An American In Taiwan

It’s no secret that the relationship between China and Taiwan has been … tense. Taiwan is a democracy seeking independence from the communist state away from which it recently (history-wise, anyway) broke. On the other hand, China sees Taiwan as a rogue state which must be, even through the use of violence if need be, re-attached with its former body. Needless to say, tension runs high amongst people with differing political opinions on a good day.

Still, today, something happened which may be the beginning of a new era for Chinese-Taiwanese relations: direct flights. It’s big news, but don’t necessarily take it from me.

Used to be, when you wanted to travel between the two countries, you could only do it via another country. There were no direct flights from Taiwan to China, or vice versa. By allowing direct flights between the two countries, it cuts travel by over an hour (from Taipei to Shanghai), as well as untold amounts of extra shipping and freight charges for businesses.

This is good news for the prospective future father-in-law. He travels to China occasionally and is even entertaining the idea of opening an English school there. Being able to travel directly between Taipei and China is considerably convenient for him (and, who knows, maybe for me, too).

Of course, there could be tremendous faults to this entire situation of which I am so blissfully unaware that I wouldn’t know them if they sat on my face. From the outside, however, it sounds like a great deal. I would imagine that, to the die-hard proponent of Taiwanese independence (and, therefore, those who support cutting ties with China) it seems like a slippery slope. I get that. I’m just not sure I would be worried.

Then again, what do I know?

Quoting president 馬 in the Taipei Times, he said, ““The opening of direct air and shipping links means the two sides are no longer hostile toward each other and are willing to replace confrontation with dialogue and conflict with reconciliation.” I’m not sure it’s that simple. No longer hostile? Or maybe just not hostile enough to overlook such a lucritive decision? China’s the next superpower. Taiwan is a production supernova. Why wouldn’t they want to get in on each others’ deals? China also needs to be cognizent of Obama’s position toward Taiwan. Obama and 馬 will likely be peas in a pod, so China more or less needs to quit being a bully in Taiwan’s back yard.

I’m interested to see how this is going to pan out.

Tags: china, politics, travel

This entry was posted by 美國人 on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 11:42 and is filed under Logistics, Taiwan Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.