang University’s Graduate Institute of International Affairs.

With the impact of Europe’s debt woes contributing to the weakest gain in exports in two years last month, Ma said in the Dec. 23 interview that he expects the crisis to worsen in the first quarter. In the hour-long session, he called on China to remove missiles still pointed at Taiwan, said his administration isn’t considering investing in Chinese bonds and cautioned against overreacting to the death of Kim Jong-Il in North Korea.

(...) [artículo aquí]

TAIWAN AND NUCLEAR ENERGY

EXISTING NUCLEAR PLANTS TO BE SHUT DOWN: MA

Grace Soong

The China Post, November 4, 2011

President Ma Ying-jeou promised yesterday that the licenses of the existing three nuclear power plants will not be renewed after they expire, and if the fourth power plant begins stable operations before 2016, early shutting down of the first nuclear power plant will be considered.

Ma, who is running for presidential re-election in 2012, held a press conference yesterday to explain the steps which his administration would take to reduce the use of nuclear power, and eventually attain the “nuclear-free” goal. The process will be gradual, and “safety will always be of top concern,” he pledged.

Because of Taiwan's geographical nature — surrounded by oceans and located in the seismic zone — power generation is doomed to be challenging, Ma said, pointing out that currently, 99 percent of Taiwan's energy supply is imported. As the government promotes new policies on energy and pushes for the operation of the fourth nuclear plant, maximized safety precautions will be conducted.

If any natural disasters were to leave Taiwan's nuclear reactors beyond safety standards, the facilities would be suspended or scrapped, he proposed, reasoning that Taiwan cannot afford any nuclear disasters, and “We would never opt for nuclear power generation at the expense of safety.”

(...) [artículo aquí]

CHINA, TAIWAN AND 1911

'ACCEPT HISTORY' TAIWAN'S MA URGES BEIJING

Lawrence Chung

South China Morning Post, Oct 11, 2011

Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou yesterday urged Beijing to pursue democracy and "face the existence of the Republic of China", as the island celebrated its national day and the centenary of the revolution that was a precursor to both governments.

Stressing that the 1911 revolution launched by Sun Yat-sen to overthrow the Qing dynasty was a shared memory on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, Ma urged Beijing to remember the ideals of Sun, who was later honoured as the founding father of the Chinese republic.

"The aspiration of our founding father Dr Sun Yat-sen was to establish a free and democratic nation with equitable distribution of wealth," he told thousands of local and foreign dignitaries in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei.

He asked the mainland to "courageously move in that direction", saying it was the "only way for the two sides to shrink their gap".

Ma called on Beijing not to "deliberately cut out certain parts of history", but to take note of the "actual facts of history and face the existence of the Republic of China head-on".

"The Republic of China's existence is referred to not in the past tense, but in the present," he said, adding the republic had "continued to flourish in Taiwan for more than six decades" and would continue to flourish and radiate vitality.

(...) [artículo aquí]