Category Archives: Americas

Time To Bring Taiwan In From The Cold: Start Working Towards A Normalization Of Relations

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 8, No. 2, February 2020

Taiwan into the UN rally held in front of the PRC Mission to the UN in New York City, September 22, 2018. Photo: Gerrit van der Wees.

Gerrit van der Wees
George Mason University, George Washington University

A recent episode in Prague illustrates in two important ways that China’s relations with the West are changing fast.  It shows the need for the US and Western Europe to reimagine relations with Taiwan, bring Taiwan in from the cold of political isolation, start working towards a normalization of relations, and find a rightful place for that democratic country in the international family of nations.

A Prague Spring in the offing?

First, consider that policymakers in the Czech Republic are increasingly pushing back against the way China has been attempting to isolate Taiwan internationally. Led by the new mayor of Prague Zdeněk Hřib, elected in November 2018, and his up-and-coming Pirate Party, the city last year broke off sister-city ties with Beijing – which had imposed unacceptable “One China” conditions on the arrangement – and established ties with Taiwan’s capital Taipei.

To be sure, at the national level, key policymakers like President Miloš Zeman and Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, both associated with the right of center business community, are still very much in Beijing’s pocket. But observers in Prague indicate that a new Prague Spring is in the offing.

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Plutocrats Are Only Part Of A Larger Problem

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 8, No. 2, February 2020

BEIJING, CHINA – MARCH 18: Apple CEO Tim Cook (R) attends China Development Forum 2017 – Economic Summit at Diaoyutai State Guesthouse on March 18, 2017 in Beijing, China. The forum sponsored by Development Research Center of the State Council centers on “China and the World: Economic Transformation through Structural Reforms”. Source: ITHome.

William R. Hawkins
Former US House Foreign Affairs Committee member

I ran across a review of the Plutocratic Insurgency Reader in an unusual place. Not in the usual left media outlets, like Jacobin, Dissent or The New Republic as its title would seem to fit, but in Parameters, the quarterly journal of the U.S. Army War College (AWC). This is because the book is not edited by the usual “progessive” activists, but by Robert J. Bunker, adjunct research professor at the AWC Strategic Studies Institute and his wife, Pamela Ligouri Bunker, a specialist in counter-terrorism. And the book is published under the auspices of the Small Wars Journal (SWJ), not known for leaning left.

The book collects 31 short essays by 15 authors, six of whom have ties to either the AWC or the SWJ, thus giving a high expectation that national security would be its primary concern. Its self-avowed purpose is to present the core of a scholarly movement that originated in 2012 from correspondence between Robert Bunker and Nils Gilman of the Bergguen Institute concerning how the wealthy “opt out of participation in the collective institutions that make up society.” The Bergguen Institute was founded in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and Gilman’s interest is apparently reshaping the relationship between globalized capitalism and national sovereignty. As one reads through the essays, there is a tension that undermines the national security side of the discussion in favor of a domestic policy focus on income inequality and a radical desire to transform property rights that leaves the welfare state in the dust. Gilman is not an editor, but I would argue, his is the stronger voice.

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Scientific Publishers Disregard International Law

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 12, December 2019

Republic of China’s 11-dash line, which succeeded the 9-dash line in 1947. Secretariat of Government of Guangdong Province, Republic of China – Made by Territory Department of Ministry of the Interior, printed by Bureau of Surveying of Ministry of Defence. Now in Sun Yat-sen Library of Guangdong Province, People’s Republic of China. Source: Wikimedia

Clive Hamilton
Charles Sturt University

Why are prestigious scientific journals endorsing China’s illegitimate territorial claims?

Times Higher Education reports that journals including Cells, Diversity and Distributions, Molecular Ecology, New Phytologist and Plos One have published maps of China that incorporate the ‘nine-dash line’, hand-drawn on a map in 1947 that marked out China’s claim to virtually all of the South China Sea and the islands and reefs within it.

China’s assertion of jurisdiction within the nine-dash line—including the right to its rich resources and deployment of its navy and maritime militia to force other long-term users out of the sea—has raised military tensions and prompted a series of maritime disputes. Filipino fisherman can no longer trawl around Scarborough Shoal, which is within the Philippines exclusive economic zone. Vietnam has been forced to abandon oil exploration in its zone after pressure from Beijing.

When the Philippines challenged China’s claimed jurisdiction within the nine-dash line, an arbitral tribunal was constituted in The Hague under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. In July 2016, the tribunal delivered a ‘sweeping rebuke’ of China’s behaviour in the South China Sea. The tribunal ruled that there is ‘no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the “nine-dash line”.’

Yet prestigious scientific journals are disregarding international law and legitimizing China’s claim by publishing maps showing everything within the nine-dash line as belonging to China. This legitimization process is subtle propaganda, part of Beijing’s campaign to slowly and invisibly induce the world to accept its claim.

The maps occur in articles that have no bearing at all on the South China Sea, such as ones covering the distribution of butterflies, trees and grasses in China, and are included solely as political statements.

The insertion of the nine-dash line in an article in Palgrave Communications, owned by Springer Nature, was gratuitous because its subject is the development of agriculture in China since ancient times. As if anticipating objections, the paper carries a ‘publisher’s note’ at the end. It reads: ‘Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.’ Continue reading →

The Legitimacy of U.S. “Intervention” in Hong Kong and East Turkistan

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By William R. Hawkins

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 12, December 2019

This photo taken on May 31, 2019 shows a watchtower on a high-security facility near what is believed to be a re-education camp where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained, on the outskirts of Hotan, in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region. As many as one million ethnic Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities are believed to be held in a network of internment camps in Xinjiang, but China has not given any figures and describes the facilities as “vocational education centres” aimed at steering people away from extremism. (Photo by GREG BAKER / AFP via Getty Images)

On the surface, the Hong Kong Democracy and Human Rights Act and the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act seem similar. Both condemn oppression in the People’s Republic of China and declare that American values of human rights, democracy and religious freedom are the proper norms on which Beijing’s actions will be evaluated. Violation of these standards will bring sanctions against those held responsible and could affect how the broader relations between the PRC and the U.S. will be conducted going forward.

The situations in the Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (East Turkistan) are different as are particular measures in the two bills. The legislative efforts are, however, united in a common concern seen on both sides of the aisle. Americans cannot look askance from what happens in China without betraying their own values.

The U.S. interest in Hong Kong’s autonomy, prosperity and liberty (all seen as interconnected) goes back to the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992 which states “Support for democratization is a fundamental principle of United States foreign policy.” The British turned Hong Kong back to China in 1997 after governing the city since 1847. Though Hong Kong was not a democracy, it became one of the great cities of the world due to the culture of freedom and Western values conveyed by the British. In 1984, when London and Beijing negotiated Hong Kong’s future, the Chinese pledged that “The current social and economic systems in Hong Kong will remain unchanged, and so will the life-style” for 50 years. The British hoped that in another half century, the Communist regime would reform itself in positive ways, even perhaps out of existence. Unfortunately, as Hong Kong nears the half-way point of this special status, Beijing seems more of a threat than ever before. Under the arguably megalomaniac General Secretary Xi Jinping whose “China Dream” is to wield dominant global power by 2049 (the centennial of the Communist takeover), the “one country, two systems” balance will end with the rule of just one system, communism. Continue reading →

War In The Taiwan Strait Is Not Unthinkable: Some Will Lose More Than Others

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 11, November 2019

Screen capture of Chinese state media video of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops training for an assault on Taiwan’s presidential office. Pictured is a mock building at the Zhurihe military base in China, that mimics the actual building in Taipei. The video aired July 5, 2015. CCTV via Apple Daily.

Grant Newsham
US Marine Officer (Ret)

Whether anyone actually ‘wins’ a war is a philosophical debate.  The Germans and Japanese in 1945 might have thought wars do indeed have winners.  But perhaps it’s better said that in most conflicts some parties ‘lose more than others.’

Such would be the case if Beijing attempted to militarily subjugate Taiwan.  And Xi Jinping just might do so.  He declared in a January 2019 speech that “we (China) do not promise to renounce the use of force and reserve the option to use all necessary measures (to take Taiwan.)”[1]

The Battle for Taiwan would have truly global consequences, akin to the invasion of Poland by the Soviets and Germans in 1939.

However, much of the debate over a Taiwan Strait conflict focuses on preparation for and conduct of the PRC’s attack: whether Beijing will or won’t attack, what an attack might look like and Taiwan’s ability to defend itself, whether the US will or should get involved and whether it ought to sell Taiwan ‘this or that’ weapon.  Such discussion is useful, but the actual consequences and longer-term ripple effects of a fight over Taiwan deserve much more attention.[2]

This paper examines key aspects of what happens once the shooting starts, and the follow-on global economic and political effects.  The envisioned scenario is a full-scale PLA assault against Taiwan, but it’s worth noting that even a ‘limited’ assault–such as against one of Taiwan’s offshore islands–may not stay limited for very long: given Beijing’s oft-stated determination to take all of Taiwan, an off-shore island assault would only constitute a tactical objective in the march on Taipei, and would also have serious and wide-ranging political and economic consequences.

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