Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Over the past few months, we have seen several articles by US academics advocating that the US back away from its commitments to Taiwan (Charles Glaser, et al) and others who suggested that the US “rethink” its relations with Taiwan. I have taken strong issue with these suggestions (“Charles Glaser’s fallacious arguments,” March 7, page 8 and “There’s no need for US to ‘rethink’ on Taiwan,” April 14, page 8).

Now comes Bob Sutter, of George Washington University, who argues that Taiwan’s freedom of action is diminishing, as Taiwan has gravitated into China’s orbit because of three sets of factors: one, China’s rise and its ever-growing economic, military and political leverage over Taiwan; two, Taiwan’s relative weakness as a result of its decreasing importance and its internal divisions; and three, eroding US support.

Taiwan's president, Ma Ying-joke likes to brag that he has reduced tension in the Taiwan Strait and that he has opened Taiwan up for tourism etc. If there are problems with the Chinese tourists of course Ma Ying-joke does not take responsibility for the Pandora's Box that he opened. One of the past examples of Ma letting Taiwanese pay for what he boasts that he did was that Chinese tourists wanted to come on the cheap. Rather than offend the cheap Chinese, Ma's government let the Taiwanese travel agents and companies bear the extra burden of cost for finding cheaper places that had extra transportation requirements because they would be much out of the way.

Again, if Chinese tourists jumped ship and broke off from the tours to remain illegally in Taiwan, Ma did not take responsibility; he passed the buck to the travel agents. They now had to be the policemen and be responsible for illegal entries.