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Updated Wednesday, September 30, 2009 9:18 am TWN, The China Post news staff

Economy also vital for people's welfare

While they are essential and symbolic to a successful democracy, fair and open elections, the stable change of regimes and the determination of the people's will are only half of the democratic process.

　　Democracy does not end after the inauguration of the head of state. The implementation of people's choices through well-planned and practical policies is an important yet often overlooked part of the process.

　　By electing Ma Ying-jeou as their president, the Taiwanese people have made it clear that they want policy change. They bravely chose to deal with the thorny issue of cross-strait relations, to end a decades-old stand-off with what was once the island's sworn enemy and to commence dialogue with a country that possess both strong negotiation skills and buying power that are so persuasive even the U.S. has to budge.

　　Countries chose to work with China not because they want to “sell out Taiwan” or even because they particularly like China. They simply realized that it is impractical to just stick their heads in the sand and ignore a country capable of buying itself out of recession and maintaining 8 percent GDP growth amid the greatest global economic crisis in generations.

　　U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, both strong critics of China's human rights conditions — Pelosi had famously unveiled a protest banner in Tiananmen Square in 1991 to mark the second anniversary of the crackdown — decided to be mute on the touchy issue in their visits to China this year and focused on economic relations between the two nations.

　　Clinton put it bluntly that pressing China on issues such as human rights “can't interfere with the global economic crisis.”

　　It does not mean that the U.S. is going to let China go on human rights. Both Clinton and Pelosi criticized China on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Crackdown.

　　There is a time for protest and there is a time for talks.

It is exactly the ability to bend both ideology and realpolitik that makes the U.S. such a formidable nation.

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October 8, 2009 pdeacon2@

The idea that the US has - or can - "bend ideology and realpolitik" in favor of the global economy is nonsense: The global economy is dominated by the US (still) and its ideology is that of the market. As such, it realizes that it's better for business to not offend China too much. Its pursuit of its own agenda demonstrates its "realpolitik": it's the basis for "realpolitik", and the US will sacrifice the human rights of anyone who isn't American in the pursuit of its 'interests' as it has always done in the past: it's precisely what the comment by Clinton demonstrates. The China Post's own ideological stance that politics (dubbed 'ideology') and economics are somehow separate blinds it to this simple truth.


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