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Friday, March 29, 2024

Swan song hastens the inevitable

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“China, by hook or by crook, will annex what it considers a ‘renegade province’ in due time. And it keeps pushing that envelope towards its goal.”

It was Nancy Pelosi’s moment at the world stage. At 82, it was to be her political swan song.

Her native California has seen droves moving out to Texas, Arizona, Oregon, and other states because life has been getting more and more unbearable, with high state taxes and stratospheric real property costs and rentals.

The homeless litter the streets of her native San Francisco, such that many now shun its fabled downtown attractions, from Union Square to Chinatown to Pier 39.

But she is Speaker of the House of Representatives, number three in the order of succession because under their political system, the vice-president automatically sits as president of the Senate, a most sensible set-up. That position gives her not just power, but awesome panache as well.

To be fair, her advocacies have always been wary of the bellowing dragon west of tiny Taiwan; her liberal democracy sentiments always demonstrate a rejection of authoritarian politics.

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But she was warned about including Taiwan in her Asian swing, not only by the “military” as her president mumbled, but by soft diplomatic ministrations from other Asian leaders.

And of course, by a bellicose China who saw the symbolic meaning of her visit as belligerence on the part of an America with whom its relations have soured in the last six years.

The victim here is Taiwan. Pelosi’s swan song has just hastened the inevitable.

China, by hook or by crook, will annex what it considers a “renegade province” in due time. And it keeps pushing that envelope towards its goal.

Xi Jinping has declared this goal before communist China’s party congress, and has anchored his continuing leadership on the unification of its recalcitrant parts with the mainland.

His predecessor achieved the hand-over from Britain of leased Hong Kong; previous to which, Portugal surrendered Macau.

The hand-over was premised on an agreement to honor Hong Kong’s legal and political system for at least 50 years, under a “one-country, two systems” approach.

Xi made short shrift of that promise in 2019, and despite worldwide condemnation, the erstwhile crown colony has yielded to his control, its “two systems” shattered.

High-handedness in Hong Kong increased the decibels of resistance in Taiwan.

In 2018, the pro-unification Kuomintang won significantly in the mid-term elections, and the pro-independence DPP of President Tsai Ing-wen was in danger of losing the national elections of 2020 to a strident Kuomintang.

Taiwan’s electorate was shocked with the Hong Kong experience, and instead of being cowed, they became angry.

The protests and the strong-handed tactics of the PRC in Hong Kong reversed the fortunes of the Kuomintang and gave Tsai a resounding re-election. This riled Beijing further.

To be sure, the animosity between the two super-power rivals started earlier. The first instance was when Donald Trump accepted a congratulatory call from Tsai, which Beijing saw as an affront to its One-China principle. Then the economic sanctions.

The world heaved a sigh of relief when Biden trumped the Donald in November of 2020.

But subsequent events proved otherwise, with the pandemic creating chaos in the world economy, and now the invasion of Ukraine by Russia’s Vladimir Putin exacerbating the crisis.

Against this backdrop, Nancy Pelosi chose to tweak the dragon’s tail.

I will no longer describe Beijing’s reaction in this article which our readers have seen on traditional and social media reports. Short of armed conflict, Beijing has given the world a view of what it can do, a simulation of war over the Taiwan Strait.

The US and Japan protested Beijing’s live-fire drills and missiles, but that is as far as they can do for the moment. Meanwhile, the entire world, most of all the Indo-Pacific region and our very own ASEAN, are worried at Beijing’s next moves.

It is clear that China’s slow asphyxiation of Taiwan’s economy, by banning certain aspects of their two-way trade, will further escalate.

The reality now is that the interdependence between the economies of the mainland and Taiwan has become a function not of good sense, but of the politics of losing face.

In the end, Pelosi’s tribute to the altar of democracy in her Taiwan visit, and Biden’s inability to stop her from such bravado has merely stepped up

Beijing’s resolve and shortened the “strategic ambiguity” of the situation.

There are three major political events in the near horizon: Taiwan’s election in November where Tsai’s term expires; the mid-term elections in the US of A where, as things stand, the balance of congressional power tilts against Biden and Pelosi’s Democratic Party; and China’s Communist Party Congress where Xi expects to get an unprecedented third term.

Meanwhile, the whole world is held in suspense. Taiwan, the innocent victim of these political power plays most of all.

****

Not an insignificant postscript is the effect of these events on the fate of 160,000 Filipinos living and working in Taiwan. (These are the rounded-up numbers as of the first quarter of 2021, before I resigned as MECO head.)

Earlier on, we started talks with civil defense officials of Taiwan, along with the resident representatives of Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand, which also have migrant workers in the island, about how our compatriots can be sheltered in case of hostilities.

The other side was a bit reluctant to engage, assuring us that such was not about to happen. The events of the past week have made the contingency plans a matter of urgency.

Can Taiwan house 23.9 million Taiwanese in their underground shelters, in addition to some 800,000 foreigners residing there? How long will the hostilities last? Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

And military tactics tell us that the first obvious targets will be the major ports and airports and all other military installations.

Our de-facto embassy in Taiwan has a contingency plan for Filipinos, but this is contingent on many variables, the most worrying of all being how to evacuate our compatriots when these ports and airports have been rendered inutile.

For now, let us all pray and hope for the best.

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