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COMMENTARY
January 3, 2004
Chinese lantern
I am appalled to discover that through my focus on the "war on terrorism" I did not write about China through all the last calendar year. Let me rectify this early in 2004. While the contest between Islam's Jihadists and the West has been naturally the focus of our attention in international affairs it cannot be the exclusive issue. The other huge challenge to our peace comes from the decaying but hegemonic communist regime that still rules China and which provides the only plausible competitor to the U.S. as a superpower. The reader will wonder in the world post 9/11/01 what I mean by "the West". To my mind we should no longer use this term as a geographical grouping of North America and Western Europe corresponding roughly to the old NATO membership. Japan South Korea Taiwan and Israel have become effectively Western nations in political habit and orientation; and the frontier has been extended well to the east in Europe. Such countries as India Thailand possibly Russia Chile Mexico move increasingly into the "Western hemisphere" -- reach a point where there is no going back short of total disaster on that peculiar combination of bourgeois social economic legal and political institutions which make them non-threatening to us even when they grow stronger. Our safety whether we like it or not depends in the foreseeable future on a Pax Americana. The American hyperpower is "the West" par excellence -- even more the guarantor of our free lives and prosperity than was once the Royal Navy. The French Germans even Canadians may natter or whine but the only real external challenge to this order is an armed challenge. (Which does not exclude the threat of moral decay from within.) The contest between this "West" and alternative "Easts" is moreover dynamic: there is no stasis and never will be a secular "end of history". So long as we live we must establish our way of life or surrender to another. The world will never be a safe place. Taiwan remains important out of all proportion to its size because it is in the Far East what Israel is in the Middle East -- the little beleaguered democracy at the front of a contest of civilizations. If Taiwan can remain what it is -- a beacon of freedom enterprise and rule of law in the face of potential communist invasion -- our beachhead holds. For Taiwan is through all Chinese history the only place where democracy and non-arbitrary government has ever been established. Here is where my own judgement differs radically from that of the Bush administration; though I secretly hope they are double-dealing with China. When President Bush recently publicly warned Taiwan against any formal declaration of independence from the mainland -- something the great majority of Taiwanese long for -- he did it to appease China and to the sensible end of getting Beijing's help against North Korea. Mr. Bush cannot risk selling out Taiwan however. For the future of democracy and non-arbitrary government in China itself depends upon Taiwan's achievement. As we should realize Beijing has repaid Mr. Bush's dangerous gesture -- for this is the only way to explain the sudden agreement of North Korea to let a U.S. delegation inspect its Yongbyon nuclear facilities. (This may be a huge breakthrough parallel with the recent retreats of Libya and Iran from their weapons programmes.) Taiwan is democracy's beachhead in the Far East and the front line runs presently through Hong Kong. On New Year's Day well over 100 000 people demonstrated in Hong Kong's streets to demand reforms. More than half a million took the streets last July challenging the legitimacy of Hong Kong' s Beijing-imposed municipal government under the hated Tung Chee-hwa. There will be new municipal elections in September. The number of directly elected members of Hong Kong's legislative council will rise to 30 out of 60 (it is now 24). Since several of the appointed members are sympathetic to the aspirations of Hong Kong's people the possibility now exists that a landslide victory for the reform movement will create a blocking majority against Beijing's stooge. This would create by the end of this year a face-off. Beijing's position has been consistently that it is not opposed to democratic reforms so long as they are "gradual". But Beijing's idea of gradualism runs along the lines of Zeno's paradox: you may move towards democracy so long as you never get there. In pure theory Hong Kong's chief executive was himself to be directly elected by the year 2007. In practice the Chinese communists settled for a date which when it was agreed in 1997 seemed as far off to them as 1997 must have seemed to British negotiators who signed the original 99-year lease for Hong Kong in 1898. My guess is that this will be the crunch year for Hong Kong. While hope springs eternal I cannot imagine the present Chinese politburo agreeing to surrender their power to overrule any decision made of by and for the people of Hong Kong for the simple reason that this would set the precedent to sweep them from power across China. We thus depend on the U.S. to insist first on the continuing independence of Taiwan; second on China's treaty obligations towards Hong Kong; and third on further Chinese domestic reforms. These are the West's essential interests. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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