Opinion: Pushing China’s buttons

BOSTON — There is nothing like a good flood, and an imperfect governmental response, to set off people’s ire.

George W. Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina four years ago erased any lingering credibility he had with the electorate, and they took it out on his party in the next election.

Nearly 40 years ago a monsoon storm in the Bay of Bengal brought flooding and great loss of life to what was then East Pakistan. The people’s ire morphed into revolution and, with the help of India, East Pakistan split away to become Bangladesh.

The Taiwan government’s reaction to the recent typhoon, that that did so much damage and killed upwards of 600 people, was also bitterly criticized and has brought political trouble down on President Ma Ying-jeou’s head.

Unfortunately, flood politics have now involved the Dalai Lama who is making a tour of the devastated south of Taiwan this week. The Dalai Lama has visited Taiwan before, but his visit comes at a delicate time. Ma’s government had been improving relations with the mainland, with direct tourist flights and shipping across the Taiwan Straight without having to first transit Hong Kong. A considerable number of Taiwan citizens live and work in China now, and China has become Taiwan’s biggest trading partner.

The opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in Taiwan, however, favors formal independence while Ma’s Kuomintang party does not. It is no coincidence that the invitation to the Dalai Lama comes from seven southern cities, badly hit by the typhoon, whose leaders happen to belong to the DDP. It is said that Ma, who turned down a previous visit by the Dalai Lama, didn’t feel he could risk further unpopularity by doing so again when tempers are so high. Many Taiwanese citizens are Buddhist, but the Tantric Buddhism of Tibet is very different.

The two most sensitive subjects for Beijing’s leadership are independence for Tibet and Taiwan. The Dalai Lama advocates autonomy for Tibet, not full independence, but Beijing doesn’t believe him and employs its most venomous rhetoric when referring to him. Feelings left by anti–Chinese riots in Tibet a year ago are still raw

As for Taiwan, it was occupied by the retreating forces of Chiang Kai-shek after the civil war in 1949. Beijing holds that Taiwan is a part of China and has said China would go to war rather than see Taiwan declare independence.

President Richard Nixon and Chou En-lai produced a masterpiece of diplomatic ambiguity in the Shanghai Communique of 1972 in which China stated its claim to Taiwan, and America agreed that there was only one China, not two, and that the matter should be settled peacefully. It was left up in the air by the Americans which government represented the one China, but by 1979 the switch of diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to mainland China was complete.

China has been transformed by a capitalist economy since the days of Nixon’s trip to China, and Communism remains only in the name of the ruling party. Improving the economy has been China’s primary goal ever since. But that hasn’t lessened Beijing’s insistence on sovereignty over Taiwan. China’s military buildup of the last few years has been to designed to gain control over the Taiwan Straight so that no foreign power — i.e. the United States — could intervene if a cross–straight invasion were seen necessary to preserve China’s territorial integrity.

No doubt the invitation to the Dalai Lama was delivered by the DDP to poke a stick in the political eye of Ma Ying-jeou and mainland China as well. It is a pity that the Dalai Lama did not refuse the invitation, seeing clearly what it was, but then the Dalai Lama is a consummate politician who may see it as an opportunity to pressure China and make a little mischief in his own cause.

Predictably, Beijing took the bait, and said: “No matter under what form or identity Dalai uses to enter Taiwan, we resolutely oppose this.”

Pushing China’s hottest buttons on Taiwan and Tibet at the same time is a dangerous game, and the United States ought to make it very clear that the Shanghai Communique is still the only game in town as far as Washington is concerned. As much as I admire the Dalai Lama and his cause, the visit to Taiwan is an unnecessarily provocative act.