Taiwanese Politics | The Foreigner in Formosa

Sure-Fire Vote-Getters

Opposition to Taiwan’s attempt to join the U.N. from the local China Post:

The KMT has been…mimicking the DPP [Taiwan’s main independence party] in every major political initiative, including such crucial issues as the U.N. bid and what the United States has branded an "ill-conceived" plan to hold a national referendum on U.N. membership under the name Taiwan. Apparently out of electoral considerations, the opposition KMT has chosen to follow, rather than oppose, the DPP’s move for fear of losing votes.

Taiwan’s 23 million people do not deserve U.N. membership. They should gain membership to have their voice heard and to contribute to the world organization. [emphasis added]

Picture the electoral chances of some poor boob from the KMT who takes the Post‘s advice and proclaims, "My fellow Taiwanese: You SHOULD gain U.N. membership…but you don’t DESERVE it!"

(Pity we aren’t given the reasons WHY Taiwan’s people don’t deserve it. Are they too stupid? Too fat? Too ugly? Killed puppies in their previous lives? What, exactly?)

To the China Post, the issue is an unwelcome distraction from badmouthing the economy as a means of persuading people to hitch Taiwan’s economy even further to China’s:

But there are issues more important than the U.N. bid, which is a non-starter in the first place. The KMT should have the courage to initiate campaign issues of its own, issues that concern the public interest.

One of the more comical aspects of the KMT’s recent rally in support of its U.N. referendum question was its half-heartedness. Taiwan should try to join the U.N. under the Republic of China name, or some other practical name. That was supposed to be the event’s major theme, anyways. But the march’s organizers couldn’t resist throwing all manner of economic complaints into the stew, even going so far as to request that supporters wear blue flip-flops as symbols of their destitution under President Chen’s administration.

The result was a diluted message. Hey everybody, we’re FIRMLY committed to Taiwan joining the U.N.. (But please notice we’d rather talk about all this OTHER stuff instead!)

In a similar way, the paper sought to dismiss the value of U.N. membership by trotting out the example of one country that’s doing very well on its own outside of the U.N., thank you very much:

The U.N. membership is important to be sure, but it is not everything. Switzerland is not a U.N. member for instance. It is rich and prosperous.

Of course, the effect of this argument is somewhat blunted by the fact that Switzerland DID become a U.N. member. Back in 2002.

(And regardless of its recent date of entry, the Swiss had long played host to a number of U.N. organizations in a little town known as Geneva.)

From Beijing’s lips to the China Post‘s presses, the next one’s wrong as well:

Taiwan’s U.N. bid, initiated in 1993 when Lee Teng-hui was in power, was a political move to deceive the people. The hidden purpose was to promote the cause of Taiwan independence…

By that reasoning, East Germany and North Korea’s entry into the U.N. were also crafty moves designed to promote those respective countries’ independence. Funny, but it didn’t exactly work out that way for East Germany. And I dare say it won’t for North Korea, either.

The piece concludes on an optimistic note, best paraphrased from Homer J. Simpson: "Taiwan, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try."

Now, 15 years has elapsed [since Taiwan first attempt to rejoin the U.N.] and the bid has become more hopeless than ever. Yes, Taiwan can keep trying next year and every year "to let the world know the absurdity" of the issue. But is it wise to do so when there are more pressing issues at home?

What I would dispute here is the notion that Taiwan can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Is it really so difficult, so costly, for Taiwan to apply to the U.N. that resources can’t simultaneously be channeled towards other domestic problems? * Just how much time does it take for President Chen to draft a few letters to the Secretary-General? How hard is it for Taiwan’s overseas diplomats to petition its allies for help? I mean, that’s their JOB, isn’t it? It’s what they’re PAID to do. The government isn’t going to wake up tomorrow and say, "Hey! We’ve got more pressing issues at home! Let’s recall all those good-for-nothing diplomats of ours and put them to work in Allen-wrench factories instead!"

There are plenty of countries that are worse off than Taiwan. Far worse off. But relative poverty has not been an excuse for them to put off joining the U.N..

* Sunday’s Taipei Times put a price tag on Taiwan’s recent U.N. bid:

Which brings us to the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) threat last week to sue the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) for spending an estimated NT$100 million (US$3 million) on its UN campaign. Though the exercise failed in its primary objective, it was immensely successful in promoting Taiwan and engendering debate all over the world. Rarely has Taiwan been discussed so extensively in newspapers, from the US to Denmark, or had rallies — from San Francisco to Vancouver — held in support of the nation.

To put things in perspective, the DPP’s campaign only came at one-fifteenth of the cost of an F-16 aircraft. From a PR point of view, that NT$100 million was a wise investment.

Quite an apropos comparison to make, between the cost of the U.N. bid and part of Taiwan’s defense expenditure. For three million dollars, Taiwan energized some of its international supporters, and those supporters made their backing public. Such visible support, in some SMALL way, makes an attack on Taiwan less likely, because it makes the point clear to Beijing that any attack would not be yawned at by members of the international community. It lets the Chinese know there may be unpleasant international consequences for them if they ever take aggressive action against the Beautiful Isle.

I’d be the first to say that the significance of this deterrent value should not be overestimated. Given that though, I’d also ask whether an additional one-fifteenth of an F-16 would have provided Taiwan with much more deterrence at the margins.

Penny Wise and Pound Foolish

Terrific set of editorials in Taiwan’s China Post on Monday – from a blogger’s point of view, anyways. Both deal with issues of Taiwanese sovereignty. The first, "Did Taiwan give up sovereignty over the Tiaoyutai Islands?" makes the case those islands belong to Taiwan rather than Japan, then takes the government to task for not pressing Taiwan’s claim assertively enough:

Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration appears reluctant to confront Japanese patrols over the Tiaoyutai [known to the Japanese as the Senkaku Islands – The Foreigner], where Yilan* fishermen now often get caught for "intrusion" into Japanese "territorial waters." Activists have been forbidden to make any protest trips there…

You want an international incident…over THIS???

Japan's Senkaku Islands

(Image from twhistory.org)

The second editorial, "What’s in a name?" ridicules President Chen Shui-bian’s efforts to have the country named "Taiwan" rather than "Taiwan, China":

[President Chen] is obsessed with the idea of getting Taiwan to accede to the United Nations under its rightful name. His government bristles whenever anything from Taiwan shown abroad is said to be from Taiwan, China.

That’s why the Government Information Office lodged a complaint with the organizers of the Venice Film Festival, who, under pressure from Beijing, listed Taiwan-produced films as entries from Taiwan, China. Among them was "Se Jie (Lust Caution)," directed by Ang Lee of "Brokeback Mountain" fame. It was originally described as a production from "USA and China" for it was shot in both countries. It was later changed to Taiwan at the request of its producer. That in turn drew complaints from China. Then the name was settled as "USA/China/Taiwan."

[…]

All this sounds like silly gags in a bad TV sitcom. Can’t we try just to forget whatever name other countries in the world choose to attach to our island nation? [emphasis added]

Ironically enough, the Post‘s conclusion is contradicted by the very example it provides. The Venetians didn’t "choose" to list Taiwan-produced films as originating from "Taiwan, China"; they were PRESSURED by Beijing into doing so – by the China Post‘s own admission.

Be that as it may, we’re still faced with the question: Is this, as the Post claims, just a silly semantic quibble? Isn’t the whole "Taiwan" vs. "Taiwan, China" vs. "Chinese Taipei" debate on par with arguments over tomayto-tomahto or Germany-Deutschland? Shouldn’t Taiwan just get a life and ignore trivialities?

What’s amusing is that a paper that spilt so much ink complaining about the renaming of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall would have the face to turn around on a dime and subsequently ask its readers, "What’s in a name?" Let me guarantee you, the China Post wouldn’t be nearly so philosophical about that question if Tokyo started referring to Taiwan as JAPANESE-Taipei. Nosiree – the China Post would be the first to regard THAT as an attempt to de-legitimize Taiwan.

No Czech newspaper would nonchalantly ask, "What’s in a name?" if Berlin started talking about "Sudetenland, GERMANY" once more. Not if it didn’t want to appear treasonous, it wouldn’t. And papers in the Baltics wouldn’t give little sermons about semantic freedom if Vladimir Putin had pressured other countries into referring to Lithuania as RUSSIAN Vilnius.

No, in both cases, the Czechs and Balts would be swift to recognize their own self-interest. They’d instantly see those names as something sinister, as preludes to future attacks upon their national sovereignty.

Maybe now you can see why I was so impressed that the China Post printed both those editorials on the same page. Because recognizing that the second piece calls upon Taiwan to surrender its sovereignty in one arena, the writers compensated by defending it in another.

Now, I may be one of the world’s worst chess players, but even I know that as a general rule, the key to success in that game is to protect your important pieces, while sacrificing your unimportant ones. Yet, the China Post counsels the exact opposite. The Post would have Taiwan defend the sovereignty of the Senkakus – risking war through "confrontation" with Japanese patrols ** – over a relatively insignificant group of islands 7 square kilometers in size, on which not a single Taiwanese lives, or ever HAS lived. That, while ignoring Chinese threats to the sovereignty of Taiwan Island itself – an island 36,000 square kilometers in size and populated by 23 MILLION people.

There are only two possible conclusions here.*** Either those guys are even worse chess players than I am…or, this is a game they deliberately want Taiwan to lose.

* Yilan is a county on Taiwan’s north-east coast.

** A Taiwanese confrontation with Japan over the Senkakus risks war with not only Japan, but America herself:

The 1960 US-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security applies to territories under the administration of Japan, including the Senkaku Islands. In November 1996, Assistant Secretary of Defense Campbell stated that the basic position of the US is that the Japan-US security treaty would cover the Senkaku Islands. Secretary of Defense William Perry reconfirmed this fact on 03 December 1996.

A conflict is, perhaps, what the China Post hopes for. Stir up Chinese nationalist sentiment in Taiwan and provoke a war with Japan and its ally, America. Chinese nationalists then have their excuse to renounce America, and openly ally themselves with their communist brethren across the Strait. From twhistory.org:

But the fight for sovereignty of the Diaoyutai [Senkakus], even to the extent of debating Taiwan’s international position and legitimacy, has been continuously examined and contended, with some people [in Taiwan] even advocating a United People’s Republic of China, or so-called Overseas Chinese, fighting together for the sovereignty of the Diaoyutai… [emphasis added]

With the strategic goal of uniting Taiwan with the PRC accomplished at last, the victor in any war for the Senkakus’ would be largely besides the point.

*** Actually there is a third possibility. While as a general rule the good chess player protects valuable pieces and sacrifices weak ones, he sometimes does the opposite in order to BAIT his opponent. Parenthetical point #2 above represents an example of what this might look like.

The opponent in such a case would be none other than the Taiwanese people, who, if misled into taking the bait, would be lured away from a democratic ally and into the arms of authoritarian one.

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Danes For Taiwan

Long-time readers will know that this blog has had a soft spot for Denmark ever since that country came under assault from global Islamic totalitarianism last year. Pleasing to see that Taiwan received some support from Denmark recently:

The Jutland Post contributed a half-page in last Tuesday’s edition to publishing readers’ letters in support of Taiwan. Most of the letters were written to rebuke Jin Zhijian (金智健), a counselor with the Chinese embassy in Copenhagen, who claimed in a letter published in the Post dated Sept. 6 that "according to the Cairo Declaration [1943] and the Potsdam Proclamation [1945], Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic of China."

Jin wrote to the Danish daily in response to Minister of Foreign Affairs James Huang (黃志芳), who published an article in the Post on Aug. 25 about the nation’s bid to enter the UN using the name "Taiwan."

Now, I’m not sure that one foreign paper publishing a few pro-Taiwan letters qualifies as news, but the story concludes on an intriguing note:

Also responding to Jin’s claim, Pia Kjaersgaard, chairwoman and cofounder of the Danish People’s Party — the third largest political party in Denmark, which regards itself as center-right — almost immediately issued a statement saying that Jin’s letter to the newspaper was an attempt to cover up the fact that the People’s Republic of China’s sovereignty has not for a single day extended to the island of Taiwan.

Kjaersgaard said that from now on, the Danish People’s Party would extend every assistance to help Taiwan be accepted as a normal member of the international community.

Kind of makes me wonder exactly how many other foreign political parties are Taiwan-friendly. Of course, I realize that it’s easy for opposition parties to adopt pro-Taiwan planks; it’s a whole lot harder to hold that position once you’ve won an election and the Chinese ambassador starts pounding his shoe on your desk, threatening your country’s commercial interests.

Still, the Danes showed a lot of guts in not caving to Muslim boycotts during the Battle of Khartoon. It’s not inconceivable that they might someday stick to their guns in the face of Chinese bullying as well.

Postscript: A quick google reveals that the Jutland Post is the English name of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper which first published the Mohammed cartoons in 2005.

Pearly-White Terror

Got a hot date with the drill coming up, and, discretion being the better part of valor, The Foreigner will NOT be engaging in political argument at the clinic:

Dentists form group to support [Chinese Nationalist Party]

Chen Shui-bian’s a bum, Chiang Kai-shek was the greatest thing ever, and the KMT’s Taiwan’s only hope?

Rrrrrr-AIR-rrrrrr!

"Ahhtever you shay, Doc!"

Raising the Flag

It was only a few months ago that Chinese nationalist news media in Taiwan berated President Chen over the government’s refusal to allow the Olympic torch relay to set foot here. Chen (not China!) was politicizing sport; Taiwan should just take whatever humiliation China throws its way and be thankful that Big Brother China allows Taiwan to participate at all. If I remember correctly, the China Post even concluded one of its editorials by growling that Chen had "better not dare boycott the 2008 Olympics."

(Exactly what humiliations am I referring to? China wished to officially designate Taiwan as "Taipei, China" – an appellation that suggested Taipei is a possession of China.)

Well, what a difference a few months can make! Because suddenly, I see Chinese nationalists jumping on the Chen Shui-bian bandwagon, threatening all manner of boycotts themselves:

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has vowed to defend the right of audiences at sports games to carry national flags, adding that if he were elected next year, his government would cancel any games where Chinese teams refused to cooperate.

A brief explanation is in order here. Several years ago, China twisted enough arms at the International Olympic Committee to get Taiwan banned from the Olympics. Taiwan was eventually permitted to take part in them again, but only after signing an agreement that it would not display its national flag or play its national anthem during the Games. Taiwan was forced to sign similar agreements to allow it to participate in other international games as well.

(Republic of China flag image from Taiwandc.org)

Now, there are two interpretations of this deal. Most Taiwanese accept a narrow interpretation that stipulates that there cannot be any OFFICIAL displays of Taiwanese flags. Say a Taiwanese athlete wins a medal. In such a case, most Taiwanese accept that their flag can’t be shown on the podium, and their national anthem can’t be played. They’re not happy about it, but they know that’s the best deal Taiwan could get from the Butchers of Beijing.

The Chinese however, interpret the agreement more broadly. No Republic of China flags – PERIOD.* You, a private spectator, bring an ROC flag to an Olympic game? The Chinese will INSIST you be expelled from the premises:

During the 2005 Asian Figure Skating Trophy at the Taipei Arena, the [Taiwanese] audience was banned from bringing the national flag and the Taipei City Government — while Ma was mayor — failed to defend the audience’s right, arguing it was not the organizer of the event.

A similar situation arose during the Taiwan Auto Gymkhana Grand Prix at the Taipei Tobacco Factory in 2005, in which the national flag was not allowed to fly.

But that’s not the half of it. Now the Chinese are demanding that Taiwan forbid the display of the ROC flag during a a possible Olympic torch run here. And all at once, even Taiwan’s capitulation-minded Chinese nationalists are growing spines and saying this is all a bit much.

Kinda nice to see the Taiwanese rallying around the flag in the face of Chinese insults for a change, instead of the usual sad spectacle of local Chinese nationalists reflexively siding with Beijing. Of course, it’s easy to be cynical about Chinese nationalists’ sudden defence of their country’s flag, it being PURELY COINCIDENTAL that legislative and presidential elections** are less than a year away. But the Taiwanese demos is rightly PO’ed, and politicians are taking note. For once, it feels like the system is actually working.

One final thought. Last year, Chinese nationalists in Taiwan were cosying up to China, and they began to openly espouse a triangulation strategy between Beijing and Washington. Taiwan was to become a neutral country, based upon the dubious theory that Taiwan isn’t a piece of real estate greedily coveted by China, but rather, a preference-less bystander trapped between two great powers.

Thanks to this latest act of arrogance on Beijing’s part, selling that triangulation strategy to angry Taiwanese voters may not be quite as easy as Chinese nationalists had once hoped.

* I’ve often thought that there are obvious ways around the ban. Stadium security would certainly have a difficult time expelling a thousand spectators who had taken it upon themselves to secretly bring Republic of China flags to the venue. It’d be one of those, "I’m Spartacus," kind of moments. Or alternatively, audiences could respect the ban on Republic of China flags at international sporting events, and bring another one in its stead.

After all, the deal says nothing about Republic of TAIWAN flags, now, does it?

(Proposed Republic of Taiwan flag image from Taiwandc.org)

** I may be wrong, but I’m not sure whether the issue of allowing local spectators to bring ROC flags to international sporting events held here is really a presidential issue at all (except in a tangential way, which I’ll explain in a moment). To begin with, I’ll assume that stadiums in Taiwan receive SOME sort of tax breaks and / or government grants from municipal and national legislatures. At least, that’s the way it usually works back home. Furthermore, I’ll also point out that it’s legislatures that control the purse, and it’s legislatures that make the rules governing eligibility for those tax breaks and government grants.

Now, over the last 7 years, we have seen the Chinese nationalist-dominated legislature threaten to cut off funds of numerous government agencies that it felt were not following its directives. And sometimes, those threats were not empty ones. Given that history then, one might have expected similar legislative activism on behalf of Taiwanese spectators denied their right to bring ROC flags into local stadiums. Or rather, one might have expected this, if the legislature had deemed this to be something worthy of its concern.

Since I honestly don’t know what executive powers the Taiwanese president has to deal with problems such as this, I tend to think this is more of a legislative issue than a presidential one. But it IS a presidential issue in one sense: the lack of prior legislative action serves as an indictment of the priorities of the legislature’s former leader, Ma Ying-jeou.

And that would be the very same Ma Ying-jeou who is now running for the Taiwanese presidency, on the Chinese Nationalist Party ticket.

UPDATE (Sep 15/07): Over at Taiwan Matters!, Tim Maddog has a good background on Ma Ying-jeou’s "evolving view" of the issue.

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Why China Airlines Should Keep Its Name

Been gone for a month, so I’m woefully out of touch with local events. About the only things I heard about are the big typhoon and the airplane that blew up on the runway in Japan. Didn’t see footage in the foreign media of the former, but there sure was plenty of the latter.

Massive fireball on a China Airlines jet on the tarmac of Okinawa, Japan.

(Image from Aug 21st ed of the Taipei Times)

One thing I DID notice was that none of the foreign media bothered to mention that China Airlines is in fact a TAIWANESE airline. And with some new Chinese product or another being recalled every 3 or 4 days, it suddenly dawned upon me that here was ONE reason for not renaming the company that Taiwan’s China Post managed to overlook. Here goes:

China Airlines should not be renamed "Taiwan Airlines" out of a simple desire to maintain Taiwan’s good reputation. After all, when a China Airlines jet blows up on the tarmac, isn’t it better from Taiwan’s perspective that foreigners mistakenly take it to be a Chinese, rather than a Taiwanese, company?

Heh.

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Should Chinese Students Be Permitted To Study In Taiwan?

What Taiwan’s relationship with China should be is something that definitely represents a challenge to anyone with small ‘l’ liberal values. Take for example, free trade. The textbook case for free trade may be a slam dunk, but what does classical theory have to say about allowing free investment into a country like China, which pressures Taiwanese industrialists into signing political pledges against Taiwanese independence? And take something else, like student exchanges. As matters stand now, the government of China allows Taiwanese students to study in China, while the government of Taiwan doesn’t return the favor. Furthermore, China recognizes degrees from Taiwanese universities even though Taiwan doesn’t do the reverse. Recently, Taiwan’s China Post wrote to say that this state of affairs is grossly unfair, in its editorial, "It’s called reciprocity":

…the concept of reciprocity means that we must treat others at least as well as they treat us. A good first step would be to recognize China’s diplomas.

Here, the China Post seems to have mysteriously forgotten one other concept. It’s called "self-interest".

I didn’t blog about it at the time, but a few weeks ago, a Taiwanese folk dance team visiting Israel had its flag snatched away by the dancers from China. "You’re not a REAL country, so we’re takin’ yer stinkin’ flag. Nyah, nyah, nyah!" Typical grown-up Chinese behavior.*

But how to respond? Should Taiwan heed the principle of reciprocity, uncoupled from self-interest, and adopt a similar policy of pro-actively snatching Chinese flags whenever it can at international venues?

Of course not. When Chinese hooligans snatch flags away at folk dance performances, they reveal themselves before all the world to be the cretinous bullies they truly are. Naive adherence to a principle of reciprocity in this instance would be self-defeating. It’s in Taiwaneses interest NOT to imitate their example, thereby demonstrating to everyone their sense of maturity is a bit greater than the tantrum-throwing babies from across the Strait.

What I’m saying is that reciprocity without consideration of one’s self-interest is a fool’s game. So, with that point made and getting back to the point of this post, is it in Taiwan’s self-interest to reciprocate, recognizing PRC degrees and allowing Chinese students to study here?

There are indeed some good arguments for doing so:

1) Understanding & peace. Chinese students in Taiwan will gain an understanding of the place and its people beyond the propaganda they’re usually exposed to, and thus be motivated to maintaining future peaceful relations between China & Taiwan. Therefore, it is definitely within Taiwan’s interests to promote such contacts.

2) Reversing Taiwanese brain drain. By not recognizing Chinese diplomas, Taiwan provides a disincentive for those of its citizens who have studied in China, and want to return home and put their skills to good use here. Taiwan’s current policy is therefore a waste of human capital.

3) Raising Taiwanese university standards. By increasing the pool of candidates for university slots here, competition for those seats would increase. That would have the positive effect of raising Taiwanese educational standards.

4) Confidence. To allow Chinese students to study in Taiwan is a powerful expression of confidence in the value of openness.

There are however, sober arguments for retaining the current system:

1) Contrary to the warm and fuzzy things we’ve been taught about understanding, it doesn’t always lead to peace, love and good feelings all around. Civil wars are often the most vicious kinds of wars precisely BECAUSE the combatants understand each other so well. Understanding is nothing more than a tool, for good or ill. On page 291 of Buying the Night Flight, Georgie Anne Geyer challenges the conventional thinking about the virtue of understanding, with this comment on the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979:

"You [should] have been able easily to predict that bringing eighty thousand Persian students to the United States, where they felt miserably inferior and alone and out of place, would only bring about, at the right time, a disastrous countereffect."

In fact, there are some kinds of Chinese understanding of Taiwan that are completely undesirable. To be blunt, spying would be one of them. Strategy Page reports:

"In a manner similar to Chinese espionage efforts, Chinese students [in America] are encouraged to gather seemingly innocuous data for the Chinese government. For example, who has been saying anti-Chinese government things on campus?"

As I wrote in an earlier post:

"Left unaddressed in these proposals is the ~~possibility~~ probability that many of these Chinese students will be tasked with identifying future collaborators, and marking other Taiwanese students for blacklists, re-education camps – or worse."

I think there’s something missing from my analysis, though. Which is, that the costs of education and living are higher in Taiwan than in China. As a result, it’s not the average Chinese student who’ll most likely be able to afford the additional expense – it’s privileged Chinese students with Communist Party connections. And that little fact (which is never mentioned) raises the probability of student spying even higher.

2) With regards to "brain drain" to China due to non-recognition of PRC diplomas, the case may be overstated. After all, there’s no law PREVENTING Taiwanese private sector firms from accepting Chinese degrees, is there? A graduate with a degree in say, Communications from a major Chinese university is just as likely to be hired in Taiwan as someone from a Taiwanese school.

Only in cases where the government invokes licensing requirements, or in the case of government work, does the current ban have any teeth. And as far as applicants for government jobs go, does Taiwan’s government really want people who have been exposed to Beijing’s anti-democracy and anti-Taiwan propaganda for several years to come back one day and suddenly take up government positions of power over Taiwanese citizens?

3) As far as raising standards, letting Chinese students study here will probably do that, but recognition of Chinese degrees in Taiwan is likely to have the opposite effect. Remember, I said that the cost of getting a degree is less in China? Well, once Chinese degrees are recognized in Taiwan, a large incentive will be created for Taiwanese students to study there, not here. That influx of Chinese students INTO the Taiwanese university system is just as likely to be met with a stampede of Taiwanese students OUT FROM the system. It’s not at all clear then, what the net effect on the university population will be.

President Chen probably overstates the case when he says, "Taiwanese professors would have to make a living by driving taxis while taxi drivers would become beggars. Taiwanese beggars would not even be able to compete with Chinese beggars." But the possibility that the number of students in Taiwan’s universities could fall from current levels cannot be discounted. Fewer students in Taiwan means more Taiwanese professors have to find other work. The line about Taiwanese beggars and Chinese beggars is just a colorful way of illustrating that.

Or is that all that it is? The China Post rightly objects, "No one is suggesting that Taiwan open its doors to the wholesale import of Chinese taxi drivers, workers or beggars." Which is true. The discussion here is about students, not workers. Yet the cynical should be forgiven if they view the opening up of the Taiwanese university market as a first step to Chinese migration.

The way it would work is this: One or two years after allowing Chinese students to study here, a NEW crisis will quickly be discovered. Some Chinese students who have studied here would now like to stay. What a shame it is that Taiwan cannot profit from their knowledge. Why, they have unique skills that Taiwanese just don’t have. And girlfriends they don’t want to leave – I can just picture the media eating up THAT angle. (Oh, don’t forget the ones that DON’T have Party connections – the ones that’ll work for a pittance. Local business loves ’em.)

Pressure mounts to issue work visas. Next stop, fast-track plans for citizenship.

Now, THERE’S one way for Chinese nationalists to cure the Taiwanese of that "provincialism complex" they go on about. Just import more Chinese nationalists!** For Taiwanese Mainlanders who never saw a case of Han imperialism they didn’t like, and who aren’t too crazy about being a minority here, Chinese immigration is the perfect way out of permanent minority status.

4) Finally, we come to the last argument. The current policy represents a lack of confidence in the virtues of openness. Indeed, it does.

But on the other hand, I know a lot of people who believe in openness who don’t lend their house keys to stalkers who brag about wanting to kill them and steal their possessions. Which is exactly the position Taiwan is in when people try to brow-beat it into friendly relations with a government that seeks nothing less than Taiwan’s destruction as a nation.

By now, you probably have an idea where I stand on the issue. Still, as a way of comparison, it would be most interesting to see how the West German and South Korean governments dealt with the issue of student exchanges with THEIR communist counterparts. Alas, during my brief web search, I couldn’t find any evidence that these governments allowed such exchanges to take place at all. The only piece I did manage to discover was this 11 page story by a BBC reporter about East German recruitment of American and British exchange students for use as spies:

In the latter decades of the Cold War, Communist spy agencies…earmarked young Americans and Britons for recruitment. The superficial thaw in East-West relations provided by bouts of detente in the 1970s and 1980s gave them the opportunity to trawl among hundreds and later thousands of Western students, Americans and Britons among them, who took part in cultural-exchange programs and studied for months, even years, at a time in the universities of the Warsaw bloc.

[…]

Based on a huge cache of hitherto secret East German intelligence documents, including complete Stasi mole files of two British academics code-named "Armin" and "Diana," Insight/BBC has established the Stasi had a high recruitment success rate among American and British exchange students. "Regardless of whether these were students from Britain or other countries, as a general rule one out of 10 attempts to recruit someone for the secret service were successful," says Pieter Richter, a former HVA analyst. Neither the CIA nor Britain’s counterintelligence service, MIS, detected the recruitments at the time. The disclosure of the Stasi’s massive clandestine recruitment drive, which comes on top of a recent wave of spy revelations in London about Soviet espionage missions against the West during the Cold War era, likely will prompt further doubts concerning the effectiveness of Western counterintelligence during the Cold War. [emphasis added]

1 out of 10 attempts at recruitment by the East German spy agency resulted in success? I do NOT like those odds.

* What a gift these episodes of flag snatching are to Taiwanese nationalists, if only they had the sense to use them in campaign commercials. Recount – or better yet, show them – on TV. Conclude by stressing how shameful it is to be Chinese, and how decent Taiwanese are. Let the KMT defend Chinese conduct to voters, if they dare. After all, THEY’RE the ones who’ve been so chummy with the Communist Party of China for the last three years now.

** Please note that I’m saying Chinese from China are likely to be Chinese nationalists (with a small "n"), not Chinese Nationalists (ie: members of the Chinese Nationalist Party, or KMT).

The Rebirth Of Global Autocracy

Terrific piece on international rivalry in the 21st Century by Robert Kagan. Some things I could quibble with*, but I won’t get into specifics (This post is long enough, as it is!). Instead, I’ll try to limit my comments to where it dovetails with my own thoughts on China, the Third World and Taiwan.

Back in the ’90s, two books on international relations came into vogue. Of the two, Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man was the more optimistic, positing that ideology (or at least, ideological competition between countries) was dead. Dead, because virtually all nations on earth had come to the same conclusion that liberal democracy and capitalism were the way of the future. Since everyone thus agreed on the ultimate goal, the only matter left for countries to determine then, was the speed and precise paths they would take towards democratization and economic liberalization.

Samuel P. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations however, had a darker vision. Although he agreed that ideology was dead as a motivating force of international rivalry, Huntington didn’t see international rivalry therefore coming to a happy Fukuyaman end. Instead, Huntington theorized that sources of irritation, dispute and even warfare would increasingly be civilizational in nature.** (The author has always regretted the fact that for many, the word "clash" seems to invoke the latter connotation almost exclusively.)

And so Kagan begins, dismissing the basic premise of both these authors that nationalism and ideology are dead at all:

Today the nations of the West still cling to that vision. Evidence to the contrary — the turn toward autocracy in Russia or the growing military ambitions of China — is either dismissed as a temporary aberration or denied entirely.

The world has not been transformed, however. Nations remain as strong as ever, and so too the nationalist ambitions, the passions, and the competition among nations that have shaped history. The world is still “unipolar,” with the United States remaining the only superpower. But international competition among great powers has returned, with the United States, Russia, China, Europe, Japan, India, Iran, and others vying for regional predominance. Struggles for honor and status and influence in the world have once again become key features of the international scene. Ideologically, it is a time not of convergence but of divergence. The competition between liberalism and absolutism has reemerged, with the nations of the world increasingly lining up, as in the past, along ideological lines.

Thus he begins explaining the unipolar world as he sees it, then goes on to describe the nationalistic predominance various countries are seeking. Of particular interest for this blog is what he has to say regarding China and Japan:

National ambition drives China’s foreign policy today, and although it is tempered by prudence and the desire to appear as unthreatening as possible to the rest of the world, the Chinese are powerfully motivated to return their nation to what they regard as its traditional position as the preeminent power in East Asia. They do not share a European, postmodern view that power is passé; hence their now two-decades-long military buildup and modernization. Like the Americans, they believe power, including military power, is a good thing to have and that it is better to have more of it than less. Perhaps more significant is the Chinese perception, also shared by Americans, that status and honor, and not just wealth and security, are important for a nation.

Japan, meanwhile, which in the past could have been counted as an aspiring postmodern power — with its pacifist constitution and low defense spending — now appears embarked on a more traditional national course. Partly this is in reaction to the rising power of China and concerns about North Korea ’s nuclear weapons. But it is also driven by Japan’s own national ambition to be a leader in East Asia or at least not to play second fiddle or “little brother” to China. China and Japan are now in a competitive quest with each trying to augment its own status and power and to prevent the other’s rise to predominance, and this competition has a military and strategic as well as an economic and political component.

Elsewhere, he points out one possible ironic outcome to China’s efforts to become the local hegemon:

…even China, which seeks gradually to supplant the United States as the dominant power in the region, faces the dilemma that an American withdrawal [from Asia] could unleash an ambitious, independent, nationalist Japan.

His assessment of the role of ideology is particularly worth the read:

Complicating the equation and adding to the stakes is that the return to the international competition of ambitious nations has been accompanied by a return to global ideological competition. More precisely, the two-centuries-old struggle between political liberalism and autocracy has reemerged as a third defining characteristic of the present era.

The Cold War may have caused us to forget that the more enduring ideological conflict since the Enlightenment has not been between capitalism and communism but between liberalism and autocracy. That was the issue that divided the United States from much of Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and it divided Europe itself through much of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. The assumption that the death of communism would bring an end to disagreements about the proper form of government and society seemed more plausible in the 1990s, when both Russia and China were thought to be moving toward political as well as economic liberalism. Such a development would have produced a remarkable ideological convergence among all the great powers of the world and heralded a genuinely new era in
human development.

But those expectations have proved misplaced. China has not liberalized but has shored up its autocratic government. Russia has turned away from imperfect liberalism decisively toward autocracy. Of the world ’s great powers today, therefore, two of the largest, with over a billion and a half people, have governments that are committed to autocratic rule and seem to have the ability to sustain themselves in power for the foreseeable future with apparent popular approval.

Many assume that Russian and Chinese leaders do not believe in anything, and therefore they cannot be said to represent an ideology, but that is mistaken. The rulers of China and Russia do have a set of beliefs that guide them in both domestic and foreign policy. They believe autocracy is better for their nations than democracy. They believe it offers order and stability and the possibility of prosperity. They believe that for their large, fractious nations, a strong government is essential to prevent chaos and collapse. They believe democracy is not the answer and that they are serving the best interests of their peoples by holding and wielding power the way they do. [emphasis added throughout]

Kagan examines the ideological self-interest these two autocracies have in the principle of non-interference in other autocrats’ affairs:

Autocrats can hardly be expected to aid in legitimizing an evolution in the international system toward “limited sovereignty” and “the responsibility to protect.” … China, after all, has been a victim of international sanctions imposed by the U.S.-led liberal world, and for killing far fewer people than the governments of Sudan or Zimbabwe. Nor do China ’s rulers forget that if the liberal world had had its way in 1989, they would now be out of office, probably imprisoned, possibly dead.

[…]

To ask one dictatorship to aid in the undermining of another dictatorship, however, is asking a great deal. Chinese leaders will always be extremely reluctant to impose sanctions on autocrats when they themselves remain subject to sanctions for their own autocratic behavior. [emphasis added throughout]

Here, he admits the odd exception:

They may bend occasionally so as to avoid too-close association with what the West calls “rogue regimes.”

But on the whole:

Neither Russia nor China has any interest in assisting liberal nations in their crusade against autocracies around the world. Moreover, they can see their comparative advantage over the West when it comes to gaining influence with African, Asian, or Latin American governments that can provide access to oil and other vital natural resources or that, in the case of Burma, are strategically located. Moscow knows it can have more influence with governments in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan because, unlike the liberal West, it can unreservedly support their regimes. [emphasis added]

This is an old observation, dating at least as far back as the Peloponnesian Wars, when Spartan oligarchs preferred foreign oligarchic allies, while Athenian democrats were more comfortable with democratic ones. Closer to our own time, how many communist allies did the Soviets ever abandon during the Cold War? The democratic West was certainly far quicker in judging the failings of IT’S authoritarian allies.

Because of this comparative advantage autocrats have in supporting other autocrats, Kagan predicts an authoritarian resurgence:

…the more autocracies there are in the world, the less isolated Beijing and Moscow will be in international forums such as the United Nations…The general effect of the rise of these two large autocratic powers, therefore, will be to increase the likelihood that autocracy will spread in some parts of the world. This is not because Russia and China are evangelists for autocracy or want to set off a worldwide autocratic revolution. It is not the Cold War redux. It is more like the nineteenth century redux…The great-power autocracies will inevitably offer support and friendship to those who feel besieged by the United States and other liberal nations. This in itself will strengthen the hand of autocracy in the world. Autocrats and would-be autocrats will know they can again find powerful allies and patrons, something that was not as true in the 1990s.

It is in this light that I view China’s current diplomatic charm offensive in the Third World. If YOU were an authoritarian African ruler bent on preserving your own power, who would you rather receive aid and support from? Western nations, which attach strings and all kinds of benchmarks and requirements regarding corruption, human rights, economic liberalization and democratization? Or China, which doesn’t? This isn’t a criticism of the strings that Western countries place upon aid – those requirements were implemented for good reasons. Western taxpayers have seen too much of their money disappear into the bank accounts of kleptocrats, and aren’t eager to vote for governments that persist in looking the other way. Western politicians have to explain to hostile electorates why their money seems to be propping up disreputable dictators; Chinese politicians don’t.

China DOES have a comparative advantage in winning over Third World regimes, at least in the short and medium terms. And no doubt about it, that is something that bodes ill for Taiwan’s efforts to retain its diplomatic partners.

Getting back to Kagan’s article, he later examines China’s weaknesses:

It is easy to look at China and Russia today and believe they are simply getting stronger and stronger. But one should not overlook their fragility. These autocratic regimes may be stronger than they were in the past in terms of wealth and global influence. But they do still live in a predominantly liberal era. That means they face an unavoidable problem of legitimacy. They are not like the autocracies of nineteenth-century Europe, which still enjoyed a historical legitimacy derived partly from the fact that the world had known nothing but autocracy for centuries. To be an autocrat today is to be constantly concerned that the powerful forces of liberalism, backed by a collection of rich, advanced nations, including the world’s only superpower, will erode or undermine the controls necessary to stay in power. Today’s autocracies struggle to create a new kind of legitimacy, and it is no easy task. The Chinese leaders race forward with their economy in fear that any slowing will be their undoing. They fitfully stamp out signs of political opposition partly because they live in fear of repeating the Soviet experience. Having watched the Soviet Union succumb to the liberal West, thanks to what they regard as Mikhail Gorbachev’s weakness and mistakes, they are determined neither to show weakness nor to make the same mistakes.

[…]

Leaders in Beijing rightly fear they are riding a tiger at home, and they fear external support for a political opposition more than they fear foreign invasion. Even promoting nationalism as a means of enhancing legitimacy is a dangerous business, since in Chinese history, nationalist movements have [often] evolved into revolutionary movements. [emphasis added throughout]

To these, I would add one other internal weakness as well (which isn’t original, but what the hey). All that aid that China gives, it gives without consent of Chinese citizens. If you’re a poor Chinese peasant, and you hear your government is giving away heaps of money to foreigners, you’re probably not going to care about how much "goodwill" or "soft power" all that largesse is buying your country. No, you’re gonna look at your less-than-fancy hovel one day and you’re gonna get mad. Real mad. But unlike the electorate in democratic countries though, when YOU get mad, you don’t get the choice to vote for some mean, tight-fisted, old guy who promises to cut back foreign aid. Only choice YOU ever get is to bottle up that rage deep down inside…or grab a pitchfork and join the mob stormin’ the castle.

(No matter what kind of guff some KMT-affiliated papers tell us about "stability" and "harmonious societies", the most harmonious society in the world is the one where change happens WITHOUT people breakin’ the china.)

In addition, China’s foreign aid causes a couple of external problems for it as well. First, ANY country (Taiwan included) that ties its economy too closely with that of China renders itself vulnerable to shocks in the Chinese economy. A Chinese recession, or even a sufficiently worrisome Chinese product scare, has the potential to quickly turn public opinion in a dependent Third World country against its benefactor. And secondly, Chinese support of repressive governments is likely to stir anti-Chinese feelings in members of the opposition in the long-term, while aid to corrupt governments could do the same amongst ordinary people.

A single example should suffice. Earlier this year, Hu Jintao went on what was billed a triumphant tour of Africa. That’s it, we’re DOOMED, said Taiwan’s China Post. Yet one thing I noticed was that the opposition in one country (Zaire, I believe), REFUSED to meet with him. Now, THERE’S a sign all that aid isn’t making everybody happy.

Now, should that opposition win, or ever seize power, what then? Doubtless the Chinese will be quick to offer support to the new government, but they may be surprised to find it spurned. People sometimes have harsh memories about the foreigners who came and armed the local tyrant; who came and trained the secret police that kept the populace down.

And that’s why I think the prospects for Taiwan’s diplomatic relations with the Third World aren’t so bleak. Some countries are going to get absolutely BURNED by China, make no mistake of that. And when that happens, Taiwan will still be around. Around to maybe grab an ally or two.

* This criticism,
for example, may arguably be true; however, the claim by the same author that China is not an autocracy but in fact a "one party meritocracy" seems a bit further off the mark.

** Conversely, Huntington believes civilizational SIMILARITIES will be a powerful unifying factor in the years to come. I’ve often thought that Taiwan serves as a kind of crucible for his theory, poised as it is between democratic independence or unification with a civilizationally-similar autocracy. If ideology is truly dead, then the theory predicts Taiwan’s ultimate unification with China, no matter what China’s political make-up. But if ideology yet lives, then Taiwan will prefer democratic independence (be it legal or de facto), for at least as long as China remains authoritarian.

UPDATE (Aug 5/07): The country where the opposition refused to meet Hu Jintao may have been Zambia, not Zaire.

Diverting The Issue (Of Stolen Assets)

UPDATE (Aug 5/07): It just occurred to me that I spent this entire post talking about "transitional justice" without actually explaining what that even means. David on Formosa begins his post on the subject the smart way – by defining the term. Stealing from his source:

Transitional justice refers to a range of approaches that societies undertake to reckon with legacies of widespread or systematic human rights abuse as they move from a period of violent conflict or oppression towards peace, democracy, the rule of law, and respect for individual and collective rights.

There. NOW this post should make sense, especially to the uninitiated.

Over at Jerome Keating’s website, Dr. Keating believes transitional justice needs to be a campaign issue in Taiwan in 2008 (Hat tip to Tim Maddog at Taiwan Matters!). In an earlier post, Dr. Keating describes the structural advantage the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has over other parties:

…we had seen how the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has gone on record to admit it has over [NT$ 25 billion] in assets [US$ 757 million]. Its closest rival, the ruling party Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has barely about one per cent of that, it has approximately [NT$ 25 million] in assets, or US$ 7.5 million.

A great deal of this 100:1 advantage can be explained by the forced sales and outright confiscations that the KMT was the beneficiary of during 38 years of martial law. He notes one irony: communist parties from former Soviet Bloc nations, ideologically dedicated to confiscation, were eventually forced to return assets they had confiscated. Meanwhile, the KMT, ideologically opposed to confiscation, not only confiscated vast amounts of property, but has STILL never returned it!

That this might be an issue of vulnerability for the KMT was highlighted a week ago, in a column by Dr. Joe Hung. Towards the end of the piece, Dr. Hung began casting out wildly, looking for other transitional justice issues that the country should attend to besides this one:

Why not help the former patients of Hansen’s disease segregated by the Japanese? President Chen Shui-bian has apologized for their continued segregation after 1945, but his government wants to remove them from the sanatorium they now call home and raze it to make way for a mass transit system.

Why not help Taiwan’s dwindling number of "comfort women"? They were forced to work as sex slaves, serving troops of the Japanese imperial army in the Pacific War. All they want is an apology from the Japanese government. Has Taipei done anything to get Tokyo to offer it?

Why not reckon with the slaughter of ten times more than the victims of the 2/28 Incident the Japanese committed in the first decade of their colonization of Taiwan. For a mere five years, from 1898 to 1902, at least 11,950 people were slain as rebels. How about the Wushe Incident of 1930? The Atayal village of Wushe, with 270 inhabitants and 60 families, was totally destroyed. Nearly all of the men, women and children in the village were massacred by Japanese troops. Japanese army warplanes bombed the Atayal reservation. Gas bombs were dropped to smoke out those "rebels" who refused to surrender.

Why not seek transitional assistance for all the indigenous people whose forebears the ethnic Chinese killed on Taiwan, to grab their land and go into their forests to fell camphor trees? In 1662, when Koxinga took Taiwan from the Dutch their population was estimated at 200,000. That population remained almost the same in 1945. It may not be genocide, but the fact is that countless thousands of Austronesians were slaughtered by the ethnic Chinese, as well as the Japanese colonizers. James Davidson, the first American-born U.S. consul in Taipei at the turn of the twentieth century, reported that aborigines were killed and their flesh sold to ethnic Chinese, who ate it. Why not reckon with these horrible legacies?

I’m not necessarily opposed to action on any of these issues, but I think Dr. Hung overstates the urgency of his cases:

1) The Lo-Sheng Sanatorium. What this is is a classic case of competition for a finite resource. At least 10,000 residents of the town of Hsin-juang want the sanatorium leveled so that they can get an MRT station. You know – reduce traffic on the streets, clean up the air a bit, and all those other nice things that mass transit is good for. Meanwhile, the project is being held up by a mere 75 former lepers who want the sanatorium to stay.

Now, Hung would have his readers believe that cruel President Chen Shui-bian stroked his Snidely Whiplash moustache one day and decided on a whim to throw all those poor, disfigured old lepers into the gutter. But the truth is, it was the former KMT government that sold Lo-Sheng for use as an MRT depot, all the way back in 1994.

The KMT wants to run on THIS issue of transitional justice? Fine. Maybe they can start by explaining why they sold Lo-Sheng WITHOUT EVER CONSULTING THE BLOODY RESIDENTS. Forget consultation – the KMT never bothered to NOTIFY the poor bastards even AFTER the sale. The first the lepers ever heard of the deal was TEN YEARS LATER when the BULLDOZERS arrived, Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy-style.

The reality is that 150 former Hansen’s disease patients have already moved into the brand-new hospital just next door, while the 75 that remain prefer the open air and gardens of the sanatorium they live in now. Can’t say I blame the ones that want to stay. But surely, the solution is obvious. Just build ’em another sanatorium SOMEWHERE ELSE. And make sure it’s bigger. And nicer.

Oh, and don’t forget to put it all on the KMT’s tab. Because as far as I can make out, they’re the idiots responsible for the whole mess in the first place.

2) The "comfort women". An apology from Japan would be nice. And future help from Japan against a Chinese attack would also be nice. If Taiwan can get both through amiable diplomatic means, then great. But if aggressive pursuit of the former alienates Japan from providing the later, then prefer the latter instead. I don’t see allies America and Britain demanding apologies from each other for old wounds.

National survival trumps apologies to a tiny minority. Welcome to realpolitik.

3) Other, earlier Japanese atrocities. Um, at this point, exactly how many first generation descendants of these victims are still alive to benefit from the transitional justice Dr. Hung proposes? Moreover, the KMT had 55 years to deal with this (and the "comfort women" issue as well). If their efforts were half-hearted, perhaps they can be forgiven because of the realpolitik mentioned in Case #2.

4) The aborigines. Dr. Hung discusses the injustices done to Taiwanese aborigines that date back to the year 1662. 1662? FOUR HUNDRED years ago? By now, I get the distinct impression Hung isn’t just asking for TRANSITIONAL justice – he’s asking for something Thomas Sowell calls COSMIC justice. He’s asking that every injustice that was EVER DONE IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE be attended to.

And it can’t. It simply can’t.

And Dr. Hung knows that. So what in effect he’s saying is that the KMT shouldn’t give back ANY of the $757 million it plundered until ALL THE WRONGS IN THE WORLD are made right. Which of course, might just be a while.

Hung closes on this note:

Of course, President Chen and his government are not going to do anything to get transitional justice done for all these people, for the very simple reason that any help rendered won’t be translated into votes at the ballot boxes in December’s legislative elections, and the presidential race in March next year.

But while he sees cynicism, I see democracy. Let the Taiwanese talk about the relative merits of Joe Hung’s cases, as well as that of the KMT’s looted assets. Let the jurors decide which cases are more urgent, and which are more marginal. Then, let the members of the jury vote.

All 13 million of them.

POSTSCRIPT: Another aspect of the program for transitionaljustice in Taiwan is the de-glorification of its former dictators. Dr. Hung also discussed this in his column; my reply can be found here.

Citizen Journalism In Taiwan

Funny, I spoke with a friend of mine about citizen photojournalism about a week ago, and I’ve seen two stories on citizen journalism since then. The last one, from Monday’s Taipei Times, I’ll mention first:

Wu Ping-hai (吳平海) has neither a journalism degree nor experience working for newspapers or TV news programs.

But Wu’s video camera has recorded a footage from a wide range of events, documenting the personal stories of ordinary people and the issues that concern local communities.

Wu posts short documentaries on peopo.org, an online citizen news platform started recently by the Taiwan Broadcasting System.

Two of his films document the study of farmland tree frogs, a species only found in Taiwan, and the experiences of foreign spouses learning Mandarin in Meinung Township (美濃), Kaohsiung County.

Wu was one of more than 700 citizen journalists who have contributed to community news coverage since the creation of the platform in April.

They have generated more than 2,200 news stories over the past three months.

[…]

To ensure the quality of stories, the Web site’s administrators have asked would-be contributers to submit a formal application before posting reports and footage.

Over at The Belmont Club, Wretchard speculates where this is headed:

Here’s what I think people will see in the next decade. Big news won’t go away but readers will be able to drill-down on news stories in a way impossible before. For example, suppose new riots break out in the banleius of Paris in 2017. The reader will be able to drill down into every greater detail. Was a man burned on a torched bus? Click and find the micro-journalist who is following the recovery of the victim in a hospital. Or discover how the riots have affected a particular suburb in northern Paris. Not only will you be able to drill down, but you will be able to interact with the news. With online payment systems I believe readers will be able to support micro-journalist efforts to find out more details about an story, in a miniature version of the way readers support Michael Yon in Iraq today.

UPDATE (Jul 26/07): Might citizen journalism be a way for Taiwanese nationalists to circumvent the stranglehold that Chinese nationalists have on Taiwan’s mainstream media? Apparently RCTV in Venezuela carried on in reduced form on YouTube after their license was pulled, so there is some kind of precedent.