By Stephen Bryen.
China has been running a campaign to convince Taiwan to surrender its independence. To get this done, China attracted Taiwan business to the Mainland, generating big profits for them and in some cases shifting the bulk of their manufacturing over. A great example is Foxconn, the manufacturer of iPhones and iPads.
Foxconn is the Hon Hai Precision Industry Company which is based in Taiwan and is the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer. Along with the iPad, Foxconn has produced Blackberry products, Kindles, Playstations and Intel-branded motherboards. Foxconn has 13 factories in China spread out over 9 Chinese cities and employs close to half a million workers. There have been a string of controversies, worker suicides, and reports about bad work conditions in Foxconn factories. Even so, Foxconn is the largest private employer in China.
China found a good friend in the current Taiwan government. Taiwan is headed by President Ma Ying-jeou who also leads the Kuomintang Party. The Kuomintang was founded by Sun Yat-sen on the mainland and often was known as the Nationalist Party.
But the era of President Ma has an entirely different emphasis reflected in efforts to continually improve and deepen ties with China and driven by big business that seeks opportunity on the mainland. Taiwanese companies continue to invest in the mainland and the Ma government continues to support them, though the annual rate of investment has dropped significantly because China is now growing its own private sector.
The Ma government is deeply unpopular and its loss of support in the Taiwan electorate was dramatically demonstrated in the so-called 9-in-1 elections that just took place in the country. The Kuomintang suffered heavy losses leading to the resignation of the Cabinet and a temporary caretaker government.
Voters shifted to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which emphasizes Taiwan independence and social reform, although its own corrupt politicians caused it to lose strength in Taiwan until recently. If anything, China hates the DPP and so does Washington, because Washington and China see the DPP as an impediment to a political solution between Taiwan and China.
To get an idea of Taiwan’s political situation, recent polls done by the Taiwan Thinktank tell a lot. Last June the handwriting was on the wall for the Ma government with 66.8% of the electorate voicing dissatisfaction with the Ma government. That level of dissatisfaction grew even more with the 9-in-1 election, and rose to 74%.
Even worse, between June and December, the Ma government approval rating dropped from a mere 14.2% to 9.8%. No American leader could survive under such conditions, and there is little chance either the Kuomintang or Ma can survive the hatchet.
Even more interesting is the youth vote. Youth turnout in the 9-in-1 election was very high, at 74%. Concern among young people in Taiwan is very high. Young people are deeply sympathetic with democracy protesters in Hong Kong, are concerned about complicity between the Ma government and China that could impose a similar fate on them, and are unhappy over Taiwan industry investments in China and business neglect in Taiwan.
The DPP is now running around Washington trying to convince Congress and the administration that the election had nothing to do with so-called “cross strait relations,” that is relations between Taiwan and China. This campaign is not credible and the DPP would be well advised to stop telling such stories. No one will believe them, certainly not China.
For a long time Washington has been putting the screws on Taiwan, even under Ma, by systematically weakening the Taiwan military and overly-coddling China. A great example is Washington won’t consider selling Taiwan a more advanced version of the F-16, an obsolete airplane, while China is already producing more advanced jet fighters and will soon have two stealth interceptors, one like the F-35 Joint Strike fighter and another one that resembles the F-22 fighter-bomber.
Leaving Taiwan in the lurch as Chinese power increases is a dangerous game but Taiwan won’t roll over and play dead. Washington still takes a colonialist view of its so-called clients and thinks they are incapable of standing up on their own. But Taiwan is a democracy and people there have registered a strong objection to the lurking Chinese solution that would erase their freedom. Perhaps policy-makers here should sit up and take notice and stop undermining Taiwan.
