Regime Watch: Beijing

The China Post describes the first day of a new cross-strait commercial air travel arrangement between Taiwan and Mainland China:

More than 700 Chinese tourists arrived in Taiwan while about an equal number of Taiwanese passengers flew to China yesterday in the first wave of regular cross-straits commercial flights in nearly six decades that could transform ties between the old foes.

On the first day of the operation, a total of 753 Chinese people, including 622 tourists, 31 officials and 60 news reporters and photographers, arrived in Taiwan on nine flights from China.

This is pretty significant. Keep in mind that the communist regime in Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan, even though is is plainly obvious that Taiwan functions as an independent state, and that Taiwanese go about their daily lives under threat of annihilation by Chinese ballistic missiles pointed at the island. So what good can possibly come from this? Well, hopefully a great many Chinese tourists will decide that life in a liberal democracy beats life under communism. Or as Michael Turton notes his blog, The View From Taiwan:

No doubt China is pondering the consequences of letting loose thousands of middle and upper class Chinese on a nation where Asians refute every day the lie that Asians are not suited for democracy.

In fact, that refutation may have already begun. From Saturday’s Taipei Times:

Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners and unificationists took the opportunity to highlight their causes yesterday as the first cross-strait charter flights arrived.

The groups welcomed Chinese tourists with placards proclaiming their views outside Taipei Songshan Airport on Dunhua N Road.

“Human rights for China, independence for Tibet,” Tibetans and their supporters shouted, waving the Tibetan flag as buses carrying Chinese tourists passed by. “We welcome Chinese tourists to breathe the air of freedom in Taiwan!”

Chinese visitors waved at the Tibetan demonstrators and took pictures.

As has been on display to the world recently, under Beijing’s thuggish occupation of Tibet, advocating Tibetan independence (or even going on about human rights) gets you beaten down or killed in the streets by Chinese security forces. In contemporary Taiwan, an Asian nation that only a few decades ago was a one-party dictatorship, Tibetans and advocates for independence can invite Chinese to “breathe the air of freedom.”

That’s great stuff.

The latest Taiwan Communique, published by the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, has an interesting essay by Charles Tannock of the British Conservative Party. Tannock notes that while China’s thuggish occupation of Tibet gets much (and well deserved) international attention, “the injustice of Taiwan’s ongoing international isolation has barely stirred a flicker of interest despite Taiwan’s recent presidential election and referendum on UN membership.”

As Tanner explains:

This seeming double standard can be explained partly by a sense of guilt. The West has, for the most part, embraced Kosovo’s independence in an effort to assuage its own culpability for not preventing late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic’s campaign of ethnic cleansing there. Similarly, much of the world is protesting on behalf of Tibet because countless millions have witnessed China’s brutal suppression of Tibetan culture.

Taiwan, on the other hand, does not grab our attention, because it is stable and flourishing economically. But it has never been part of the People’s Republic of China. Taiwan is an unrecognized independenct state with a vigorous democracy and high standards of human rights. Because Taiwan has not allowed itself to become a victim, the world simply does not feel guilty about it, and so ignores it.

Tanner may have a point about Western guilt, but could there be a worse reason to protest Beijing’s thuggish occupation of Tibet than to simply try and make one’s self feel better? Even worse is to ignore Taiwan’s international marginalization at the hands of Beijing because it doesn’t make one feel “guilty” enough to care.

Note that Tanner says guilt only partially explains this situation…here he gets to the good stuff:

The campaigns that the West waged throughout the 1980s in solidarity with democratic forces in Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe helped bring about the end of communist domination. A similar commitment to the democratic rights of Taiwanese could have salutary effects in China. Moreover, Taiwan is a natural ally of any party that espouses the values of pluralistic politics, free markets and human rights.

It seems particularly shortsighted, indeed hypocritical, for the US and Britain to seek to spread democracy and human rights throughout the world while failing to recognize and reward the Taiwanese, a people who have embraced these concepts wholeheartedly.

Unquestioning recognition of the “one china” policy sends the message that we appreciate more a country that is a big, communist dictatorship rather than a small multiparty democracy.

Indeed, the U.S. does stubbornly cling to the antiquated “one China” policy. The lack of formal recognition of Taiwan by the U.S. actually lends support to Beijing’s remarkably successful efforts at marginalizing Taiwan internationally. This doesn’t mean there isn’t support for Taiwan in the U.S. government. The U.S. Senate has a Taiwan Caucus with twenty five members and the U.S. House of Representatives Taiwan Caucus has 151 members.

Still, at the end of the day, U.S. policy can be boiled down to appeasing the communists in Beijing at the expense of democratic Taiwan.

This morning regime watch hit two thousand page views. As I said when the blog hit one thousand page views, I don’t really know what this means considering the many thousands of blogs out there…but it seems like a pretty hefty number to me. The majority of visitors continue to come from within the United States, followed by the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada. About twelve percent of visitors come from “other” countries. Welcome and thanks to you all.

The first post on regime watch was about my article “Misery: China’s Main Export,” which describes Communist China’s moral illegitimacy to host the 2008 Olympics, and which was first published in the excellent weekly Colorado newspaper, Johnstown Breeze. Here it is, re-printed in its entirety. And again, thanks to everyone who found their way to this blog…hope you come back from time to time.

In 2005, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo introduced a resolution into the House of Representatives calling on the U.S. Olympic Committee to change the venue of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, citing among other things, the “egregious violations of human rights” by China.

And indeed, while Communist China is well qualified to host an international gathering of thugs and tyrants, the regime’s moral legitimacy as host of the Olympics is another matter entirely.

In May 2007, The Hill—a Washington, D.C. newspaper that covers Congress—reported on “a quiet lobbying campaign” in Washington by China in an attempt to “deflect threats that the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing will be boycotted because of what critics say is a Chinese failure to help end genocidal violence in Darfur.”

Actually, far from simply failing to help end the slaughter, China’s outright complicity in the genocide being perpetrated by the National Islamic Front regime in Khartoum against non-Arab tribes-people in the Darfur region of Sudan is well established

A March 2007 report from the Washington D.C.-based Heritage Foundation notes that China’s huge investment in Sudan oil in turn helps fund the genocide in Darfur, “Khartoum has doubled its defense budget in recent years, spending 60 percent to 80 percent of its estimated $500 million in annual oil revenue—half from China—on weapons. Some of these weapons find their way to the conflict in Darfur.”

Beijing has also helped subvert international arm embargoes against Khartoum. As the Heritage report continues, “Moreover, with Chinese assistance, the Sudanese government recently built three weapons factories.”

So with China’s help, the Janjaweed militias carrying out the genocide in Darfur are not only well-armed, but have also received military transportation and helicopter gunship support from Khartoum, making the slaughter all the more efficient.

In 2006, China not only abstained from a United Nations Security Council Resolution authorizing the deployment of troops and civilian police into Darfur to provide security against the genocide, but also used its veto power to force language into the resolution requiring the consent of the same Khartoum regime whose mass-murder in Darfur created the need for an international security force in the first place.

But the lobbying campaign didn’t work out as Beijing may have hoped. In May 2007, Congressman Tom Lantos (D-Ca.) released a letter to the Chinese President signed by over 100 members of Congress, including Colorado’s Tancredo stating, among other things, “…unless China does its part to ensure that the government of Sudan accepts the best and most reasonable path to peace, history will judge your government as having bank-rolled a genocide.”

The letter continues, “If China fails to do its part, it risks being forever known as the host of the ‘Genocide Olympics.’ ”

Besides enabling genocide in Darfur, China is also well into its fiftieth year of a military occupation of Tibet. Many thousands of Tibetans—including Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama—are forced to live in exile around the world

Last year, Beijing showed its hyper-sensitivity to having its thuggish occupation of Tibet tied to the Olympics by detaining and then deporting Colorado resident Kirsten Westby and four other Americans for peacefully displaying a banner saying “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008” on the Tibetan side of Mount Everest.

The slogan was a clever play on Beijing’s own cynical slogan for the 2008 Olympics, “One World, One Dream.”

In addition, Beijing is again threatening violence against the peaceful and democratic island nation of Taiwan, over which China claims sovereignty—even though it is plainly obvious that Taiwan function as an independent state—and that only Beijing may represent Taiwan’s 23 million citizens in international organizations.

In 2005, Beijing enacted an “Anti-Secession Law” which codified China’s already long-standing threats against Taiwan. Article eight of the law mandates the use of “Non-peaceful” means against Taiwan if, among other things, “a major event occurs which would lead to Taiwan’s separation from China.”

After more than a decade of being turned down for United Nations membership under its traditional name “Republic of China,” Taiwan is planning a national referendum this year over whether to formally apply for UN membership under the name “Taiwan.”

Beijing recently stated that Taiwan’s referendum represents the kind of “major event” that would allow the regime to invoke article eight against Taiwan.

So Communist China is desperately trying to put on a friendly face for the Olympics while at the same time threatening one of Asia’s most dynamic representative democracies.

The eyes of the world will be on Beijing for the summer games, making the 2008 Olympics a unique opportunity to shine an international spotlight on the misery China exports around the globe.

I posted earlier on National Journal’s excellent article on China’s “cyber-militia” penetrating U.S. government and business information systems.   The Heritage Foundation has also been on top of this story.

From the February 2008 Heritage report, “Trojan Dragon:  China’s Cyber Threat” 

The U.S. military has been the primary target of Chinese cyberattacks, followed closely by the Departments of State, Commerce, and Homeland Security.  Academic, industrial, defense, and financial databases are also vulnerable.  Regrettably, American officials tend to be very sensitive to China’s feelings and refrain from public allegations that the attacks are launched by Chinese agents, even though, as one U.S. cybersecurity expert points out, “the Chinese are in half of your agencies’ systems” already.

But it is not just the U.S. under cyberattack by Beijng, the Heritage report has sections on Chinese hacker penetration of systems in the United Kingdom and Taiwan:

According to an offical of Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, in 2006, Taiwan detected 13 PLA [People's Liberation Army] zero-day attacks launched within Microsoft applications and experienced a total of 178 days days of vulnerability between notifying Microsoft of the attacks and receiving  the appropriate patches.

Earlier this month, the World Health Organization assembled in Geneva, and for the twelfth year in a row Beijing and its toadies at the WHO blocked Taiwan’s efforts at meaningful participation by denying Taiwan even “observer” status.

From Rueters (May 19):

The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) assembly again rejected Taiwan’s bid for observer status on Monday, declaring that mainland China had responsibility for health issues affecting the island’s 23 million people.

The decision, taken on the opening day of the WHO’s six-day annual meeting, was the 12th year in a row that the United Nations agency had rebuffed Taiwan’s campaign.

It is quite amazing how willing so much of the world is to appease a communist regime like China at the expense of a representative democracy like Taiwan.

Rueters continues:

A proposal to drop the agenda item calling on Taiwan to be given observer status was adopted without a vote as part of a behind-the-scenes deal to give the issue an airing without devoting too much time to it.

“The reason that no one objected is that we all know what the outcome is,” said one diplomat. The assembly has a built-in majority against Taiwan, which draws support only from a couple of dozen small countries mainly in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific, plus the United States.

Taiwan is a member of the 152-nation World Trade Organisation but is excluded from most other international bodies because of Beijing’s one-China policy.

If we are going to have “international bodies” then perhaps it is time for the liberal democracies of the world to break off from the United Nations and form a new international body that includes Taiwan, but excludes China and the other thugocracies that inhabit the UN.

The United States too often kowtows to Beijing’s absurd claim of sovereignty over democratic Taiwan.  One of the more weak and archaic U.S. appeasment policies towards China is a decades old ban by the U.S. State Department on personal meetings between high-ranking officials of the U.S. and Taiwan.  My colleague at the Independence Institute, Dave Kopel, has a great idea for helping to end this silly policy, involving U.S. Presidential candidate Barack Obama:

By expressing a readiness to meet with Cuba’s Raul Castro, and also to meet with personally with the heads of Iran, Syria, and North Korea, Senator Obama seems to be promising that one of the changes his Presidency would bring is a greater willingness to engage in person with controversial foreign heads of state. Accordingly, there is another head of state with whom Obama should also promise to be willing to meet in person: Taiwan’s new President Ma Ying-Jeou. Inaugurated on May 20 as Taiwan’s democratically-elected President, Ma is a Harvard Law School graduate who speaks excellent English. Unlike some of the other foreign leaders whom Obama has said he would meet, Ma won a legitimate, free election, is very friendly towards the United States, is not working on a nuclear weapons program, does not militarily threaten the U.S. or its allies, and does not sponsor international terrorism. A fortiori, the case for a meeting with Ma is much stronger than the case for a meeting with Castro et al.

As Dave points out, such a meeting would “infuriate the Chinese Communist dictatorship.” But it would be great to have a Presidential candidate express a willingness to engage Taiwan, one of Asia’s most dynamic representative democracies, without regard to what the regime in Beijing thinks.

As Kopel continues:

However, such a meeting might help allay concerns that President Obama would be easily coerced by dictatorships, or that he might be weak in supporting U.S. allies. In any case, given that Obama has answered whether he would be willing to meet with Raul Castro, it would be reasonable for him to state whether he will meet with Ma Ying-Jeou.

From the May 10 Arab News (an English language daily newspaper in Saudi Arabia)

In May 2005, the World Health Assembly (WHA) — the governing body of the UN World Health Organization (WHO) — enacted a thoroughly revised set of International Health Regulations (IHR). This marked a significant milestone in the history of cooperative efforts of governments to counter the increasing risk of cross-border spread of infectious diseases. Not the least reason for this appraisal is the addition to the IHR (2005) of Paragraph 3, Article 3, which reads as follows:

“The implementation of these Regulations shall be guided by the goal of their universal application for the protection of all people of the world from the international spread of disease.”

The insertion of this “universal application clause” was motivated by the resolve of WHO member states to remove political barriers to comprehensive implementation of the regulations. It was aimed at empowering the WHO to communicate and cooperate with “all people of the world” regardless of whether they are citizens of member states.

The Taiwanese people welcomed this amendment to the IHR and looked forward to close cooperation with the WHO in IHR-related affairs. However, the WHO Secretariat has continued to spurn Taiwan’s participation in cooperative efforts to implement the regulations, leaving a dangerous vacuum in the disease prevention network.

Note that the “universal application clause” is supposed to allow participation by citizens of non-member states, so why is it that the WHO is spurning Taiwan? The answer is the same reason that the U.S. opposes Tawian’s efforts at United Nations membership…to appease Beijing. As the Arab News continues:

On the eve of the WHA’s enactment of the IHR (2005), the WHO Secretariat signed a secret memorandum of understanding (MOU) with China wherein, reportedly, it promised that the WHO would not communicate with Taiwan’s health authorities on any matter, or invite them to take part in any WHO activity, without China’s consent.

So it is Beijing’s thuggery at work behind the scenes, with the aid of its toadies in the WHO Secretariat. Here’s where it gets interesting:

Politically, Taiwan and China are separate entities that do not exercise jurisdiction over each other’s territories, although they share confusingly similar official names — the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China, respectively. China, therefore, cannot legitimately represent Taiwan’s people in the international community.

Wow, an Arab newspaper from the dictatorial Saudi Kingdom publishes an article saying essentially (and correctly) that China’s claim of sovereignty over democratic Taiwan lacks legitimacy. In the meantime, the United States of America still clings to an archaic “one China” policy that explicitly recognizes China’s legitimacy to represent Taiwan’s people in the international community.

Shouldn’t that be the other way around?

Jacques Rogge, the chief of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), wants the west to be patient over China’s thuggery. From Saturday’s Financial Times:

Mr Rogge says while he understands the depth of emotion in the west on China’s human rights record, public expectations about the country’s pace of change are unrealistic.

Noting that the People’s Republic of China has only been around since 1949, Mr. Rogge goes on to compare contemporary China to past colonial powers:

Back in 1949, Mr Rogge pointed out, the UK was a colonial power. So too were Belgium, France and Portugal, “with all the abuse attached to colonial powers. It was only 40 years ago that we gave liberty to the colonies. Let’s be a little bit more modest”.

China may not be a role model in the west, Mr Rogge concedes, but “we owe China to give them time”.

Granted, Mr. Rogge was not the IOC president at the time China was granted the 2008 Olympics, but the IOC awarded the Games to Beijing with full knowledge of China’s atrocious human rights record, so now the IOC gets to reap what it sowed.

But as long as Mr. Rogge wants to tell the rest of us what China is “owed,” perhaps he could also tell us all how much longer the people of places like Tibet and Inner Mongolia should be expected to exist under the boot heel of Beijing, or how much longer the Taiwanese should be expected to live with Chinese ballistic missiles pointed at them from across the Taiwan Strait.

China has tried mightily to put on a friendly face for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, but with the brutal nature of China’s military occupation of Tibet on display to the world, the regime in Beijing is showing its true colors. Tibetans being murdered on the streets of Lhasa and other parts of Tibet by Chinese security forces, an amazingly efficient censorship campaign of video websites such as You tube, and the ousting of foreign journalists from Tibet is all bad enough on its own. But Beijing’s thuggery in Tibet is also a grim indicator of what might be in store for Taiwan should the island-nation ever be “re-unified” with Mainland China.

From my article on this topic in the Boulder Daily Camera (Boulder, Colorado) newspaper from earlier this month:

As with Tibet, China claims sovereignty over democratic Taiwan — even though it is obvious that Taiwan functions as an independent state — and that only Beijing may represent Taiwan’s 23 million citizens in international organizations.

China backs up its claim over Tibet through brute force of military might. Similarly, China backs up its false claim over Taiwan with over 1,300 ballistic missiles pointed at the island from across the Taiwan Strait and the threat of annihilation against the Taiwanese people.

While China has been tyrannizing Tibet for decades, Beijing recently codified its threats of violence against Taiwan, thus giving itself a legal rationalization (at least by totalitarian regime standards) for possible future tyrannization of Taiwan:

Shortly after the People’s Republic of China was formed, Chinese Dictator Mao Tse-Tung sought to “re-unify” Tibet with China. After first invading eastern Tibet in 1950, China pressured Tibetan delegates to sign a 17-point “peaceful liberation” agreement in 1951. Then Mao went ahead and sent People’s Liberation Army soldiers into the capital city of Lhasa and simply tyrannized Tibet by force.

In 2005, Beijing enacted an “Anti-Secession Law” which codified China’s already long-standing threats against Taiwan. Article eight of the law mandates the use of “non-peaceful” means against Taiwan if, among other things, “a major event occurs which would lead to Taiwan’s separation from China.”

As I conclude in the article, what is happening in Tibet makes clear that Beijing is more than willing to back up its threats of violence with the real thing, and should be reason enough for the world to demand an end not only to China’s occupation of Tibet, but also to the regime’s threats of invasion against democratic Taiwan.

On Wednesday, after first dutifully reminding everyone that “The United States recognizes Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China,” Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte talked semi-tough about China’s thuggish and ongoing crackdown in Tibet in front of the U.S. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee:

The Tibetans have legitimate grievances, stemming from years of repression and Chinese policies that have adversely impacted Tibetan religion, culture and livelihoods. In the months preceding the protests, restrictions on religious freedom were further tightened, leading to increased frustration among the local Tibetan population. In order to be a great and respected power, China will have to make real efforts to guarantee to its own citizens the internationally recognized rights and fundamental freedoms enshrined in China’s own constitution and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Good stuff so far. Especially considering that the same John Negroponte last year called Taiwan’s planned referendum on United Nations membership a “provocative policy,” thus actually propping up Beijing’s threats of violence against democratic Taiwan.

After the semi-tough talk, Negroponte seemed to slip back into China-appeasement mode:

The Chinese government should seize the opportunity to talk to those Tibetans, represented by the Dalai Lama, who oppose violence and do not seek independence for Tibet. If Beijing does not engage with the Dalai Lama now, it will only serve to strengthen those who advocate extreme views.

If I’m reading this right, a senior U.S. goverment official just referred to those seeking independence from a military occupation by a thuggish Communist regime as advocating “extreme views.” Wow.