Behind the Taiwan-Singapore
spat By Laurence Eyton
TAIPEI
- Taiwan's Foreign Minister Mark Chen, speaking to a
pro-Taiwan independence group from the central city of
Taichung this week, lashed out at Singapore's
denunciation of what it interprets as Taiwan's moves
toward independence.
An exasperated Chen,
speaking in the earthy Taiwanese dialect rather than the
more formal Mandarin that is supposed to be the national
language, was commenting on remarks by his Singaporean
counterpart George Yeo. Chen said Yeo had just been
"fondling China's balls", meaning that it was fawning
over China by criticizing Taiwan. Chen went on: "Even
Singapore, a country smaller than a piece of snot, can
swagger around to criticize Taiwan at the United
Nations. Where is the justice in the world?"
Chen's remarks have met with a chorus of
condemnation from official Taiwan, from both sides of
the political divide, not least because many of Taiwan's
26 diplomatic allies are in fact smaller than Singapore.
Nevertheless, the sentiments of ordinary Taiwanese are
not nearly so offended by Chen's remarks, and
newspapers' letters bags have been bulging with messages
of support.
Chen's outburst was provoked by
Yen's remarks at the United Nations last Friday, when in
the General Assembly the subject of Taiwan's absence
from that forum was raised, as it is every year, by the
island's diplomatic allies. Yeo took issue with what he
perceives as the direction of Taiwan's current
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government, which he
believes is pushing for formal independence from China.
"The push toward independence by certain groups
in Taiwan is most dangerous because it will lead to war
with mainland China and drag in other countries. At
stake is the entire Asia-Pacific region," Yeo said.
The language here is interesting. The use of the
phrase "certain groups" might sound in the UN like a
diplomatic refusal to point the finger directly at the
DPP, but to longtime independence activists such as Chen
it is an attempt to deny the legitimacy of the
government in Taipei and parrot the Beijing line that
Taiwan has "authorities" but not a government worthy of
the name.
To Chen, who has a decades-long
history of pro-independence activism, who was
blacklisted and exiled by the former Kuomintang (KMT)
dictatorship and unable to return to his native Taiwan
even for his father's funeral, Yeo's dismissal of
Taiwan's status was a red rag waved before a bull. And
yet the tension between the two men reflects the rocky
road of relations between the two countries that goes
back a decade or more.
There was a time, in the
early 1990s, when Taiwan and Singapore were assumed by
the outside world to have a convergence of interests
simply because they seemed rather similar: they were
both newly industrialized countries and runaway economic
success stories, run by what The Economist magazine once
called "thuggish technocrats".
Once Singapore
was seen as a model for Taiwan Singapore got a
good press in Taiwan because its spick-and-span,
buttoned-down propriety was seen as a model for where
the far more anarchic and freewheeling Taiwan should be
heading.
The comparisons were, however, always
mistaken, first because Taiwan might be small but it is
nevertheless 50 times as big as Singapore and has
problems - infrastructure, agriculture, rural
development - that Singapore simply cannot have. Indeed,
the idea that Singapore might be some development role
model for Taiwan as it attempted the leap from newly
industrialized country (NIC) status to fully developed
status was perhaps little more than a conceit of
metropolitan op-ed writers comparing Taipei unfavorably
to pristine, hyper-efficient Singapore, although
Taiwan's technocrats were interested in the city-state's
financial markets and its ability to cast itself in the
role of a regional hub.
But the real divergence
between the two states appeared in the mid-1990s with an
interesting spat between the two Lees, Taiwan's
president Lee Teng-hui and Singapore's former president
Lee Kwan Yew, at the time supposed to be a semi-retired
"senior minister", in reality still the same fearsomely
self-disciplined patriarch of Singaporean development as
always.
The battleground was "Asian values"
about which, of course, we have heard little since the
1997 financial crisis. In the mid-1990s, however, this
idea that authoritarian collectivism that stressed
increased communal wealth and prosperity at the expense
of individual liberties and democracy was much bruited
about, and even received a respectful hearing in the
West. One place, however, where it received little more
than a Bronx cheer was in Taiwan, which at the time was
just completing the democratic reform of its national
political institutions. While at the time, Malaysian
prime minister Mahathir Mohamad was perhaps the most
vocal advocate of Asian values, Lee Kuan Yew, the
architect of modern Singapore, was the advocate with the
most gravitas.
Taiwan's Lee Teng-hui, however,
didn't believe in Asian values and was quite outspoken
in his dissent. It was, in a way, exactly the kind of
system that "Asian values" supported - a patriarchate of
technocrats driving change from the top, not a nanny
state but rather a "schoolmaster state". That is what
Lee Teng-hui had inherited from Taiwan's previous
president and last dictator Chiang Ching-kuo, and what
he spent his years in office trying to dismantle.
Partly he might have been driven by his
background - Lee Teng-hui was the first leader of Taiwan
who was a native Taiwanese rather than a native of
mainland China. As a result he had a large chip on his
shoulder about patriarchal values being used to crush
the aspirations of his own people to self-determination,
which was part of what he called "the tragedy of being
Taiwanese".
The mid-1990s saw a number of spats
between the two Lees, with Singapore's championing
"soft" authoritarianism on the basis that Asians were
more interested in wealth then personal freedom, while
Taiwan's Lee was staunchly on the side of the
universality of democratic values and the idea of
freedom - subtly implying that "Asian values" were, in
fact, deeply racist in their assumptions.
Taipei said Singapore didn't understand
Taiwan Along with this ideological difference
there was a more practical bone of contention. Lee Kuan
Yew wanted to appear as an intermediary between Taiwan
and China, while Lee Teng-hui firmly believed that his
Singaporean counterpart didn't understand Taiwan and its
achievements and only was so uncritical of the Beijing
regime because he didn't live next to nor was he
threatened by it.
In particular, Lee Teng-hui
was offended by Lee Kuan Yew's assumption - which in
fairness was the stated goal of Lee Teng-hui's own party
at the time though he himself didn't believe in it at
all - that unification was both a priori
desirable and was something that could be negotiated
without some kind of democratic endorsement by Taiwan's
voters.
Given that the current DPP government is
the ideological heir of Lee Teng-hui - ironically his
own party has repudiated his legacy lock, stock and
barrel, much to its electoral cost - it is not
surprising that the same coolness that emerged between
Taiwan and Singapore in the mid-1990s hasn't really
dissipated. So it was a surprise when, just before
assuming Singapore's prime ministership in early August,
Lee Hsien Loong, son of Lee Kuan Yew, visited Taipei.
The substance of Lee Hsien Loong's talks with
President Chen Shui-bian have not been revealed.
Speculation at the time suggested that the Singaporean
leader was interested in democratic reform. But from
Singapore's behavior since he took office, it is more
plausible that he wanted a heart-to-heart with Chen to
find out just how far Taiwan is likely to push its bid
for formal independence.
If this is so, whatever
he heard does not seem to have reassured him. Lee had
been prime minister for barely 10 days when he first
sallied forth against the Chen government. In a National
Day rally speech on August 22, Lee said the gravest
problem facing the region was the Taiwan-China issue and
that war might break out if Taiwan moved toward
independence.
This is the line that has been
repeated by Singapore several times since then,
particularly by Yeo at the UN and again this week.
To a certain degree Singapore's worries are
simply a matter of self-interest. The country has a
close economic relationship with China, while at the
same time it has a defense agreement with the United
States, Taiwan's protector - which has a vested interest
in Taiwan's remaining de facto independent - thus
allowing the US to use Singapore's logistical support in
time of conflict, no matter who the conflict is with.
The US going to Taiwan's aid against China, therefore,
is perhaps the nightmare for Singapore's leaders.
How valid are Singapore's fears? But
how valid are Singapore's fears? In the sense that
Taiwan is going to make overt steps toward de jure
independence, the fears probably are not valid at all.
The reason for this is that Washington has what amounts
to a veto over the kind of constitutional changes in
Taiwan that Singapore fears might provoke conflict. Here
the DPP tends to talk a bigger game than it is actually
prepared to play. For example, President Chen Shui-bian,
in his election campaign, promised a new constitution,
and this sent shivers down spines in Beijing, Washington
and elsewhere since it was thought that Chen would in
some way try to ditch the vestigial pretense that Taiwan
is part of a China still divided by an unfinished civil
war, and claim that it is new nation - one of China's
red lines.
Yet Chen appears, in fact, content to
amend the current "Chinese" constitution, and the
significant changes that he seeks to make so far appear
so abstruse as to be of interest only to scholars of
constitutional systems. And given that the most urgent
reform, that of Taiwan's problem-ridden election system,
has already been agreed upon by all parties this year,
it is far from certain that Chen can actually get the
momentum going for yet another round of constitutional
change.
The Taiwanese people would like to see
effective government, rather than what appears to be
endless haggling and bickering about who has the right
to govern and how they are supposed to go about it. In a
similar vein, it is true that Chen has advocated the use
of "Taiwan" rather than "Republic of China" when
referring to the nation (China calls it a breakaway
province that must be returned to the embrace of the
motherland, by force if necessary), except in the most
strictly formal of circumstances - presenting
ambassadorial credentials, for example. This might
suggest a "drive for independence", but no formal name
change has actually been mooted - again this would
require constitutional change. The name-change move,
however, is rather popular since many Taiwanese think
the old "Republic of China" tag is a tiresome and
foolish anachronism. And nobody thinks that China is
going to go to war because Taiwanese politicians use the
name "Taiwan" in their speeches.
What is going
on is perhaps best summed up as a populism that tweaks
China's nose, but is severely constrained by what
Washington will and will not put up with.
Having
said this, it is worth noting that US power in the
Western Pacific depends on Taiwan retaining its de facto
independence from China. Since the parties in opposition
to the governing DPP have become aggressively
unificationist - for which they are likely to suffer in
the legislative elections in December far more than
their narrow defeat in the presidential election earlier
this year - Washington is likely to become more
indulgent with Chen and the DPP as it learns to trust
them not to go too far. This contrasts with Washington's
earlier preference for the KMT as being less troublesome
and more status quo-oriented than Chen's DPP.
Unification a rapidly receding possibility
But is eschewing independence enough to avoid
war, or must there be movement toward unification, as
China has insisted? Unification is a rapidly receding
possibility.
After all, much of the support for
unificationist parties, the KMT and People First Party
(PFP), is not support for unification itself but rather
the result of fears among Taiwan's ethnic minorities
concerning the perceived chauvinism of the
ethnic-majoritarian DPP. Since the DPP is going all out
to allay such fears with some radical policy
initiatives, this support for the opposition by ethnic
minorities cannot be relied upon in future.
Meanwhile, the DPP government is working very
hard at changing the China-centric education of the
Kuomintang years toward a Taiwan-centered syllabus aimed
at instilling a national consciousness at the most
impressionable age. Given that the voting age is likely
to be reduced to 18 before the next presidential
election, such moves have immediate significance.
While Washington and natural caution, therefore,
can be expected to keep Taiwan's so-called "drive for
independence" in check, this still does not bode well
for unification. Cross-strait peace depends not so much
on Taiwan but on what China really wants. If Beijing is
content to let Taiwan keep its current status, then
there will probably be peace. If Beijing is determined
to have unification, to make good on its threats to
force unification should Taiwan delay too long in
discussing terms, then war is a distinct likelihood. It
is inconceivable at the present time that Taiwanese
would vote for unification on the terms offered by
Beijing - "one country, two systems" - and this
sentiment is only going to harden further in the future.
What makes things especially touchy right now is
that the United States is determined, as is the DPP, to
add serious muscle to Taiwan's military capabilities.
Taiwanese Premier Yu Shy-kun spoke last weekend of a
"balance of terror" that would come from Taiwan
obtaining an offensive capability. In the early 1980s,
the US promised China that it would supply only
defensive weapons to Taiwan, a promise it has largely
kept. But China's missile buildup and the lack of
ability on Taiwan's part - or anybody else's, given the
state of missile-interception technology - to counter
the missile threat has prompted suggestions both in
Taipei and Washington that the best means of defense is
offense. Perhaps Taiwan should be able to "hit back",
though the current US$18 billion package Taiwan is now
considering will not, in fact, give it that capability.
The danger is that if China feels that the military
option is a closing door on unification, it might
suddenly make a run at it, and that would have to happen
quite soon.
Laurence Eyton is the
deputy editor in chief of the Taipei Times newspaper and
a columnist for the Chinese-language Taiwan Daily. He
has lived and worked in Taiwan for 18 years.
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