http://tinyurl.com/l9dy6ph
On the antlers of a dilemma
...Students occupying parliament have resorted to undemocratic
means, and many of the arguments they and the DPP make about the
trade agreement are specious....
...學生佔領議會是反民主的，而且學生和民進黨關於貿易協議的訴求
都是刻意誤導...
其他部分大概就是在描述大腸花的形成背景。主要是認為馬的親中政策讓
某些人產生疑慮。才會在台灣產生迴響。至於對帶頭人的評價，人家已經
講得很清楚囉。(攤手
整篇裡面除了這段都沒有價值判斷，負面意見也是引用DPP的發言。這些人
真的可以洗洗睡了。
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全文
THE fresh-faced good looks have been lined and drawn by the cares
of office. His immaculate English is forsaken for the dignity of
immaculate Mandarin. Patient replies to questions come wearily, as
if said many times before. Yet, six years into his presidency, Ma
Ying-jeou’s hair remains as lush and jet-black as any Chinese
Politburo member’s. And, speaking in the presidential palace in
Taipei, he remains as unwilling as any leader in Beijing to admit
to any fundamental flaws in strategy.
Perhaps Mr Ma draws inspiration from his portrait of Sun Yat-sen,
founder of his ruling party, the Kuomintang (KMT), and, in 1912,
of the Republic of China to which Taiwan’s government still owes
its name. Sun is revered as a nationalist hero not just by the KMT
but, across the Taiwan Strait, by the Chinese Communist Party
too. Mr Ma may also hope to be feted on both sides of the strait—
in his case as a leader responsible for a historic rapprochement.
For now, however, reconciliation between Taiwan and China remains
distant. And Mr Ma, once the KMT’s most popular politician, is
taunted by opponents as the “9% president”, a reference to his
approval ratings in opinion polls last autumn.
Economic integration
Improving relations with China has been the central theme of his
administration, after the tensions of eight years of rule by the
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which leans towards declaring
formal independence from the mainland. Mr Ma can boast of 21
agreements signed with China. He reels off the numbers of two
fast-integrating economies: a tenfold increase in six years in
mainland tourists to Taiwan, to 2.85m in 2013; cross-strait
flights from none at all to 118 every day; two-way trade,
including with Hong Kong, up to $160 billion a year.
China’s strategy to reabsorb Taiwan is plain. As the island’s
economy becomes more intertwined with that of the vast mainland,
China thinks, resistance to unification will wane. Then Taiwan
becomes an “autonomous” part of China—like Hong Kong, though
allowed its own army. Taiwan will return to the motherland without
resort to the missiles and increasingly powerful armed forces
ranged against it. But as Mr Ma sees it, cross-strait “
rapprochement” is a first line of defence against Chinese
aggression, since “a unilateral move by the mainland to change
the status quo by non-peaceful means would come at a dear price”.
Politics in Taiwan is framed as a debate about independence or
unification but is really about preserving the status quo.
The next step in rapprochement with China would be a meeting
between political leaders. In February in Nanjing, once the
capital of a KMT government of all China, ministers from China and
Taiwan held their first formal meeting since 1949. Mr Ma hoped to
meet China’s president, Xi Jinping, in Beijing this November, at
the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit. To
accommodate Hong Kong and Taiwan, APEC’s members are not “
countries” but “economies”. So Mr Xi and Mr Ma could meet as “
economic leaders”, sidestepping the tricky protocol that usually
dogs relations, with China viewing Taiwan as a mere province. The
Chinese demurred. But Mr Ma thinks a meeting somewhere is “not
outside the realm of possibility”.
This backdrop explains why a protest movement against a
services-trade agreement with the mainland is more than a little
local difficulty for Mr Ma. Students occupying parliament have
resorted to undemocratic means, and many of the arguments they and
the DPP make about the trade agreement are specious. But they
have tapped a vein of popular mistrust of Mr Ma and of economic
integration with the mainland. A split persists between native
Taiwanese, on the island for generations, and mainlanders, like Mr
Ma, whose families came over as the KMT lost the civil war in the
1940s. Protesters portray Mr Ma as either a mainland stooge or as
clueless and out of touch. In the occupied parliament, student
caricatures give him antlers, a reference to a slip he once made
when he appeared to suggest that the deer-antlers used in Chinese
medicine were in fact hair from the animal’s ears.
Mr Ma says public opinion supports a “Ma-Xi” summit. Joseph Wu
of the DPP, however, claims such a meeting would actually damage
the KMT in the next presidential election, due in 2016; rather, he
says, Mr Ma is trying to leave a personal legacy. The DPP’s lead
in the polls alarms not just the Chinese government but also
America, which could do without another flare-up in a dangerous
region. The stronger China grows, the more Taiwan’s security
depends on commitments from America. It switched diplomatic
recognition to Beijing in 1979, but Congress then passed a law
obliging it to help Taiwan defend itself.
All political lives end…
Mr Ma says relations with America are better than they have ever
been at least since 1979 and perhaps before. Others are doubtful.
In all the talk of America’s “pivot” to Asia, its promises to
Taiwan are rarely mentioned. Many in Taiwan paid attention when
John Mearsheimer, an American academic, suggested in the National
Interest, a policy journal, that there is “a reasonable chance
American policymakers will eventually conclude that it makes good
strategic sense to abandon Taiwan and to allow China to coerce it
into accepting unification.” For some, abandonment is a fact of
life and unification a matter of time. “No one is on our side
strategically, diplomatically, politically; we have to count on
China’s goodwill,” an academic in Taipei argues.
Mr Ma has tried to steer what seems a sensible middle course
between such defeatism and the adventurism of those in the DPP who
would like to confront and challenge China. But he sounds weary
with the effort, and Taiwan’s people seem weary of him. Their
pragmatism and the DPP’s internecine strife may yet see them
elect another KMT president in 2016. But if Mr Ma hoped to leave
office with cross-strait relations stabilised, and with his own
role as an historic peacemaker recognised on both sides and around
the world, he seems likely to be disappointed.