Hong Kong, China (PRWEB)
November 12, 2006
While conventional wisdom argues to keep the status quo with the province of Taiwan, author Terence Kwai, in his provocative new book, War and Peace Between America and China: How Solving the Taiwan Problem can Lead to a Pacific Century, suggests that failure to reunify Taiwan with China could create great uncertainty and lead to war between America and China.
Many Americans are becoming more aware of China's movement to reunify with Taiwan. While many Chinese see this as the ultimate conclusion to the century of humiliation that China suffered at the hands of imperialism and colonialism, others in the world, including America, worry about the rise of a new and bigger power.
Kwai, who runs seminars on China, argues that Taiwan is the first Chinese region to develop democratic institutions. Reunification may actually accelerate democracy throughout China. If China, America and Japan, the three largest national economies in the world, can live in peace and harmony, Kwai suggests, a new golden age, or a "Pacific Century," can truly be possible.
Harvard educated Dr. Terence Kwai is president of China Specialists, a research, consulting and investment firm based in Hong Kong. Dr. Kwai has taught international business at the University of Hong Kong and has written seven books, including Strategic Planning and Control: A New Dimension to Asian Business, China's Challenges in the 21st Century, and Japan and China: Prospects for Economic Partnership.
In War and Peace Between America and China, Dr. Terence Kwai suggests that failure to unify Taiwan with China could adversely affect the global economy.
Comment: Kwai is absolutely right.
Failure to reunify Taiwan with mainland China -- let's be semantically precise -- has already adversely affected the global economy. Taiwan's Personal Computer industry, as Taiwan independence chest-thumpers never tire of reminding us, is a significant component of the global economy.
Never mind that Taiwan's Personal Computer industry was the brainchild of the KMT, the regime that Taiwan independence spinmeisters persist in referring to as a "wai lai zheng quan," i.e., "outside/foreign political authority."
Lee Teng-hui's economically suicidal policy of "Avoid haste, be patient," perpetuated by Taiwan independence movement successor Chen Shui-bian, has already "adversely affected" Taiwan's economy, and therefore the global economy.
Conversely, a reunified China would favorably affect the global economy. Chinese reunification would not only enhance Taiwan's economic competitiveness by creating countless synergies with the Chinese mainland, it would also dramatically enhance Pacific Rim poltical stability.
This is of course the "Pan Blue reunificationist" position. But it is not exclusively a "Pan Blue reunificationist" position.
AmCham, the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei, recently released its 2006-2007 Taiwan White Paper:
AmCham Urges Relaxation of Trade Barriers with PRC
Taiwan News
May 31, 2006
The facilitation of cross-strait trade ... will invigorate the domestic economy and enhance Taiwan's competitiveness, the largest foreign business organization in the country said yesterday.
"Over the past years, AmCham has been calling on Taiwan to strengthen its competitiveness as a player in regional and world economies. This year we particularly emphasize that such competitiveness can only be achieved by removing obstacles to the free flow of goods, people, and capital between Taiwan and [mainland] China. This is no longer simply a Cross-strait' matter," Tom Johnson, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei, said at the unveiling of AmCham's 2006-2007 Taiwan White Paper yesterday.
"[mainland] China is becoming so firmly integrated into the world economy that Taiwan risks cutting itself off from global business by continuing to erect cross-strait barriers," he continued.
"Thankfully it appears that the people of Taiwan (judging from opinion polls) and government leaders (looking at their recent statements) understand and support the idea of building better cross-strait economic connections - including the opening of direct passenger and cargo flights," he said.
"When that happens, Taiwan will be able to leverage its core competencies as a world trader in order to rejuvenate the domestic economy."
AmCham, being a private sector business organization, is among the few entities on Taiwan, foreign or domestic, that comes anywhere close to speaking the truth.
Kwai is to be commended for having the intellectual independence to thumb his nose at the China Threat theorists' notion that Chinese reunification would somehow constitute a threat to regional or even world peace.
Unfortunately Kwai goes awry when he attempts to explain why failure to unify Taiwan with mainland China could adversely affect the global economy.
Kwai goes awry because he subscribes to the long discredited, but still dominant theory of "Democratic Peace." He subscribes to the fallacy that "Democracy equals peace. No democracy equals no peace. " He subscribes to the fallacy that because mainland China is undemocratic, therefore it cannot be peaceful. He hopes that integrating a democratic Taiwan into an undemocratic mainland China will innoculate mainland China with the democratic virus, transforming a reunified China into a democratic, hence more peaceful nation.
In short, Dr. Kwai's prescription, reunification, is correct. But Dr. Kwai's diagnosis, "Not enough democracy" couldn't be more wrong. .
The logical response to the Conventional Wisdom promulgated by China Threat theorists is: "Why ?"
Why assume that Chinese reunfication would be any more of a threat to world peace than German reunification?
German reunification turned out to be beneficial, not only to European regional peace, but also world peace. What possible reason is there to assume that Chinese reunification would not be equally beneficial, not only to Asian regional peace, but also world peace?
Chinese reunification can be defined as a threat to peace only if one insists on blaming any disturbances to the peace on the victim instead of the victimizer.
Chinese reunification would eliminate the key threat to Asian regional and world peace, because Chinese reunification would eliminate the most significant bone of contention between the US and China -- hegemonistic US attempts to split Taiwan off from China.
Chinese reunification is an essential step along China's hard won return to its traditionally peaceful economic superpower status. Should anyone really be surprised that US and Japanese hegemonists are committed to keeping China divided and weakened?
Western strategic analysts often bill themselves as humanists concerned not merely with helping their own governments gain a strategic advantage over rivals, but about the future of the mankind as a whole.
In fact, most of them are far more narrowly Chauvinistic than they care to admit. The way their minds work can be seen in the way the US government has chosen to deal with China.
CIA World Factbook Map of China
CIA World Factbook Map of "Taiwan"
On the one hand the US government insists that it recognizes only One China. Under its entry for "China" the CIA World Factbook correctly uses the same color for Taiwan as it does for the Chinese mainland.
On the other hand, the US government insists on creating a separate entry in the CIA World Factbook entitled "Taiwan," where it applies a different color to the island of Taiwan than it does to the Chinese mainland.
What's more, the manner in which they labeled the Chinese mainland "China" implies that only the mainland is China, that "Taiwan" is not China.
The pipe-puffing, tweed-wearing Yalies in The Company evidently consider themselves fiendishly clever for playing such two-faced little games.
Viewed in isolation, these sleazy little tricks may not seem like anything worth complaining about. But viewed in context they reveal a larger pattern of bad faith and malevolent intent. Hardly the way a great nation ought to comport itself.
The ugly fact is that US and Japanese hegemonists, consumed with envy at the prospect of China outcompeting them on the free market playing field, remain stubbornly committed to sabotaging China's peaceful renaissance by any means available, peaceful or violent.
The Taiwan independence movement is of course the most convenient political force at their disposal, and Taiwan independence Quislings their most "useful idiots."
Mainstream intellectuals in developing nations are often unseemingly eager to win the peer approval of their western counterparts. It is time they paused to "consider the source."
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