Friday, June 6, 2008
Russian Translation by Andre Fesyun
Japan sidelined on Taiwan
Arriving at Taipei international airport en route to a Taiwanese university conference on Russia, you are hit by the headline of a local magazine on display. In translation it reads: "The New Diplomacy Will Rescue Taiwan."
The new diplomacy, of course, is recently elected President Ma Ying-jeou's plans for closer relations with mainland China.
Leaving the airport you begin to realize one reason for wanting to be rescued? the economy. Taiwan's living standards are still well above those of mainland China. But it has little of China's dynamism. Urban slums seem to linger on for decades; in most mainland cities they would long ago have been replaced by attractive high-rises.
Taiwan too has its high-rises, but they can be pockmarked by failed projects. The overall mood is one of quiet resignation, waiting for some new progress formula to emerge.
Taiwan is a victim of its own success. From almost complete stagnation in the 1950s it boot-strapped its way to successful industrialization in just two decades, relying like mainland China today on cheap, hardworking and intelligent labor making a variety of consumer goods for export.
But just for that reason it is in trouble. It is still trying to make those consumer goods, but with labor four times more expensive than China's. Even its quite successful moves into computers and information technology are being finessed by China. Hundreds of companies have moved their factories to mainland China. One estimate says there are now 400,000 Taiwanese and their families living in the Shanghai area alone.
Taiwan's main hope now seems to be tourists and investment from China. Already some are arriving? mainland Chinese living or working abroad who can bypass Beijing's present restrictions. The promised direct air flights (currently most traffic has to move via Hong Kong) will see a large increase. Already Taiwanese tourists visit China easily. Closer political links will soon follow.
True, the surprisingly strong sense of Taiwan identity will prevent any sudden move to Beijing. The Chinese who fled the mainland in 1949 and wanted so much to go back are gradually dying out.
Native-born and -bred Taiwanese have taken over. They are proud of their island and its achievements. And as ever they are still looking for new friends and allies, like Russia, which was why I was in Taiwan. Hundreds of young Taiwanese go there each year to study the language and Moscow maintains an active representative office in Taipei.
Taiwan once had a president, Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Chiang Kai-shek, the founder of the Nationalist party (Kuomindang), who was educated in Russia, was fluent in Russian and had a Russian wife. In the 1960s the CIA hawks felt they had to go well out of their way to bud-nip any pro-Beijing ideas he might have had.
Basically Taiwanese remain thoroughly Chinese; a serious move to complete independence from China has always seemed unlikely. Pro-Taiwan outsiders sometimes talk of the native Taiwanese clinging to a native language called Minnan-hua, as if this would somehow encourage moves to independence.
But Minnan-hua is simply the dialect of the Fujian region of southeast China from where the native Taiwanese came several hundred years ago. Since 1949 all Taiwanese have been educated in the Mandarin dialect of north China, which is now the lingua franca for all Chinese worldwide. Indeed, you will hear better Mandarin accents in the streets of Taipei than you will in Beijing.
If and when Beijing launches a full-scale cultural offensive against Taiwan, it should be able to win converts. Certainly it will find the going easier than in Hong Kong, which retains a very strong Cantonese identity.
Politically Taiwan may want to remain separate. But it is not hard to imagine a Puerto Rico/USA style "commonwealth" or "associated free state" (in Spanish) relationship allowing some autonomy.
All this is far from past anticommunist hopes that Taiwan could be kept separate from and hostile to the communist mainland. In 1961 with an Australian delegation I found myself standing alongside Chiang Kei-shek on a cliff overlooking the Taiwan Strait as hundreds of fully equipped soldiers were dropped into the sea below and made to swim to the beach below us.
"That," Chiang told us proudly, "is how we will recover the mainland." Few share those illusions now.
Japan will be the main loser. As ever it has allowed emotion and shortsighted tactics to overcome strategy in a foreign policy. Its conservatives and rightwingers seemed to think that sentimental pre-1945 colonial links and the presence of pro-Japan oldtimers, such as former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui, would somehow translate into close ties allowing Taiwan to move closer to independence under Japan's aegis.
In Tokyo's various pan-Asian schemes over the years designed to keep communist China at bay, Taiwan often figured large. Originally the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum was one such effort. More recently the hardliners have talked of Japan creating an oceanic bloc of Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and even Australia to counter Beijing. Those ideas must have turned to ashes by now.
A very large Japanese delegation headed by the archconservative former LDP luminary Takeo Hiranuma, and including Tokyo Gov. Ishihara Shintaro, attended Ma's inauguration ceremony. To their chagrin, Ma managed to avoid any mention of Japan in a speech devoted mainly to hopes of closer ties with China. Some say he was reacting deliberately to Hiranuma's hard line while trying to dampen Beijing's fears of a Japan-Taiwan alliance.
Taipei also shares Beijing's upset over Japan's virtual annexation of the Senkaku Islands west of Okinawa.
For once, the United States seems to have been closer to the mark. True, its military, together with Japan's, has always seemed to hope for a Taiwan-mainland China confrontation in which it could flex its muscle. But the U. S. political position has been much more nuanced. It has kept a firm lid on Taiwanese nationalist talk about independence.
Maybe it realized better than Tokyo the power of Chinese ethnic attraction. Once again in policy to China, Japan's hardliners seem destined to become sideliners.
Discuss this Article
Russian Translation by Andre Fesyun
Japan sidelined on Taiwan
Arriving at Taipei international airport en route to a Taiwanese university conference on Russia, you are hit by the headline of a local magazine on display. In translation it reads: "The New Diplomacy Will Rescue Taiwan."
The new diplomacy, of course, is recently elected President Ma Ying-jeou's plans for closer relations with mainland China.
Leaving the airport you begin to realize one reason for wanting to be rescued? the economy. Taiwan's living standards are still well above those of mainland China. But it has little of China's dynamism. Urban slums seem to linger on for decades; in most mainland cities they would long ago have been replaced by attractive high-rises.
Taiwan too has its high-rises, but they can be pockmarked by failed projects. The overall mood is one of quiet resignation, waiting for some new progress formula to emerge.
Taiwan is a victim of its own success. From almost complete stagnation in the 1950s it boot-strapped its way to successful industrialization in just two decades, relying like mainland China today on cheap, hardworking and intelligent labor making a variety of consumer goods for export.
But just for that reason it is in trouble. It is still trying to make those consumer goods, but with labor four times more expensive than China's. Even its quite successful moves into computers and information technology are being finessed by China. Hundreds of companies have moved their factories to mainland China. One estimate says there are now 400,000 Taiwanese and their families living in the Shanghai area alone.
Taiwan's main hope now seems to be tourists and investment from China. Already some are arriving? mainland Chinese living or working abroad who can bypass Beijing's present restrictions. The promised direct air flights (currently most traffic has to move via Hong Kong) will see a large increase. Already Taiwanese tourists visit China easily. Closer political links will soon follow.
True, the surprisingly strong sense of Taiwan identity will prevent any sudden move to Beijing. The Chinese who fled the mainland in 1949 and wanted so much to go back are gradually dying out.
Native-born and -bred Taiwanese have taken over. They are proud of their island and its achievements. And as ever they are still looking for new friends and allies, like Russia, which was why I was in Taiwan. Hundreds of young Taiwanese go there each year to study the language and Moscow maintains an active representative office in Taipei.
Taiwan once had a president, Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Chiang Kai-shek, the founder of the Nationalist party (Kuomindang), who was educated in Russia, was fluent in Russian and had a Russian wife. In the 1960s the CIA hawks felt they had to go well out of their way to bud-nip any pro-Beijing ideas he might have had.
Basically Taiwanese remain thoroughly Chinese; a serious move to complete independence from China has always seemed unlikely. Pro-Taiwan outsiders sometimes talk of the native Taiwanese clinging to a native language called Minnan-hua, as if this would somehow encourage moves to independence.
But Minnan-hua is simply the dialect of the Fujian region of southeast China from where the native Taiwanese came several hundred years ago. Since 1949 all Taiwanese have been educated in the Mandarin dialect of north China, which is now the lingua franca for all Chinese worldwide. Indeed, you will hear better Mandarin accents in the streets of Taipei than you will in Beijing.
If and when Beijing launches a full-scale cultural offensive against Taiwan, it should be able to win converts. Certainly it will find the going easier than in Hong Kong, which retains a very strong Cantonese identity.
Politically Taiwan may want to remain separate. But it is not hard to imagine a Puerto Rico/USA style "commonwealth" or "associated free state" (in Spanish) relationship allowing some autonomy.
All this is far from past anticommunist hopes that Taiwan could be kept separate from and hostile to the communist mainland. In 1961 with an Australian delegation I found myself standing alongside Chiang Kei-shek on a cliff overlooking the Taiwan Strait as hundreds of fully equipped soldiers were dropped into the sea below and made to swim to the beach below us.
"That," Chiang told us proudly, "is how we will recover the mainland." Few share those illusions now.
Japan will be the main loser. As ever it has allowed emotion and shortsighted tactics to overcome strategy in a foreign policy. Its conservatives and rightwingers seemed to think that sentimental pre-1945 colonial links and the presence of pro-Japan oldtimers, such as former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui, would somehow translate into close ties allowing Taiwan to move closer to independence under Japan's aegis.
In Tokyo's various pan-Asian schemes over the years designed to keep communist China at bay, Taiwan often figured large. Originally the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum was one such effort. More recently the hardliners have talked of Japan creating an oceanic bloc of Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and even Australia to counter Beijing. Those ideas must have turned to ashes by now.
A very large Japanese delegation headed by the archconservative former LDP luminary Takeo Hiranuma, and including Tokyo Gov. Ishihara Shintaro, attended Ma's inauguration ceremony. To their chagrin, Ma managed to avoid any mention of Japan in a speech devoted mainly to hopes of closer ties with China. Some say he was reacting deliberately to Hiranuma's hard line while trying to dampen Beijing's fears of a Japan-Taiwan alliance.
Taipei also shares Beijing's upset over Japan's virtual annexation of the Senkaku Islands west of Okinawa.
For once, the United States seems to have been closer to the mark. True, its military, together with Japan's, has always seemed to hope for a Taiwan-mainland China confrontation in which it could flex its muscle. But the U. S. political position has been much more nuanced. It has kept a firm lid on Taiwanese nationalist talk about independence.
Maybe it realized better than Tokyo the power of Chinese ethnic attraction. Once again in policy to China, Japan's hardliners seem destined to become sideliners.
Discuss this Article
日本は台湾問題でも傍観派に
台湾の大学で開かれたロシア関係の会議に出席する途中で台北国際空港に降りて、店頭に並んでいる地元の雑誌の特集見出しに目を奪われる。邦訳すると“新外交が台湾を救う”。
新外交とは、いうまでもなく、最近選ばれた馬英九総統の中国接近計画だ。
空港を出るとまもなく、“救われ”なければならない理由の一つが分かってくる。― 経済だ。台湾の生活水準は、いまなお中国本土よりかなり高い。ところが、ここでは中国のダイナミズムは感じられない。都市のスラムは何十年変わることなく続いているようだ。中国本土の主要都市では、スラム街はとっくに魅力的な高層ビルに変わってしまったと思われる。
台湾にも高層ビルはある。だがあちこちに破綻したプロジェクトの残骸がないでもない。全体的な雰囲気は静かなあきらめムード、何か新しい発展の図式を待っているといった風である。
台湾は、自分自身の成功の犠牲者だ。1950年代のほぼ完全な停滞から悪戦苦闘し、いまの中国本土と同様に、安い、勤勉な、頭のよい労働力を活かし、輸出向けに多彩な消費財を生産し、わずか20年で工業化を達成した。
だがまさにそのために、問題が起こった。台湾は今でもそうした消費財製造を続けようとしているが、労働賃金は中国本土の4倍だ。彼らが参入に成功したコンピュータやＩＴという得意分野でさえ、中国に入り込まれつつある。数百もの企業が工場を本土に移している。ある推計では、上海地域だけでも40万という台湾人とその家族が住んでいるという。
いまや台湾の期待は、中国からの観光客と投資のようだ。すでに一部は来ている。― 北京政府の現在の制限にかからない外国在住、在職の中国本土の人々だ。予定されている直行便が（現在は大半が香港経由）スタートすれば、大幅増が見込まれる。すでに台湾の観光客は簡単に中国訪問できるようになっている。これに続いて政治的関係がより緊密になるのも、まもなくだろう。
たしか、驚くほど強い台湾のアイデンティティ意識を考えれば、今すぐ北京へ急接近ということはありえまい。1949年に本土を脱出してからそんなにも帰国を待ち望んだ中国人たちは、次第に亡くなっている。
現地で生まれ育った台湾人への世代交代が進んだ。彼らは自分の島に、そしてこの島が成し遂げた業績に、誇りを持っている。そして相変わらず、彼らはいまなお新しい友人や同盟者を求め続けている。例えばロシア。私がそこに行ったのもそのためだ。毎年何百人という台湾の若者がことばの勉強のためにロシアへ行き、またモスクワは台北に代表事務所を置いて活発に活動している。
台湾には以前蒋慶国という大統領がいた。国民党の創設者蒋介石の息子でロシアで教育を受け、ロシア語に堪能、夫人はロシア人だった。1960年代ＣＩＡのタカ派は彼が持っているかもしれない親中国的考え方を、是非とも若い芽のうちに摘み取る必要があると考えたのだった。
基本的には台湾人は、完璧に中国人であり続けている。中国からの完全独立へ本気で始動することは、昔も今も考えにくい。親台湾派の第三者は時々、現地生まれの台湾人が民南語という現地語にこだわっていることを取り上げて、このことが何らかの形で台湾独立の動きを後押しするかのようにいう。
だが民南語は、台湾現地人が数百年前に移出してきた中国南東部の福建地方の一方言にすぎない1949年以降は全ての台湾人は、中国北部のマンダリン方言で教育されており、それは今では世界中の全中国人の共通語になっている。実際、台北の町で聞くマンダリンは北京で聞くものよりきれいなくらいだ。
もし北京が台湾に対して全面的に文化的攻勢に乗り出すようなことがあれば、達成できるだろう。広東人アイデンティティが非常に強い香港の場合よりもたやすいことだろう。
政治的には、台湾は別個であり続けたいかもしれない。けれども、プエルトリコとアメリカの“連邦”あるいは“アソシエーテッド・フリー・ステート（スペイン語で）（自治と連帯ある自由領土）”のような自治性を残した関係を想像するのは、難しいことではない。
こうしてみると全てが、過去の反共主義者たちが望んだ、台湾が共産主義と交わることなく敵対し続けることができるというシナリオとは、ずいぶんちがっている。私は1961年にオーストラリア代表団とともに、台湾海峡を見下ろす崖の上で、蒋介石のそばに立っていた。われわれが眺めていたのは、何百もの完全武装の兵士たちが次々と眼下の海に飛び込まされ海岸まで泳がされる光景だった。
“われわれはこうして本土を奪回するのだ”と、蒋は胸を張った。今ではこの幻想を共有する人は少なかろう。
いちばん割を食ったのは日本だろう。相変わらず日本は、外交問題の戦略の代わりに、情に訴えて、近視眼的な小手先戦術を取っている。日本の保守派や右派は、1945年以前の植民地時代の情緒的つながりと、前台湾総統李登輝のような親日的古い世代が存在で、台湾は日本の保護の下で独立の方向へ何とかもって行けるはずだと考えているようだ。
ここ数年来、共産主義中国を封じ込める目的で生まれた日本の様々な汎アジア計画を見ると、台湾が大きく扱われていることが多い。アジア太平洋経済協力機構も、元々はこの努力の産物だ。より最近では、強硬派が語っていたのは台湾、フィリピン、インドネシア、パプアニューギニア、そしてオーストラリアさえ加えた、日本主導の対中国のオセアニア・ブロック形成だ。今ではこうしたアイディアも燃え尽きたと思われる。
超保守派で前自民党大物政治家平沼赳夫を団長とし東京都知事石原慎太郎を含む日本のマンモス代表団が、馬の就任式に出席した。彼らががっかりさせられたことは、馬がそのスピーチで、ひと言も日本に触れることなく、中国とのより緊密な関係への希望を中心に、意志表明したことだ。
馬は日本・台湾同盟に対する中国の懸念を打ち消すと同時に、平沼の強硬路線にこの形で対応して見せたのだという人もいる。
沖縄の西の尖閣諸島を日本が事実上囲い込んだことには、北京だけでなく台北も怒っている。この点に関してはアメリカはよりまともに振る舞った。たしかに、アメリカの軍部は日本の軍部と同様に、台湾と中国本土が対決に至り、自分らの筋肉伸ばしをする機会が来ることを、常々願っているだろう。とはいえアメリカの政治的立場は、日本よりはるかに微妙なニュアンスを持つ。アメリカはこれまで、台湾のナショナリストの独立への語りにはしっかり蓋をしてきた。
きっとアメリカは中国人の民族的誘引力を日本よりもよく分かっているのだろう。対中国政策で、日本の強硬派はまたまた傍観者になってしまう。
（グレゴリー・クラークは元オーストラリア外交官、現秋田県国際教養大学副学長）