No longer pretending to be enemies, a condition in which they engaged in angry rhetoric while doing much business together on the side, a public love affair now has broken out across the Strait of Formosa. On Friday, there were scheduled direct flights between the mainland and its breakaway island* for the first time in 60 years, and the invasion of tourists clicking their cameras was on.

Robert Scheer, veteran journalist and author of The Pornography of Power, has published an article, strangely titled “Taiwan Declares Peace on China,” that has been posted at Truthdig, The San Francisco Chronicler and The Huffington Post.

Sheer’s basic argument is that the direct flights are a sign of growing peace in the Strait and a blow to Taiwan’s well-armed, neoconservative friends in the US who, as J. Michael Cole so nicely put it, think “international security is best served through further militarization -- greater investment in weapons, more reliance on force to solve problems and preemptive military action.”

That’s great.  Don’t get me wrong.  Let me stress the woeful regard I have for the truism that the only people in the US who seem to pay any attention to Taiwan are the likes of Wolfowitz, Tancredo, Bolton, etc.  Hawks certainly do rule the US’ Taiwan policy, and I personally don’t really get too worked up when Taiwan doesn’t get the American weapons that it wants or that the US wants to sell them.

(I’ve been assured before that those Taiwan supporters in the US with neoconservative leanings really do love Taiwan and would do anything for it, but that has little effect on my feelings towards their policies.  I’m glad they like Taiwan, but I often wonder that if their very support hurts Taiwan’s chances of gaining broader support in the US.  If I knew nothing about Taiwan, I probably wouldn’t be too turned on by the fact that the three aforementioned politicos are so heavily invested in the islands well-being.)

I believe peace is possible, and I don’t think its achievement will necessitate a war.  On that point, I agree with Mr. Scheer.

That said, though, I’m curious as to where exactly Scheer got the idea that war is now seen as “counterproductive” in the PRC?  One of the first things China did before the start of the direct flights, if I’m not mistaken, was to “update” the 1000+ missiles it has pointing at Taiwan:

Professor Christopher Hughes, an LSE-based expert on Taiwan, thought the boost from tourism had been overestimated. His initial optimism about the thaw had also waned after conversations with mainland officials and academics. “Their way of thinking was: ‘Taiwan’s come over to our way of thinking; Ma’s going to do what we want him to,’” he said, adding that Beijing had updated its missiles opposite Taiwan. “The question is: what is Taiwan getting out of this?"

Admittedly, I don’t know what steps one takes in “updating” missiles, but it doesn’t sound like something you do if you want to demonstrate the good faith you have in the relations you’re trying to foster.  How exactly does that jive with Taiwan’s supposed declaration of peace on China?

Moreover, its becoming more and more apparent that Taiwan is getting very little out of the deal.  China refused to let Taiwanese airlines in on the historic transits.  This, I feel, is the part that’s been left out of most of the reporting (not, as Scheer says, the fact that the neocons are going to be left in the cold).  The Hong Kong-Taipei route is one of the busiest in the world.  Now that some of that traffic will be redirected, Taiwanese companies aren’t being allowed any of the new business. 

What the KMT is doing now is no different than the DPP’s policy to facilitate closer ties with China, aside from the fact that KMT is willing to let China dictate all of the rules, and the DPP wasn’t, as Max Hirsch commented on the East West Center’s blog:

Although typically branded a ”troublemaker” — ie, one who has antagonized Beijing and Washington — Chen also leaves behind the much quieter legacy of pushing the KMT to transform (as you mention) and allowing for a degree of cross-strait economic integration that has been unprecedented, even under KMT administrations preceding his.

While declining to dismantle (indeed, he even threw up some of his own) some of the roadblocks that have hindered cross-strait trade, Chen has presided over a massive (the largest in history) trade and investment flow across the strait, while hammering out many of the prickly details of further links for which credit will ultimately go to the KMT.

A few days ago, I sat down with a top KMT official slated for a Cabinet position under Ma. Off-the- record, the official admitted that the foundations for opening up Taiwan to Chinese tourists, and for direct air and shipping links had already been laid through years of painstaking negotiations with Beijing, initiated and conducted by the DPP-led government. I doubt that much credit will go to the DPP for this, however. Equally sad is the lost legacy of how the DPP played a role in forcing the KMT to democratize from without; indeed, the opposition party (soon to become the ruling one) was, by and large, dragged kicking and screaming into democracy; now it is also beginning to embrace the localization movement that defines the DPP: Oddly enough, ”Taiwan First” was a slogan that the KMT clung to during Ma’s presidential campaign.

Right now, it seems that China has gotten everything it wants out of the deal, and Taiwan’s gotten little, because the KMT isn’t willing to stand up and make sure that Taiwan gets its cut. 

I can’t reiterate this enough.  I’m not denying that the cross-strait flights are a good thing.  While I certainly don’t think they they’ll be the economic boon that the KMT is claiming they will be, and I’m not alone, I have hope for moderate benefits, both financial and cultural.  It’s just a shame that KMT was so ready to back down, not daring to demand the PRC compromise. 

* There still appears to be very few people willing to let go of the split meme.  It seems obvious to me that a group fleeing to an island during a civil war is fundamentally different from a group of people seceding from a certain union. 

Before I start, I wondered if I might make one suggestion: if you’re going to make a graph depicting positive and negative attitudes,  it would probably be better to use gray to stand for the latter and not the former. 

But, hey, it’s your study, Pew

.  You do what you want.

Global Economy

Take a look at the following three graphs:

Several things struck me here.  First, obviously, malaise is the word of the day in much of the world.  A majority in many countries see their economies either worsening or remaining the same, with only an astounding 5% in Japan thinking their economy will improve. 

While the US respondents in the first graph show a fairly balanced view of their future – with about a third in each category – I would never have expected to find the US at the bottom of the list when it comes to positive views of international trade.  As Emmanuel said at International Political Economy Zone:

So let me get this straight: US GDP in Q1 2008 would have been nearly nothing had it not been for the contributions of net exports, yet America is the least trade-friendly country in this sample? Given current trends, it's certainly plausible that the trade sceptics already outnumber the pro-trade set. Just in time for the 2008 elections, too--it will be very interesting to see how this sort of sentiment will manifest itself come election time. The world awaits what the US has in store for it..

It wasn’t just the Nervous Nellies in the US that surprised me the most in the second graph.  It was the fact that, in light of the US views, the French views were so positive.  I spent a lot of time* when I lived in France, and thereafter, debating the particularity of the French when it comes to their perspectives on la mondialisation.  

Two studies come to mind on the subject.  One international poll asked participants in several countries to say the first word that comes to mind when they heard the word globalization.  While the majority of people in other countries described global trade in positive terms like, commerce, prosperity, etc., the majority of French respondents had a singularly different view: peur [fear].

The second study was a European study in which interviewees were simply asked whether or not they had a positive or negative view of international trade.  While most countries managed above sixty percent positive views, France stood out in that it posed a mirror image of the countries around it, with only about 35 percent of the population viewing globalization favorably. 

(I can now find neither of these studies, so take it with a grain of salt.)

Now, what we’re seeing above is twice as many French people saying that their growing economic ties in the international community are “very good” for the country, with only fifteen percent in the US agreeing.

Politics

This one shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone:

However, I do find these interesting:

Right off the bat, does it worry anyone that there are more people in Japan who claim to be following the US election “very closely/somewhat closely” than in the US?  I’m assuming it has something to do with the fact that the coverage in Japan couldn’t possibly be the incessant dribble that it is in the US (pessimist?  No…), so maybe they just haven’t turned off their TVs yet. 

Notice, the only two countries where McCain had a lead at the time of the survey** were Jordan and the US, and it’s not much of a lead either.  This caught my eye, particularly, because I’m one who thinks that right now world opinion – while certainly not the deciding factor – should be an important consideration when voting for our next president. 

Moreover, it shows a considerable disconnect between the US and the outside world.  This might be expected, but I wonder if other surveys in the eighties or nineties would have shown the international community leaning so far towards one candidate. 

Views of China and the US

I hope a lot of Americans and Chinese will see these graphs (which they won’t) and ponder the messages therein.  In both the US and China, one key idea has been lost in the translation of the news from the moment it transpires to the moment it shows up on the television: they don’t hate you. 

While I feel that this misunderstanding raises its ugly head more often in China than in the US, there is certainly a common thread among many Americans in the belief that protests and attacks on American policy and practice automatically denote a consuming disdain for everything that is “America.”  This belief has become particularly hard to dispel over the last eight years, as it’s been used by many of our politicians to pit us against the world.  While the foundation of this claim is weakening, there are still many in the US who see criticism of US policy as criticism of what it is to be American. 

This is all to say that suffocated somewhere beneath all of the media hoopla is the truism that the political entity that is “America” and the culture that is “American” are not one in the same, intertwined as they may be. 

I found this particularly frustrating when listening to this interview on NPR with Johns-Hopkins professor Fouad Ajami.  I agree with Dr. Ajami that anti-Americanism is not nearly as widely held a belief as many would think, but, at the same time, noting the long lines of people waiting to come to the US isn’t a sufficient refutation of that position.  I was dying for someone to call up and say, “Wait, people saying their view of the US is more negative than positive doesn’t really say much about anti-Americanism.  People around the world are very frustrated with many of the US’ policies, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t want to come to live, work, or travel.  That doesn’t suggest anything about their view of Americans, or all that is America, for that matter.” 

Moreover, regarding those people who really do hate Americans, it’s important to remember that minds can be changed.  Some of my best friends from my time abroad are people who, at first, didn’t want to associate with me at all.  I can’t begin to explain how uplifting it is to hear someone say that, just by being myself, I changed someone’s whole perspective on the US.

In China, there also seems to be this very idea that the display of disdain for the PRC’s policies is tantamount to a blanket condemnation of the Chinese people themselves (paging Jack Cafferty and all of the citizens of France).  Yet, as you can see in the last graph, in all five of the countries, the Chinese people are far more popular than their government. 

Lamenting the general lack of nuance in viewing world opinion is probably a waste of time, but I for one look longingly towards the day that disagreement on policy issues is taken a lot less emotionally and discussed over brimming bowl of unicorn soup, a smooth pint of ogre ale, and a nice hand-rolled WMD cigar. 

* I had a lot of time on my hands, because my classmates were often busy blocking our campus in what I saw was the most backwards way to protest what you saw as someone trying to rob you of your future (that is, by depriving yourself of the one thing that might lead you to a better future: your education)

** Obama’s had a consistent lead in the polls since mid-April