Chiou I-jen was the secretary-general at the National Security Council in August 2006 when he ordered Foreign Minister James Huang to make a secret deal with two diplomatic brokers, who claimed they could get Papua New Guinea to recognize Taiwan.

Huang remitted US$30 million to a joint account the brokers held in a Singapore bank on Sept. 14. The actual remittance was US$29.8 million, minus US$200,000 which had been advanced as a “working fund.”

At the end of the year, Huang called a halt to the brokering and demanded the money back. The money was gone, and one of the brokers, Ching Chi-jiu has gone into hiding in the United States. Huang claimed he was cheated. He stepped down. So did Chiou as vice premier. Another official, Ko Chen-heng had to resign as deputy minister of national defense, for he was implicated as a kickback recipient.

The reason why they would even tried to call for help from the two apparently well-known conmen to set up diplomatic relations between Taiwan and Papua New Guinea is simple.

Taiwan is in sad need of diplomatic allies, probably for a very short period of time. As a matter of fact, Papua New Guinea and Taiwan established diplomatic ties in 1999 for a mere three days.

The time has come for Taiwan to stop being the fool.

The importance of recognition was at its height when President Chiang Kai-shek needed a sizable group of diplomatic allies to keep the Republic of China as a permanent member in the U.N. Security Council in the 1960s.

Taiwan could afford to do so, because its diplomatic counterparts didn’t demand much. When his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, finally took over as president, the Republic of China had been ousted from the United Nations.

Chiang Ching-kuo was pragmatic. He didn’t spend much to keep Taiwan’s diplomatic friends’ club.

His successor, Lee Teng-hui, wanted to enlarge that club, however.

Wasteful spending began, but Taiwan could still afford, for it had enough money to buy friends.

The club, on the other hand, has been shrinking. After he was sworn in as president in 2000, Chen Shui-bian made foreign affairs his top priority, wasting billions of dollars to keep a dwindling club membership, albeit Taiwan can no longer afford to play its one-upmanship game with the People’s Republic of China to win diplomatic recognition.

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