Posted on 12/29/2001 12:14:13 AM PST by batter
By Paul Lin ªL«OµØ
Two incidents have troubled Taiwanese businesses in China recently. One was the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) establishment of a party cell in a Taiwanese corporation. The other was the censorship of textbooks at a school for children of Taiwanese businesspeople. But these events should not have surprised anyone with a little understanding of the CCP.
The establishment of the party cell was in fact nothing more than the disclosure of a reality. By the same token, however, the CCP's working committee in Hong Kong has never been made public. It operates underground in order to maintain the facade of "one country, two systems." When the committee's secretary-general endorsed Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa's (¸³«ØµØ) re-election bid, he did so only in his capacity as director of Beijing's liaison office in Hong Kong.
Previously, the CCP had established cells in small Taiwan-ese companies, but the management of those firms were able to suppress them. Because the CCP still needs Taiwanese capital, the party responded to such efforts with a "no haste, be patient" policy. The cells will make a comeback once an appropriate atmosphere has been established. Taiwanese businesses will then need to guard against retaliation for having taken action.
"Coming out" will make it much more convenient for the CCP to organize its activities. It will be able, for example, to develop its party organizations in the light of day and openly issue orders to Taiwanese businesses. This will not benefit the party and save it time and effort.
Because China's constitution mandates CCP leadership of the country, Taiwanese businesses have no way of resisting the establishment of party cells. If they follow past strategies, they may bribe cadres. But once the identities of the cadres are made public, they will have to be careful about possible charges of "corrupting CCP cadres."
What is even more worrying is that, in his July 1 speech, Chinese President Jiang Zemin (¦¿¿A¥Á) opened the way for CCP organizations to welcome Taiwanese business-people into the fold, either openly or secretly. Once they have done so, the party will use the blunt instrument of party discipline to force them to pressure Taiwan's government.
Some Taiwanese businesses say they don't mind the CCP setting up cells in their companies. So why don't they allow Taiwan's political parties to set up organizations within their companies and promote democratization in China? I don't believe anyone in Taiwan who has the temerity to attack President Chen Shui-bian (³¯¤ô«ó) and former president Lee Teng-hui (§õµn½÷) would have the courage to organize such political activity.
As for the censorship of textbooks, the issue is reminiscent of an incident in February, when a speech prepared for Taipei City's Deputy Mayor Pai Hsiu-hsiung (¥Õ¨q¶¯) at the Taipei-Shanghai City Forum was altered at the party's whim. In his speech, "world-class capital" was changed to "world-class city" and "Taipei metropolitan area" was changed to "Taipei area." Pai lodged no complaint over the changes.
Japan has frequently been condemned for the inaccurate content of its textbooks concerning its wartime aggression. Shouldn't those who also condemn Japan also condemn China for changing textbooks and turning a blind eye to the reality of Taiwan's existence?
Taiwanese businesses believe that the children of their own staff can make up for missed courses in Taiwan anyway. But wouldn't that be a little too late? If China attacks Taiwan, will their children be applauding the massacre of Taiwanese much the same way as Chinese "netizens" applauded the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the US?
Paul Lin is a political commen-tator based in New York.
Translated by Francis Huang
The CCP fears what the private sector can do to them. They fear private enterprises with a lot of money and influence will end up with more 'guanxi' than them. The people's loyalities will come under question.
The biggest threat (as was identified in a People's Congress meeting a few years ago) was that the private sector will weild too much power. About the same time Jiang said "the military will be out of business" he opened the door for setting up shop inside numerous business enterprises. They fear what they cannot control. They feared that they were losing control of the country to private enterprises.
If you think it is limited to Taiwanese companies, think again. The USA is target #1. They work on executives of every stripe and hence coerce, or force, or influence our companies to lobby Congress in behalf of the CCP. They come up with these big elaborate schemes that don't have "China" stamped on it, but ultimately will benefit the CCP. The whole thing about removing export controls is one example.
The entire Cox Report and all that campaign cash thing included a lot of big name corporations that fell into this. The Cox Report was not just about technology.
There has been an increase and going to be more and more of that stuff going on across the spectrum of businesses in China.
In the end, hopefully our corporations will get sick of that stuff, not being able to control their own business nor their own money... and will ultimately end up going somewhere else to do business.
Its just a matter of when Wall Street gets sick of those things.
The Taiwanese business people pay off the locals cadres in order to get a better position in the market competition. They don't care about the cross-strait policies.
>>Now bribery to top central CCP officials might cause some changes in the CCP's propaganda strategy.
You can't bribe the state policies and national interests. The Gulf war cost over 60 billions US dollars. Why wouldn't the US and Kuwait have used the money to bribe Sadam so that there wouldn't have been the war?
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