ECFA is being signed under a one-China framework

In case you still had any doubts...

It should be obvious to anyone not in a persistent vegetative state (and even that might not be enough of an obstacle to miss this) that the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) being "negotiated" between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in Taiwan and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is annexing Taiwan to China.

Today's Taipei Times contains the money quotes:

MAC [Maddog note: the so-called "Mainland" Affairs Council] Deputy Minister Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said that under the Act Governing Relations between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the relationship between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait is "region to region."

"The legislature passed the law in 1992 and since then such a legal status has never been changed no matter who is in power, including former presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) or [President] Ma Ying-jeou," Liu said.

"Such a theory is not something new invented by President Ma and that is why the trade pact is called a cross-strait economic framework agreement," he said.

Liu made the remarks after being asked by the Taipei Times at a press conference yesterday morning to clarify Ma's comments describing cross-strait ties as being "between two regions."

Liu also said the administration did not want to specify a timeframe for the signing of a free-trade agreement (FTA) with China within an ECFA.

He did not say why, only emphasizing that cross-strait ties were "special."

One thing stands out here: The Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) government is not treating China like the foreign (enemy) country that it is.

And in case you've forgotten how that foreign (enemy) country on the other side of the Taiwan Strait sees the ECFA, listen to their premier, Wen Jiabao (溫家寶):


0:35 YouTube video: "DPP ECFA referendum ad - with English titles"
Further reading:
* Wikisource: Act Governing Relations between Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area

* GlobalSecurity.org: Remembering when (then-premier, now-VP) Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) and (then-MAC Chairman, now-National Security Council Secretary-General) Su Chi (蘇起) agreed with (then-president) Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) "state-to-state" theory of relations between Taiwan and China.

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More red flags: Taiwan, 台灣, Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, 經濟合作架構協議, ECFA, Mainland [sic] Affairs Council, 大陸委員會, MAC, Liu Te-shun, 劉德勳, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, Wen Jiabao, 溫家寶, annexation, 併吞

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

Notice the anti-Taiwan propaganda, know the truth

Internet battles against self-censorship

Microsoft's Bing search engine downgrades Taiwan in its map search and reduces the nation's status below that given other countries. All country names on Bing's maps are written in dark red text, but Taiwan is written in greenish-gray, just like the names of China's provinces.


The names of countries -- even those as small as Kiribati in this view --
are written in dark red, but Taiwan remains unlabeled here.
(Arrow added by Tim Maddog.)
(Click to slightly enlarge)

Even in the close view, Taiwan doesn't get labeled as a country. It's labeled
in greenish-gray, just like China's Guangdong, Jiangxi, Fujian, and Zhejiang
Provinces are.
(Arrows added by Tim Maddog.)
(Click to slightly enlarge)
This is precisely the kind of unbecoming self-censorship which appeases China!

Look at what Nicholas D. Kristof says in his recent New York Times op-ed "Boycott Microsoft Bing":

Western corporations have often behaved embarrassingly in China, sacrificing any principles to ingratiate themselves with the Communist Party authorities. Yahoo was the worst, handing over information about several email account holders so that they could be arrested – and then dissembling and defending its monstrous conduct. Now Microsoft is sacrificing the integrity of Bing searches so as to cozy up to State Security in Beijing. In effect, it has chosen become part of the Communist Party's propaganda apparatus.

Why does Bing use an algorithm that results in propaganda and skews results far more than Google?

Apparently, Microsoft doesn't want to pursue the Google solution of having separate sites – one which produces generally legitimate results (google.com) and another within China that blatantly censors (google.cn). Or, it's possible that Microsoft executives can't read Chinese and are being misled by executives focused on business in China.

Domestic self-censorship
Next, does Taiwan's so-called Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) also participate in self-censorship to appease China? It sure looks that way.

These 2 documents below can be found via Google, but clicking the URLs leads us to pages which read in Hanzi "Page not found" (找不到這個頁面):

Taiwan is determined to participate in the international community ...
The MAC strongly condemns China's comprehensive suppression of Taiwan's international space for sabotaging the normal development of cross-strait relations ...
www.mac.gov.tw/english/english/news/07095.htm

Examples of China's Suppression of Taiwan in the International Arena
Examples of China's Suppression of Taiwan in the International Arena ..... Chinese diplomatic personnel in Geneva intend to lobby the Swiss ...
www.mac.gov.tw/english/english/macpolicy/961101.pdf

The example below can be viewed only by clicking the "Cached" link (for the time being, at least):

MAC: The United States should respect and understand that the ...
China presumptuously includes Taiwan's ports under its territorial ... oppression and interference that China has imposed on Taiwan's international space and ... June 2007 to conduct a new round of political suppression against Taiwan. ...
www.mac.gov.tw/english/english/news/07117.htm - Cached - Similar

Searching Google for "China's suppression of Taiwan" led to the document below, a table showing Examples of China's Diplomatic Suppression of Taiwan in the Two Years Since the Enactment of the "Anti-Separation Law" compiled in March 2007:

Examples of China's Diplomatic Suppression of Taiwan in the Two ...
Examples of China's Diplomatic Suppression of Taiwan in the Two Years Since the Enactment of the "Anti-Separation Law". March 2007 ...
www.mac.gov.tw/english/english/macpolicy/su9603.htm - Cached - Similar

The above document initially had one more URL that could be used:

www.mac.gov.tw/english/english/anti/index.htm - Cached - Similar

... but clicking either www.mac.gov.tw/english/english/macpolicy/su9603.htm or www.mac.gov.tw/english/english/anti/index.htm led only to a "page not found."

Taiwan Matters blog administrator Tim Maddog hunted it down and took on the task of preserving history by saving the page cached by The Wayback Machine as a PDF file. Take a look:


Examples of China's Diplomatic Suppression of Taiwan in the Two Years Since the Enactment of the “Anti-Separation Law”
(See the menus for more viewing options.)
After Tim published the lost document in order to stop this important history from being dumped down the memory hole, the MAC document reappeared at a different URL.

Just a coincidence?

(Tim Maddog contributed to this post)