Shane Leary joins Miles Yu to discuss the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) victory in the Taiwanese presidential election, and what this means for Taiwan going forward. They then discuss the visit of Liu Jianchao—who is the People’s Republic of China minister of the International Liaison Department of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee—with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. After talking about the state of United States–China relations today, they turn to corruption in the People’s Liberation Army, and what this portends for China’s military capability.
China Insider is a weekly podcast project from Hudson Institute's China Center, hosted by Miles Yu, who provides weekly news that mainstream American outlets often miss, as well as in-depth commentary and analysis on the China challenge and the free world’s future.
Transcript
Miles Yu:
Welcome to China Insider, a podcast from Hudson Institute's China Center.
Shane Leary:
It's Tuesday, January 16th, and we have three topics this week. The first is Miles’ reflections on the DPP victory in the recent Taiwanese presidential election and the underlying shifts in the Taiwanese electorate shaping political trends for the island nation. Second is the recent meeting between a senior CCP leader and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and the state of US-China Diplomatic relations today. And third Miles offers his thoughts on the state of corruption in the People's Liberation Army and how this affects the PRCS military ambitions. Miles, how are you?
Miles Yu:
Very good, Shane. Glad to be with you again.
Shane Leary:
Me as well. So let's just jump right in. Two Saturdays ago, the Democratic progressive party secured victory in the Taiwanese presidential election with former vice president William Lai, Lai Ching-te ascending to the presidency. This will be the third consecutive presidential term. The DPP has held miles. What does a third DPP term mean for Taiwan? And if you could, how do you think President Lai might differ from now President Tsai?
Miles Yu:
Well, they're pretty much like you'll see a great amount of continuity because President Tsai has been powerful eight years. Her Vice President is William Lai, and he's been pretty much like saying the same thing. But I would also say though there are new issues emerging from this election, and I think President-elect Lai must really address new issues, new challenges that were not quite there yet during the year of tenure of President Tsai. And one of the most important issue emerging from this 2024 election is the old paradigm and the political division was gone. The old paradigm and the old political division is basically this. The KMT, the main opposition is normally regarded as representative of the view of the unification with China. The DPP, the incumbent is popularly known for its stance for independence. So there is always this kind of dichotomy of unification versus the independence.
That's the issue that get people to vote to the ballot, the box. But now during this election cycle, however, there is a third section of the voter group, which is the TPP, the Taiwan Peoples Party. This is a party is not dominant yet, but pose the severe challenge to both mainstream parties because over a quarter of the population are belonging to this TPP, the third force. This is a huge political power. They're not blue, they're not green. Blue means the KMT green means the DPP, they're white. So what is the white, the most important political stance on this unification versus independence? Well, for neither there are status quo. So there are overwhelmingly young people, and it's amazing how this actually turned out to be the case. Young people who do not care much about the China factor, but they consider themselves purely Taiwanese or Taiwanese factor because this new phenomenon in this election cycle, both KMT and DPP were forced to move to the center that is the status quo.
And the KMT no longer talks a lot about unification outright. DPP do not talk about independence outright either, but I agree with the TPP that the future of Taiwan will be determined by the voters of Taiwanese, not by any political negotiation with China. This is really monumental development. When the former KMT chair, former President Ma said that when it comes to unification with China, Taiwan must trust Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. His statement really just the days before the voting day caused the firestorm in Taiwan, he was universally denounced by all including Mr. Ho Youyi of the KMT party. Who is the candidate there? So my prediction is that the white represented by the TPP will grow in strength in the years to come regardless of who is the head of it, or the blue and the green in Taiwan will adopt the white political and policy position and face this simplest reality.
That is the issue with China is not just about sovereignty or independence, but about freedom. Democracy versus tyranny and dictatorship. Since either unification or declaration of Independence may jeopardize Taiwan's existing freedom and democracy, the status quo is the obvious solution for a lot of people. So therefore let's vote for neither KMT's unification platform or DPP’s independent platform, but for the status quo. So it's more likely though that the winning green party, the DPP, will be merge closer with the white with the TPP position because most of the white voters in this election are formerly green. The young people and the DPP leadership has already said there is no need to declare Taiwan's independence because Taiwan is already an independent and sovereign country. Its name is the Republic of China in Taiwan.
Shane Leary:
So interestingly, the TPP has sort of drawn each party to the center, as you said, kind of moderated the positions of each. But is there a difference it seems, I mean the DPP likes to use this status quo line as a sort of rhetorical way to reinforce their position that as you said, Taiwan is already independent. Do you see any meaningful friction there between the way in which the DPP will use this statement and the way in which the TPP would like to talk about the status quo?
Miles Yu:
TPP really does not talk much about the unification or independent or status quo per se. In their campaign rhetoric, what they're talking about basically the bread and butter issue in Taiwan, they talk about Taiwanese governance issue. So they no longer care much about the China factor and that's really is important. So by doing that, they basically provide an alternative to the voters. I think that's pretty popular right now.
Shane Leary:
As you say, these two parties are kind of on a trajectory to come together or at the very least, the DPP now has to contend with a wing that's very much concerned with solely domestic issues. In what way do you think, at least over these four years, will that change the foreign policy of Taiwan in any significant ways or what effect do you think that might have?
Miles Yu:
I think the Taiwan's issue really right now is not about unification with China or declaring independence that's actually the official line. The issue is really gain international recognition of Taiwan status quo, which is [de facto] independence. And I think that Taiwan has advantage right now because Taiwan's democracy is so remarkable. The way Taiwanese handle its international policy is pretty responsible. So it has the sympathy of the overwhelming majority of democracies in the world. You cannot really ignore the 23 million people in Taiwan and Taiwan is no longer just isolated island. Taiwan plays the enormously important role on proportionally important role in global trade, global technology and global peace and security. So this is why more countries tied their national security with that of Taiwan, Japan, US definitely, South Korea, Vietnam, and even NATO countries. They always advocate for peace and security in the Taiwan Strait. And every major democracy has a vow to side with Taiwan, if China take military action against Taiwan,
Shane Leary:
Shifting perspective a little bit, we always like to give the inside perspective on China. What has been the PRCS reaction to this victory thus far? And flipping the last question I asked, do you see any significant foreign policy changes perhaps from Beijing or is this going to be business as usual in terms of applying pressure?
Miles Yu:
Well, China likes to frame the entire Taiwan issue in the perspective of sovereignty, independence, whether Taiwan is a part of China not so what the essence of their so-called One China Principle. But for the Taiwanese people, this election is about a choice of good or bad government. Yes, but for the mainland Chinese people under communist dictatorship, it's really about legitimacy of the government for hundreds of millions of Chinese people watching Taiwan's elections with all in envy. Taiwan's government has a legitimacy through a democratic process while the CCP is completely illegitimate without any real elections, and this is a powerful message. So the Chinese Communist Party has to really face that reality that is democracy is very contagious even over Chinese people, which is under the firewall. That's why the CCP is relatively mute and quiet about this Taiwanese election. There are no major state media blasts against the candidates, no missile firings of any kind.
Yes, there are US Navy's warnings, ship deployments. If you look at the US Navy's ship deployment during the election, US has two carrier strike groups. The USS Carl Vinson and the USS Ronald Reagan deployed just around Taiwan, very close to Taiwan - in the case of USS Carl Vinson Carrier strike group. But mostly because the CCP fears the democracy contagion to avoid the election issue becoming a main point of discussion within the Chinese people. And that's really powerful. CCP right now is a run out of it tricks when it comes to Taiwan. I mean there are main salvos against Taiwan now is reserved not for the Taiwanese government anymore, but reserved for countries that congratulate Taiwan election reserved for the United States. They denounced Secretary of State Blinken congratulations on Taiwan election. They denounced Japanese government's congratulation notes, and each one of them got a pretty robust rebuttal and contract denunciation. I think the Japanese government coming from the cabinet Secretary, I mean the words were very strong. I mean, so that's why the Japanese government always says that whatever happened to Taiwan really could happen to Japan. So that's why Taiwan security is also Japan security.
Shane Leary:
And I want to go back to something you said earlier about how just impressive the Taiwanese democracy is. And I mean one can see that just on its face being so proximate to an adversary who is consistently saber rattling and applying pressure and even perhaps trying to interfere in their elections, the U.S., we face on different issues on divisiveness and polarization, and we have our own concerns about election interference from adversaries. What do you think the US can learn from this election we just saw in the Taiwanese democracy in general?
Miles Yu:
Oh boy, that's a very interesting topic because the US can learn a lot from Taiwanese democracy. We say Taiwan is a shining beacon of democracy. Another reason too, that is Taiwan's extraordinary election rules and the regulations were really exemplary. The procedures in Taiwan's elections were just amazing. The United States should really learn a lot from Taiwan to buttress American democracy, the oldest democracy in the world. First of all, you notice that one of the really amazing phenomenon is that the candidates, the two candidates swiftly quickly conceded their defeat. The reason is not because they're happy, but because of the extraordinary transparency and fairness acknowledged by all Taiwan's election is handled by this tiny organization. It's called the CEC, the Central Election Commission. They're totally trusted, they're bipartisan. The vote content is completely monitored by all parties. So it's open, transparent, right? That's very, very important. So the transparency is really the foundation of fairness of election.
You also notice that if you go to the airport just before the election weeks or months before, there are plenty loads of Taiwanese all over the world flying back to Taiwan to cast their votes. That's because all voting in Taiwan must be in-person. There's no mail-in voting allowed. This prevents fraud and vote counting machinations. This is very important to reduce impact on media, sensationalism on voter behavior, there is election law in Taiwan that bans publication of any polling results 10 days before the voting day. This is really, really important. I mean, you can see the American media, which is very biased in virtually every election cycle. During the election cycle in the United States, you pick up any news outlet, you immediately would know which party this media outlet is for or against, and that's not very healthy for a true democracy. I also say this to ensure maximum voter participation, Taiwan's election law mandates that all voting must take place on Saturdays.
It's required in the United States is Tuesday. Now, Saturday is not working day, Tuesday is a working day. A Tuesday voting day in the United States is really obsolete. It's a product of the 18th century agrarian society. In old days, in the early period of this republic, the white Tuesday, because most of the borders were like agriculture sector workers, there were farmers. So Sunday you go to church, so you cannot really have a voting day on Sundays after the church and the voters would take the whole Monday traveling to the voting center because those days the communications traveling, it takes a lot of time. And so Tuesday you vote and after you vote, you have to travel back home because Wednesday normally is the market day. So you go to the market on Wednesday to sell grain or produce and buying supplies. That's why we have a Tuesday designation for voting in the most states in this country.
So actually all of the states I should say. So that's why, but that's 18th century. This is 21st century. You got to change that. So that's why voter participation on a non-working day is very important. So same day voting on either on Saturday or you can make a Tuesday a national holiday just for voting so people don't have to work. So either way it'll work out. I hope some politician will bring this up. I saw one of them, only one of them just brought up this issue, but then basically it's sunk into oblivion and nobody's picked up that kind of argument. But another very important key issue about Taiwan's democracy is really amazing that they have a same day vote counting. Not only that they have the same day announcement of the results. This is a real time accountability. This code of can prevent delay and anxiety and that kind of anxiety can definitely divide a nation and make a whole mess out of that.
Or some might say, geez, Miles, you say Taiwan democracy is such a wonderful thing, but Taiwan is small. Only 23 million people live on the island. The US is 14 or 15 times bigger than Taiwan in terms of population. So this measure is not very practical. This argument is also invalid and completely wrong because despite the overwhelmingly larger population size in the United States, we have what, 330, 340 million people. Now all elections in the United States are managed and handled by state or local governments. They are done locally, therefore do not by this federal government, by 50 states individually. So in some sense, over 90% of the US state population were smaller, much smaller than Taiwan's. So it's totally doable.
Shane Leary:
Make a compelling point. Before we move on, I know the China Center has an event coming up on this very topic. Do you want to take a second to talk a little bit about what that event is, who's speaking and when that is?
Miles Yu:
Almost simultaneously with this broadcaster. In Tuesday morning, the China Center will host a discussion about the Taiwan election and its importance by two of the most involved prisons. One is Alexander Huang, who is the Chief Foreign Policy Advisor, two, the KMT party and the chairman of the KM party and he'll be there. Another one is Vincent Chao. Vincent was formerly the Director of Political Affairs in the tech row division in the United States. And he's a very seasoned, well-spoken man and he has been the spokesperson on foreign policy and the spokesperson for the winning candidate president-elect, William Lai. So both of the gentlemen will be joining me on Tuesday talk about this. So please stay tuned.
Shane Leary:
Yeah, if you're a regular China Insider listener and you can catch this Tuesday morning or whenever you do and you're interested in this event, just go over to hudson.org/events and you'll see it right there and it should be a very informative discussion. Miles, shifting gears now, this past Friday, Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, met with the People's Republic of China's Minister of the International Liaison Department of the CCP Central Committee Liu Jianchao in Washington. Miles, who is Liu Jianchao and how important is he within the internal workings of the CCP and what do you think the purpose of this meeting was?
Miles Yu:
Well, Liu Jianchao is a very peculiar person. He is basically not even on the radar of most foreign policy circle in foreign circles in the world. He is the minister of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committees Department of Foreign External Affairs. In other words, he's not working for the Chinese government, which is under state council. He's the member of the central committee of the Chinese Communist Party. So this is a party operatic in charge of China's foreign affairs. So he's the shadow foreign minister. This tells something about the governance crisis under Xi Jinping because Xi Jinping centralizes everything. I mean he's the chairman of everything, yes, but the most meaningful title for him is the General Secretary of Chinese Communist Party. So therefore, the party not only provides ideological guidance to make sure that the country is going along communist socialist road, but also the Chinese Communist Party is in charge of management and governance of the country.
So that's because Xi Jinping knows it all and he's a supreme leader. So it's a party post, in other words, not a government post. Now secondly, which is very interesting, Liu Jianchao came to Washington and he did something extraordinary, which is very rare that he actually gave public speech in person. This is almost unheard of because the traditional Chinese Communist Party foreign policy approach is never to announce or argue, articulate their own policy in person by senior Chinese officials. Rather, they cultivate the proxies, former US government officials or the think tank analyst or some prominent academics in universities. They cultivate them. So they become the spokesperson for the Chinese Communist Party and they basically articulated the Chinese party's view in Washington and other capitals of the west. This time that approach clearly has failed. So that's why he gave a speech in person because proxies no longer can play a role to influence US-China policy. I don't think anybody really takes his word seriously because full of communist party jargon, nobody understand here if you are a true Chinese patriot, you see the Chinese country has fallen into such abyss of infamy, you'll be really mad at the regime. And I think that wrath is totally justified
Shane Leary:
As a follow-up, we've seen over the past two years, on one hand a deterioration of US-China relations. On the other hand, we've seen the Biden administration consistently trying to mend this relationship. And even at times we've seen people in or outside the administration claim that tensions have cooled. Where do we stand today? Has there been any meaningful increase in trust between the two countries or are things still generally on a downward trajectory?
Miles Yu:
I think that there are some literal change in currently the dynamics between the two countries. The Biden administration has the inherent contradiction. It's a two-prong approach to China. One is the Biden administration wants to conduct a vigorous competition with China. That's true, but also another pillar of the Biden China policy is to avoid real confrontation. So that's why there is a confrontation avoidance crisis, a mechanism going on for the last half a year or so. That's why in order to avoid fighting with China, China has always been sort of very, very aggressive and cantankerous. You said we're going to go to war, we're going to go to South China Sea, say we create all the crisis over there. So that scares some people inside the Biden administration. So they basically tried to go to China, several send the cabinet secretaries go China to modify China to say we're going to even offer you a summit with the President Biden in the Epic conference in San Francisco.
So all the things are working okay, but finally China becomes soft. China become conciliatory right now, not because that the Biden administration's avoidance, conflict avoidance policy is working not only because it's working maybe some way, but mostly because China is facing enormous internal and international problems, challenges, right? Internally the economy is in shambles and China finally realized it really cannot rely on itself to boost this economy because China's economy is so intrinsically related to international free market system. If United States impose some kind of extra control over China, China's economy will have major problem. And also because of the policy failure command economic mechanism in China, China's economy basically is in its worst shape in decades. It cannot resuscitate the dying economy. That's because the consumer confidence has become the lowest. Nobody wants to spend money buying anymore, anything. So that's why the manufacturer sector is collapsing, because China's relentless, irresponsible, blatant lending practice over the decades that caused the collapse of China's financial banking system because are most of them are in serious debt.
And because of that and you have this real estate collapse, you have a lot of people become sort of pennies. Not only that because closing of factory, because of the unemployment rate went so high and I think the US unemployment is hovering somewhere between 20% to 45%. That's unimaginable. It's incredible. So you can see all the three major pillars of China's economy, consumption, trade and investment. They're gone. Foreign capital is fleeing China. And so there's no further FDI go into China. So that's why China has to come to the United States and say, listen, we really didn't mean it and let's just have a peaceful coexistence. I hope that somebody in Washington DC in charge of China policy will realize this is just a temporary ploy, right? China has always meant to dominate globally through creating of a global dependency on China for trade, for technology, for commerce eventually for its political cloud.
Shane Leary:
So we’ve talked about Taiwan, we've talked about China. Perhaps just briefly, it makes sense to turn the People's liberation army whose increasing capability looms over Taiwan. We see a lot of hype about the increasing technological capability of the PLA, but so too, do we see consistent purges and accusations of corruption inside the organization? Miles, could you talk a bit about this? How sound are these accusations? Does the PLA have a corruption problem? And if so, how does this affect its capability?
Miles Yu:
Well, PLA always have a corruption problem. That's because how would the corruption occur in the first place? Corruption occurs because of privilege and because the people of liberation in the army is really the central pillar of the regime support for the Chinese Communist Party. So every party chief in China always try to exert overwhelming control dominance over the military. So nowadays the party secretary Xi Jinping himself must also be simultaneously the chairman of the Central Military Commission, the CMC, which is the highest command authority of the military. By the way, the military is not the military of the state of the government of China. The military is a hundred percent the military - the armed forces of a Chinese communist party, Party must command the gun. As Mao famously said. That's why the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has been given enormous amount of privileges. It basically independent kingdom itself without any public accountability and public monitoring.
So that's why the PLA itself has a lot of ways to embezzle money and cut corners in weapons production. And so it is a hotbed for corruption. Now, Xi Jinping's approach, of course has always been trying to pick some of the most blatant cases and severely punish them, kill a bunch of people and to intimidate others. It's not working because it's not systematic, it's not institutional guarantee of anti-corruption. So that's why you see the corruption keep coming, keep coming. The more he purged, the more corruption you might see. The corruption is not just some of the minor packet deals. It's a really, really mind bogglingly huge. So the reason why we see, the reason the wave of purge with the PLA is because of the allegations that the China's inner core of its defense force, the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army, its Rocket Force has custom corners in its long range inch missiles and instead of putting into liquid fuel in there, they add water there.
So I don't know whether it's true or not, but indicating this kind of stuff is not really unimaginable. It could be real. So that's why they purged to deal with a situation like this. Xi Jinping has purged the entire leadership team, the commander authority of the Chinese PLA Rocket Force. The commander is gone. His two deputies gone. One of them committed suicide, and he also sacked the Defense Minister, which he just promoted over several months before, which supposed to be his favorite. He was sacked, allegedly. He was in charge of the PLA’s equipment department, equipment dealing with this kind of issues. He just announced an appointment of a new defense minister, which is nobody. It is a Navy guy and nobody had heard of him. So as I say, he picked him probably very randomly because this gentleman's name, this admiral's name is Dongjun. If you understand Chinese you could say it really means literally someone who “knows the military.” So Xi probably look at the names, it's kind of cute, they'll pick him up. So this shows you sort of the casual, haphazard way of dictatorship's governance.
Shane Leary:
Well, Miles, I think that's a great note to end on and we're unfortunately out of time. So thanks so much for taking the time and look forward to doing this again next week.
Miles Yu:
Okay, have a good week and I'll see you next week.
Shane Leary:
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of China Insider. If you enjoy the show, please share with your friends and colleagues and for our Chinese language audience, be sure to come back and check out our monthly Chinese language episodes, which are released on the same channel as well as the Hudson Institute YouTube channel. For more research and analysis from the China Center, be sure to find miles on X and then head on over to hudson.org where you can read and watch more on these and other pressing issues around the globe. Finally, please review and subscribe wherever you are listening from to help grow the show from all of us at China Insider will see you next week.