Asia Times: China


	June 27, 2002	atimes.com

China

Political football: Senegal's ill-will Taiwan tour
By Laurence Eyton

TAIPEI - As goodwill visits go, seldom can one have backfired quite so spectacularly. And it all seemed so straightforward.

Taiwan has formal diplomatic relations with only 28 countries, several of which are little more than remote lumps of guano in the Pacific Ocean. One of the biggest allies it currently possesses, in terms of both size and clout, is Senegal, where President Chen Shui-bian will kick off a trip to four African diplomatic allies on Saturday.

Senegal's soccer team has just received international attention and plaudits for its World Cup performance, beating France, the last competition's champions, and reaching the quarterfinals before being ousted by Turkey last Saturday.

Taiwan's thinking, to which the Senegalese government eagerly acquiesced, was that since the team was in the region, why should it not stop over in Taiwan on its way home for a 36-hour goodwill tour? At least one justification for the tour was that Taiwan's national side might be able to pick up some pointers from the Senegalese in an exhibition match. They certainly need to, as the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the international football governing body, ranks Taiwan 172nd out of 203 teams worldwide.

Unfortunately this was not to be. While the Taiwan team - along with its cheerleaders - turned out suited up for the exhibition match on Monday at Taipei's Chungshan municipal stadium, the Senegalese strolled on to the pitch wearing training outfits and some in flip-flops, obviously without any intention of playing a match. What they did do was give a 15-minute demonstration of ball-handling skills. Dissatisfaction among the spectators was palpable.

However boldly Senegal attacked Zinadane Zidane and his compatriots on the French national team, it was soon on the defensive against Taiwan's famously piranha-like media. Several of the evening papers wrote editorials blasting Senegal as ingrates, and the disappointment of spectators of the match that never was featured as a major story on TV evening news programs.

Senegal said that it had not been informed that it was expected to play a match in Taiwan. For that reason the team had left its equipment at Taipei's Chiang Kai-shek airport during its short stay. The players had no uniforms and no boots. Also, since they had only just played a match - against Turkey on Saturday - they were tired and loath to play another, even a friendly. The players also grumbled that they had no wish to come to Taiwan - they were told to do so as the result of a political decision.

By the time the Senegalese left, what was intended as a friendly visit had become a welter of animosity. Scurrilous stories about the visitors flooded Tuesday's newspapers. The visitors were accused of being bad-mannered, behaving thuggishly, and of being overly parsimonious, arguing incessantly over sums as small as US$1, and acting with outrage at the $300 demanded by high-class call girls.

Even the papers that eschewed such stories nevertheless got hot under the editorial collar about the cost of the visit, about NT$15 million (US$440,000). This included NT$3.3 million for the demonstration match that never happened and some NT$4 million in excess-luggage fees after the team and its entourage went on a spending spree.

For their part, as they left Taiwan the Senegalese complained that their accommodation - in a five-star hotel - was poor, the food was terrible, and the Taiwanese were poor hosts, and they were particularly incensed that their 80-person-strong group had to fly economy class; business class, they said, was the least that Taiwan should have offered.

Such was the welter of mutual rancor that President Chen might be in for an interesting reception on Saturday.

Obviously there was a breakdown in communication over the visit, given that the visit involved rapid negotiations among the foreign ministries of the two nations, the teams involved and national sporting bodies. A leading contender to take responsibility for the mess has to be Taiwan's National Council of Physical Fitness and Sports.

So rare is it for any international-level team in any sport to visit Taiwan that this government agency simply didn't know what to do. It was, for example, obvious to any observer of the events at the Chungshan stadium that the idea of providing security wasn't even an afterthought - the Senegalese were constantly surrounded and badgered by autograph seekers and other fans.

But one thing stands out from the debacle of the visit of the "Lions of Teranga", and that is the brazen opportunism of both governments, but particularly the Taiwanese side, in wanting to set up the visit in the first place.

Taiwan's interest in the World Cup is a symptom of the country's susceptibility to nine-day wonders and the cult of international celebrity. It has nothing to do with an interest in soccer. In fact, Taiwan is one of the few countries in the world that a person might visit where the sight of a group of boys kicking a ball about is rare to non-existent.

Not only are baseball and basketball the only games played professionally in Taiwan, the island still retains a remarkably Confucian-style anti-sports culture. There are no "soccer moms" in Taiwan, and any self-respecting Taiwanese mom would deplore her children wasting valuable studying time on something as pointless as sport.

The idea, therefore, that Taiwan's soccer team - it was news to most Taiwanese that there even was one - needed to benefit from Senegal's prowess was little more than a cover story to cash in on Senegal's celebrity. One might think that Taiwan's Foreign Ministry might have something better to do. But one would be wrong.

It all comes back to the magic number cited at the beginning of this story, those 28 diplomatic allies. The current government, two years into its term, has lost one ally, Macedonia, and failed to gain any new ones. Behind this lack of change is a foreign policy adrift.

One way in which the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government is different from its Kuomintang (KMT) predecessor is its readiness to admit that Taiwan's diplomatic allies are for the most part financial basket cases so insignificant that they are largely dependent on Taiwan's aid in return for which they offer diplomatic recognition.

This was, of course, also the case under the KMT, but the gap between words and reality - the cynicism needed to pretend that Haiti or Liberia cherished ties with Taiwan because of a mutual love of democracy and human rights - was easier for the KMT to muster. Taiwan found itself in the position of an aging roue, buying relationships because it couldn't get them any other way with all the preposterous flattery, eye for the main chance and lack of sincerity that such relationships usually entail.

Added to this is the government's shortage of money. Parsimonious budgets passed by the opposition and a recession-influenced plunge in the tax take have left the government without the wherewithal to continue its money diplomacy, even if it wanted to.

The DPP has longed to be able to change things, but doesn't know how and doesn't know what to. Certainly its first foreign minister, Tien Hung-mao, was not the right man in the right place. Appointed largely as a result of US pressure, he was an architect of former president Lee Teng-hui's so-called pragmatic diplomacy, which largely means strengthening ties with neighbors through investment and unofficial leaders' summits masquerading as golf games.

In February, Tien and Taiwan's "unofficial" representative to the United Kingdom, Eugene Chien, swapped places. Chien's appointment, however, had far more to do with his ability to conduct a purge of those Foreign Ministry officials who believe that reunification with China should take priority over extending Taiwan's diplomatic influence. The Foreign Ministry has long been a hotbed of reunificationist fervor, to the extend that its officials would tip off mainland China when former president Lee planned to travel abroad in the hope that the trip would get canceled. Chien was specifically appointed to weed out this kind of disloyalty. Vision as to how Taiwan might improve its diplomatic standing without resorting to money to do so will probably have to come from elsewhere.

It is an example of just how bad things are and how frustrated the government feels that when vice President Annette Lu returned from an overseas trip in March she claimed the foray had been successful simply because she didn't promise any money to any of the countries she visited. Since she actually visited the Vatican and Hungary, this is hardly surprising. But the comments of Lu and Chien were.

"My visit is a breakthrough in Taiwan's diplomatic history, which has been criticized as a sick 'money diplomacy,' because I neither carried or promised to give any money or resources to those countries I visited," Lu said at a press conference on her return.

"The vice president's experience proves that Taiwan can develop foreign relationships without spending money," Chien said at the same conference, adding that Taiwan had to expand its foreign ties by stressing its strengths, such as "freedom, democracy, human rights, love and high technology".

Which one of these areas the Senegal soccer team's visit fell into is anybody's guess. But the fact that the government grabbed so desperately at something as inconsequential as a soccer team's visit as a symbol of foreign-policy prowess is a sign of just how destitute Taiwan's foreign-policy thinking has become.

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