President Tsai Stands Up to Xi Jinping

The Chinese dictator miscalculated, increasing the pressure he exerted, but driving more support to President Tsai Ing-wen.

By Thomas Wright

Taiwan can seem like the third rail of international diplomacy. 

If a country wants a good relationship with China, Beijing has effectively stated, it cannot have a meaningful relationship with Taiwan. 

Just this week, the city of Shanghai broke off official contacts with the city of Prague for signing a partnership treaty with Taipei. 

Beijing has long regarded Taiwan as nothing more than a renegade province. 

Under Xi Jinping, China has systematically tried to reduce Taiwan’s international space, forcing it out of global organizations and forums, as well as increasing military and economic coercion to force it into a process of reunification.

By this measure, Tsai Ing-wen’s landslide reelection on Saturday as president of Taiwan will come as a great disappointment to Beijing. 

President Tsai’s victory seemed very unlikely nine months ago. 

She was more than 20 points behind in the polls. 

Her party, the DPP, suffered a big defeat in midterm elections in 2018. 

But China’s actions in Hong Kong gave the Taiwanese a glimpse of their possible future. 

In his 2019 New Year’s Day message, Xi demanded that Taiwan look to the “one country, two systems” approach as a model for future relations. 

The Taiwanese had their worst fears about what that meant confirmed in Hong Kong and gave a resounding “No, thanks.”
Taiwan’s politics are complicated and defy the typical left-right divide. 

The DPP has traditionally favored formal independence, although President Tsai is cautious and has made it clear she will not take any steps in this direction that could give Beijing a pretext for an invasion. 

Her government is focused on preserving Taiwan’s practical autonomy and freedoms. 

The other party is the Kuomintang (KMT), which extended its rule over Taiwan after losing the Chinese civil war to the Communists. 

The KMT favors closer ties with Beijing and eventual reunification, albeit on very different terms to those proposed by Xi. 

Young people in Taiwan have no emotional attachment to the past and want to preserve the only way of life they have known.
Beijing made its feelings known quickly. 

Commenting on the election, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, said the “international consensus” on “the one-China principle,” which holds that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory … will not be affected in the least by a local election.” 

“Those who split the country will be doomed to leave a stink for 10,000 years,” he said. 

The Global Times, a newspaper operated under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party, called for “a plan to crack down on President Tsai’s new provocative actions, including imposing military pressure, which is an unbearable option for Taiwan authorities.”

The big question hanging over Taiwan now is how Beijing will react over the next four years. 

I spent the past five days in Taipei with a small group of Americans and Australians to observe the elections. 

We also had an opportunity to speak with President Tsai and other senior officials.

“We need to be candid,” President Tsai told us. 

“If we are vague, Beijing may misjudge the situation. In the past, people have gotten concerned when we are direct, but the situation has changed. We need to be direct to prevent misjudgment.” President Tsai reminded me of Angela Merkel. 

A 63-year-old academic, she is both principled and cautious. 

“We must be clear, but not provocative; loud, but careful,” she said.

Taiwan officials told me that more than 70 countries had sent messages of congratulations to President Tsai and the people of Taiwan on the election, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. 

They said the messages were longer and arrived faster than in previous years. 

This may seem like a small thing, but in a place where protocol is often seen as a matter of survival, it mattered. 

The officials pointed in particular to Europe, where they said they had witnessed a sea change in recent years. 

As European countries experienced direct pressure from China on a variety of fronts, they have seen Taiwan in a new light.

Taiwan officials believe that Xi miscalculated on Taiwan. 

He saw that President Tsai was politically vulnerable and sought to increase pressure, but it had the opposite effect. 

Xi has decades of experience in dealing with Taiwan and sees himself as the expert in chief. 

Now that his judgment has been revealed to be fallible, the question is whether he will be impatient and seek to achieve unification through coercive means, or whether he has enough on his plate. 

Taipei hopes that Xi will reach out to President Tsai to ease tensions. 

The officials pointed out that President Tsai is not an ideologue. 

If China does not deal with her now, it may have to deal with future leaders who they will perceive as more difficult. 

There is no prospect of leaders who will engage on the one country, two systems idea, even if the KMT were to make a comeback.

But Taipei is not counting on Xi having a change of heart. 

Instead, officials are preparing for a prolonged pressure campaign. 

Although the military threat grabs headlines, President Tsai’s government’s main foreign-policy goal is to halt and reverse its diplomatic isolation. 

Taiwan officials see the Trump administration as a stalwart ally in this regard. 

The U.S. has increased official engagement and approved the sale of fighter jets. 

Taipei hopes to move toward a free-trade agreement and is willing to offer good terms. 

However, Donald Trump remains a wild card. 

For instance, Trump complained bitterly after a mid-ranking State Department official, Alex Wong, visited Taipei to demonstrate U.S. solidarity, because he worried that it would infuriate Xi.

Always susceptible to direct requests from Xi, Trump reportedly considered firing him, but eventually demurred.
Support for Taiwan is likely to remain a bipartisan cause in the United States. 

Both Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg issued strong statements of congratulations and support after President Tsai’s election. 

In Washington, there is widespread recognition that President Tsai’s win was not a disruptive act; it was a vote for stability and the status quo. 

Isolating Taiwan is bad not just for Taiwan, but for the world. 

After President Tsai’s first election in 2016, China blocked Taiwan’s attendance as an observer at World Health Assembly meetings even though it had participated for the past eight years under a KMT government. 

Global pandemics know no boundaries, and tackling this threat ought not to be dependent on whether Beijing approves of Taiwan’s political choices.

The pressure Taiwan is experiencing is a more extreme case of the pressure many countries, companies, and people are under from Beijing, whether it is the Swedish government awarding a free-speech prize to a Swedish citizen born in Hong Kong; the mayor of Prague; a Turkish soccer player in England; or American technology companies. 

When I asked President Tsai what lessons the world should draw from Beijing’s global assertiveness, she told me, “We cannot afford to be romantic about the relationship with China.”

The question facing democracies is whether to accommodate Beijing’s attempt to silence all criticism and to ensure engagement occurs only on its terms, or to be candid and steadfast about defending and preserving the freedoms we have. 

The people of Taiwan chose to be candid not despite the fact that they are under pressure, but because of it. 

The rest of the world is moving in that direction, too.

Chinese Peril

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attacks China in Berlin speech
BBC News

Mike Pompeo has held talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel during his visit to Berlin.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned of the dangers posed by Russia and China, and called on Nato to grow and confront "the challenges of today".
On a visit to Berlin, Mr Pompeo said methods used by China to suppress its own people would be "horrifyingly familiar" to East Germans.
And he accused Russia of invading its neighbours and crushing dissent.
He laughed off comments from French President Emmanuel Macron, who said recently that Nato was "brain dead".
But Mr Pompeo told reporters: "Seventy years on... it needs to grow and change. It needs to confront the realities of today and the challenges of today.
"If nations believe that they can get the security benefit without providing Nato the resources that it needs, if they don't live up to their commitments, there is a risk that Nato could become ineffective or obsolete."

A Nato military exercise in 2018 -- the biggest since Cold War.

US President Donald Trump has frequently accused European Nato members of failing to provide their fair share of military spending and of relying too heavily on the US for their defence.
Nato celebrates its 70th anniversary at a summit in London next month.
What else did Mr Pompeo say?
He was speaking in Berlin a day before the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Referring to that event, Mr Pompeo said "the West -- all of us -- lost our way in the afterglow of that proud moment".
He said the US and its allies should "defend what was so hard-won... in 1989" and "recognise we are in a competition of values with un-free nations".
"We thought we could divert our resources away from alliances, and our militaries. We were wrong," he said.
"Today, Russia -- led by a former KGB officer once stationed in Dresden [President Vladimir Putin] - invades its neighbours and slays political opponents."

A rallying cry - but not everyone agrees
In Berlin to remember the end of the first Cold War, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appeared to be declaring the outbreak of a second.

In insisting upon a "competition of values" between the "free nations" on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other, his was a message of ideological struggle.
He disparaged entirely the idea of Moscow being a partner for the West. 

Mr Pompeo clearly saw this speech as a rallying cry to the West. 

He struck a hawkish tone but many will wonder: What exactly is the fundamental US view?
Trump seems much less antagonistic towards Moscow and does not appear to share the strategic framework in which his secretary of state places relations between Moscow and Beijing, and the West.
It is clear that even many of Washington's allies do not fully share Mr Pompeo's analysis. 

And Moscow and Beijing are eager to exploit such tensions and divisions.
Relations between Washington and Moscow plummeted after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from neighbouring Ukraine in 2014.
Ties were further strained when US intelligence agencies concluded that the Kremlin had interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
Despite this, Trump and Putin have appeared to be on good terms personally. 

On Friday, Trump said he was considering attending the Victory Day celebrations in Moscow next May, after an invitation from the Russian leader.
Mr Pompeo accused the Chinese Communist Party of "shaping a new vision of authoritarianism" and warned the German government against using Chinese telecom giant Huawei to build its fifth-generation data network (5G).

What did Mr Macron say?
Interviewed by the Economist, the French president said he saw a waning commitment to the alliance by its main guarantor, the US.
He warned European members that they could no longer rely on the US to defend the alliance, established at the start of the Cold War to bolster Western European and North American security.

He cited the recent failure by Washington to consult Nato before pulling forces out of northern Syria.
Mr Macron also questioned whether Nato was still committed to collective defence.
Speaking on Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a key ally, said she disagreed with Mr Macron's "drastic words".
Speaking in Berlin alongside visiting Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, she acknowledged there were problems, but said she did not think "such sweeping judgements are necessary".

Liu Xia, Detained Widow of Nobel Peace Laureate, Leaves China

By Jane Perlez

Liu Xia, the widow of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo, at her home in Beijing in 2012.

BEIJING — The ailing widow of Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese democracy advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who died of cancer last year under police guard, left China for Europe on Tuesday after a high-level diplomatic campaign by the German government.
Diplomats said Liu Xia, Mr. Liu’s widow, flew to Helsinki, Finland, on Finnair. 

Her final destination is expected to be Germany.
Ms. Liu’s brother, Liu Hui, posted a message soon after the flight took off saying she had left for Europe “to start her new life.” 

He thanked all the supporters who had helped win her release from years of house arrest and strict police supervision.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany raised Ms. Liu’s case directly with China’s dictator, Xi Jinping, during a visit to Beijing earlier this year, a gesture that underscored her opposition to China’s treatment of Ms. Liu and her husband, European diplomats said.
Ms. Liu, 57, had consistently asked to leave China since the death of her husband last July, and had pleaded to be freed from detention.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry told reporters at a regular news briefing on Tuesday that Ms. Liu had been granted permission to leave for Germany for medical reasons.
Her release by the Chinese government came one day after a human rights dialogue between European Union and Chinese officials in Beijing ended Monday. 

An annual summit meeting between China and the European Union is scheduled for next week in Beijing.
Ms. Liu was placed under police surveillance in 2010, the same year her husband was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for what the committee called “his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental rights in China.” 

He was not allowed to go to Oslo to receive the prize; Ms. Liu was also barred from attending the ceremony.
Mr. Liu, who was detained in 2008 after promoting a pro-democracy charter, died of liver cancer at age 61 while serving an 11-year prison sentence for “inciting subversion of state power.”
Though he was being treated at a Chinese hospital, the government did not reveal his illness until it was in its late stages, and it would not allow Mr. Liu to travel abroad for medical care.
Ms. Liu has friends in Germany, and had asked the Chinese authorities to let her go there so she could receive treatment for depression.
In a recorded telephone call released in May by the Chinese dissident Liao Yiwu, who lives in exile in Germany, Ms. Liu said: “It would be easier to die than to live. Nothing would be simpler for me than dying in defiance.”
European diplomats had said over the last several months that China had left Ms. Liu in limbo as a show of resolve against Chinese human rights dissidents, despite aggressive efforts by Germany to press for her release.
After Ms. Merkel’s visit to Beijing in the spring, the Chinese authorities let the Europeans know that if Ms. Liu’s case was not publicized, her release would be possible, a European diplomat with knowledge of the case said.
In Hong Kong, at a makeshift statue of Mr. Liu that has become a fixture near the city’s Victoria Park, supporters of the couple expressed relief at Ms. Liu’s departure from China.
“What happened was tragic,” one passer-by, Katie Wong, said of the couple and their ordeal. 

“The both of them have helped China so much, I now wish for her to have a good, relaxing life with her newfound freedom.”

Per un pugno di renminbi

Liu Xiaobo’s death exposes Western kowtowing to China’s despots
By ROWAN CALLICK
Serving both God and Xi Jinping: Angela Merkel and Donald Trump at the G20 summit in Hamburg.

The global response to the death of Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and his crudely stage-managed cremation and burial at sea will be viewed by chroniclers as a historic watershed.
Democracy and universal human rights are losing their champions, and their power as paradigms.
The world is changing fast. 

At the start of this year — when Xi Jinping received an adulatory welcome from the World Economic Forum elite at Davos with his speech championing “economic globalisation” — it was clear that the centre of international gravity was shifting.
The rush of international leaders to laud the launch of Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative followed. 

Those accorded the loudest fanfares in Beijing for that event were Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte and Russia’s Vladimir Putin — three champions of the new populist authoritarianism.
The G20 in Hamburg followed, at which German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who accorded Xi an especially warm welcome, implicitly contrasted favourably the Chinese “win-win” cliche with the US view of globalisation, which she said was “about winners and losers”.
The G20’s vacuous communique was suffused with the vocabulary and views with which Beijing feels at home.
Soon, China will host the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa for a summit.
Each step in this impressive progress underlines China’s authoritarian culture as the new global norm.
A year ago, the International Court of Arbitration lambasted China’s occupation and arming of the South China Sea. 

But Beijing refused to participate in the process, said it would ignore any finding and would plough on with its strategy. 

Which it has.
The bureaucracies of the Western leaders, including Australia, carefully considered how to respond to Liu’s imminent death.
The result: national leaders said nothing, foreign ministers regretted Liu’s demise and asked if his widow, Liu Xia — charged with no offence — might be allowed to travel outside China.
When Liu was awarded the Nobel in 2010, symposiums were held, speeches made, Western leaders commented widely.
Erna Solberg, the Prime Minister of Norway, which hosts the Nobel Peace Prize and was punished economically by China after Liu’s award, said nothing in the weeks after news of his liver cancer leaked out. 

The former Amnesty International leader there, Petter Eide, said “silence was a sign of support for the Chinese authorities”.
The question that governments, corporations, and especially now also universities, in Western countries ask is not what would Jesus do — which they would think risible — but what would China do.
Journalists and satirists in the West are widely praised for their bravery in poking fun at Donald Trump, the softest target since King George III.
How many have joked about Xi Jinping, the most powerful person in China since Mao Zedong, and in some regards even more powerful? 

In China, even to draw a cartoon or caricature of him is at least banned, and is likely to lead to something worse.
People in the West wonder whether their companies, or economies, will be cut off from China’s wealth if they venture criticisms or make fun.
Even firms like Facebook that have leveraged off their maverick founding myths, end up playing Chinese rules. 

Apple just conceded control over its Chinese data to comply with Beijing’s new cybersecurity regulations as it stores information for its customers in China with a government-owned company.
Trump read out an impressive speech on Western values before the G20. 

But he negated every word when he breathlessly replied — a few hours after Liu had died — to a question about Xi: “He’s a friend of mine. I have great respect for him … a great leader … a very talented man … a very good man … a terrific guy. I like being with him a lot, and he’s a very special person.”
Russia is slipstreaming China’s elevation, sequestering Crimea just as China has done with the South China Sea, as the two form a tight unit in controlling the UN Security Council.
The video of US student Cody Irwin joking in fluent Mandarin about Trump — to laughter and applause — at his graduation speech at Peking University this month has been widely praised.
But when Chinese student Yang Shuping praised America’s “fresh air” and democracy in her commencement speech at Maryland University in May, she faced an avalanche of enmity.
Appropriate lessons are being drawn. 

In career opportunity terms, Irwin has cemented his future, Yang has sealed her fate.
The Sinologist David Shambaugh wrote last month: “Until China develops values that appeal universally, it will lack one of the core features of global leadership.”
However, it is the Western world that is losing contact with core values. 

It is valuing more highly the control and the authority that China is championing.

Perfidious Albion

Britain is looking away as China tramples on the freedom of Hong Kong – and my father

By Angela Gui

Angela Gui: ‘My father’s case is only one out of many that illustrate the death of the rule of law in Hong Kong.’ 

Iam too young to remember the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997 and its promise for the new world I would live in. 

But I have lived to see that promise trampled.
The Sino-British Joint Declaration, signed to pave the way for the handover, was supposed to protect the people of Hong Kong from Chinese interference in their society and markets until 2047. 

Yet as the handover’s 20th anniversary approaches, China muscles in where it promised to tread lightly while Britain avoids eye contact.

Gui Minhai: the strange disappearance of a publisher who riled China's elite
As Xi Jinping has consolidated his grip on Chinese politics since he took office in 2013, Beijing has increasingly ignored the principle of “one country, two systems” on which the handover was based and actively eroded the freedoms this was supposed to guarantee.
In October 2015, my father Gui Minhai and his four colleagues were targeted and abducted by the agents of the Chinese Communist party for their work as booksellers and publishers. 

My father – a Swedish citizen – was taken while on holiday in Thailand, in the same place we’d spent Christmas together the year before. 

He was last seen getting into a car with a Mandarin-speaking man who had waited for him outside his holiday apartment. 

Next, his friend and colleague Lee Bo was abducted from the Hong Kong warehouse of Causeway Bay Books, which they ran together. 

Lee Bo is legally British and, like any Hong Konger, his freedom of expression should have been protected by the terms of 1997.
Their only “crime” had been to publish and sell books that were critical of the central Chinese government. 

So paranoid is Beijing about its public image, that it chooses to carry out cross-border kidnappings over some books. 

Causeway Bay Books specialised in publications that were banned on the mainland but legal in Hong Kong. 

The store’s manager, Lam Wing-kee, who was taken when travelling to Shenzhen, has described Causeway Bay Books “a symbol of resistance”. 

In spite of Hong Kong’s legal freedoms of speech and of the press the store is now closed because all its people have been abducted or bullied away. 

Other Hong Kong booksellers are picking “politically sensitive” titles off their shelves in the fear that they may be next; the next brief headline, the next gap in a family like my own.
I continue to live with my father’s absence – his image, messages from his friends, the cause he has become. 

Turning 53 this year, he spent a second birthday in a Chinese prison. 

Soon he will have spent two years in detention without access to a lawyer, Swedish consular officials, or regular contact with his family.
My father’s case is only one of many that illustrate the death of the rule of law in Hong Kong. 

Earlier this year, Canadian businessman Xiao Jianhua – who had connections to the Chinese political elite – disappeared from a Hong Kong hotel and later resurfaced on the mainland. 

In last year’s legislative council elections, six candidates were barred from running because of their political stance. 

The two pro-independence candidates who did end up getting elected were prevented from taking office. 

If “intolerable political stance” is now a valid excuse for barring LegCo candidates, then it won’t be long before the entire Hong Kong government is reduced to a miniature version of China’s.
The Joint Declaration was meant to guarantee that no Hong Kong resident would have to fear a “midnight knock on the door”. 

The reality at present is that what happened to my father can happen to any Hong Kong resident the mainland authorities wish to silence or bring before their own system of “justice”. 

Twenty-one years ago, John Major pledged that Britain would continue to defend the freedoms granted to Hong Kong by the Joint Declaration against its autocratic neighbour. 

Today, instead of holding China to its agreement, Britain glances down at its shoes and mumbles about the importance of trade. 

It is as if the British government wants to forget all about the promise it made to the people of Hong Kong. 

But China’s crackdown on dissent has made it difficult for Hong Kongers to forget.
Theresa May often emphasises the importance of British values in her speeches. 

But Britain’s limpness over Hong Kong seems to demonstrate only how easily these values are compromised away. 

I worry about the global implications of China being allowed to just walk away from such an important treaty. 

And I worry that in the years to come, we will have many more Lee Bos and Gui Minhais, kidnapped and detained because their work facilitated free speech. 

Hong Kong’s last governor, Lord Patten, has repeatedly argued that human rights issues can be pushed without bad effects on trade. 

Germany, for example, has shown that this is entirely possible, with Angela Merkel often publicly criticising China’s human rights record. 

With a potentially hard Brexit around the bend, a much reduced Britain will need a world governed by the rule of law. 

How the government handles its responsibilities to Hong Kong will be decisive in shaping the international character of the country that a stand-alone Britain will become. 

I for one hope it will be a country that honours its commitments and that stands up to defend human rights.

Tsai is world’s 8th-greatest leader: ‘Fortune’

‘BOLD MOVE’:The magazine cited Tsai Ing-wen’s phone call to US president Donald Trump, economic reforms and the wooing of tourists from Southeast Asia
Taipei Times

President Tsai Ing-wen 蔡英文 was listed eighth in a list of the world’s 50 greatest leaders in Fortune magazine’s latest annual ranking.
The list was released on Thursday, the New York-based business magazine’s fourth annual ranking of world leaders.
The section introducing the Taiwanese president said that Tsai captured headlines in December last year when she telephoned US president Donald Trump, the first known call between Taiwanese and US leaders since 1979.
That year, Washington withdrew diplomatic recognition from Taipei in favor of Beijing.
“It was a bold move for Taiwan’s first female president, who is steering a cautious path between the US and China,” Fortune said.
Describing Tsai as sympathetic to independence, the magazine said that when Beijing tried to punish Taiwan after her election victory in January last year by restricting the number of Chinese visiting the nation, she wooed tourists from Southeast Asia and sparked a tourism boom.
Tsai has also pushed economic reforms, including shortening the workweek to five days from six, it added.
The list covers government, philanthropy, business and the arts, and focuses on “men and women who are transforming the world and inspiring others to do the same,” Fortune said.
Other leaders on the list include German Chancellor Angela Merkel, ranked 10th, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, at 31st, and Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, 45th.
Heading the list are Theo Epstein, president of baseball operations for the Chicago Cubs, last year’s World Series champions; Jack Ma 馬雲, executive chairman of China-based e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd 阿里巴巴; and Pope Francis.
In April last year, Time magazine listed Tsai among the 100 most influential people in the world that year.
In June of the same year, she was ranked the 17th-most powerful woman in the world by US magazine Forbes.