Scheer paints quite a rosy picture of direct flights

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Scheer paints quite a rosy picture of direct flights.

No longer pretending to be enemies, a condition in which they engaged in angry rhetoric while doing much business together on the side, a public love affair now has broken out across the Strait of Formosa. On Friday, there were scheduled direct flights between the mainland and its breakaway island* for the first time in 60 years, and the invasion of tourists clicking their cameras was on.

Robert Scheer, veteran journalist and author of The Pornography of Power, has published an article, strangely titled “Taiwan Declares Peace on China,” that has been posted at Truthdig, The San Francisco Chronicler and The Huffington Post.

Sheer’s basic argument is that the direct flights are a sign of growing peace in the Strait and a blow to Taiwan’s well-armed, neoconservative friends in the US who, as J. Michael Cole so nicely put it, think “international security is best served through further militarization -- greater investment in weapons, more reliance on force to solve problems and preemptive military action.”

That’s great. Don’t get me wrong. Let me stress the woeful regard I have for the truism that the only people in the US who seem to pay any attention to Taiwan are the likes of Wolfowitz, Tancredo, Bolton, etc. Hawks certainly do rule the US’ Taiwan policy, and I personally don’t really get too worked up when Taiwan doesn’t get the American weapons that it wants or that the US wants to sell them.

(I’ve been assured before that those Taiwan supporters in the US with neoconservative leanings really do love Taiwan and would do anything for it, but that has little effect on my feelings towards their policies. I’m glad they like Taiwan, but I often wonder that if their very support hurts Taiwan’s chances of gaining broader support in the US. If I knew nothing about Taiwan, I probably wouldn’t be too turned on by the fact that the three aforementioned politicos are so heavily invested in the islands well-being.)

I believe peace is possible, and I don’t think its achievement will necessitate a war. On that point, I agree with Mr. Scheer.

That said, though, I’m curious as to where exactly Scheer got the idea that war is now seen as “counterproductive” in the PRC? One of the first things China did before the start of the direct flights, if I’m not mistaken, was to “update” the 1000+ missiles it has pointing at Taiwan:

Professor Christopher Hughes, an LSE-based expert on Taiwan, thought the boost from tourism had been overestimated. His initial optimism about the thaw had also waned after conversations with mainland officials and academics. “Their way of thinking was: ‘Taiwan’s come over to our way of thinking; Ma’s going to do what we want him to,’” he said, adding that Beijing had updated its missiles opposite Taiwan. “The question is: what is Taiwan getting out of this?"

Admittedly, I don’t know what steps one takes in “updating” missiles, but it doesn’t sound like something you do if you want to demonstrate the good faith you have in the relations you’re trying to foster. How exactly does that jive with Taiwan’s supposed declaration of peace on China?

Moreover, its becoming more and more apparent that Taiwan is getting very little out of the deal. China refused to let Taiwanese airlines in on the historic transits. This, I feel, is the part that’s been left out of most of the reporting (not, as Scheer says, the fact that the neocons are going to be left in the cold). The Hong Kong-Taipei route is one of the busiest in the world. Now that some of that traffic will be redirected, Taiwanese companies aren’t being allowed any of the new business.

What the KMT is doing now is no different than the DPP’s policy to facilitate closer ties with China, aside from the fact that KMT is willing to let China dictate all of the rules, and the DPP wasn’t, as Max Hirsch commented on the East West Center’s blog:

Although typically branded a ”troublemaker” — ie, one who has antagonized Beijing and Washington — Chen also leaves behind the much quieter legacy of pushing the KMT to transform (as you mention) and allowing for a degree of cross-strait economic integration that has been unprecedented, even under KMT administrations preceding his.

While declining to dismantle (indeed, he even threw up some of his own) some of the roadblocks that have hindered cross-strait trade, Chen has presided over a massive (the largest in history) trade and investment flow across the strait, while hammering out many of the prickly details of further links for which credit will ultimately go to the KMT.

A few days ago, I sat down with a top KMT official slated for a Cabinet position under Ma. Off-the- record, the official admitted that the foundations for opening up Taiwan to Chinese tourists, and for direct air and shipping links had already been laid through years of painstaking negotiations with Beijing, initiated and conducted by the DPP-led government. I doubt that much credit will go to the DPP for this, however. Equally sad is the lost legacy of how the DPP played a role in forcing the KMT to democratize from without; indeed, the opposition party (soon to become the ruling one) was, by and large, dragged kicking and screaming into democracy; now it is also beginning to embrace the localization movement that defines the DPP: Oddly enough, ”Taiwan First” was a slogan that the KMT clung to during Ma’s presidential campaign.

Right now, it seems that China has gotten everything it wants out of the deal, and Taiwan’s gotten little, because the KMT isn’t willing to stand up and make sure that Taiwan gets its cut.

I can’t reiterate this enough. I’m not denying that the cross-strait flights are a good thing. While I certainly don’t think they they’ll be the economic boon that the KMT is claiming they will be, and I’m not alone, I have hope for moderate benefits, both financial and cultural. It’s just a shame that KMT was so ready to back down, not daring to demand the PRC compromise.

* There still appears to be very few people willing to let go of the split meme. It seems obvious to me that a group fleeing to an island during a civil war is fundamentally different from a group of people seceding from a certain union.

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