RSL Chief Flies A Lonely Flag For Australia

Eric Ellis, Taipei

10/16/1995

BRUCE Ruxton is not the sort of national leader one expects to see outside Taiwan's Presidential Palace on National Day.

But there the RSL boss was, looking every bit the image of Sir Les Patterson, standing full frame in a Taiwan army jeep and enthusiastically waving his plastic Australian flag as part of the Republic of China's official pageantry.

"Over there (China) they've got no human rights or dignity. But if look at Taiwan, there's not much of a comparison - you follow me?" As his jeep motored past the dais where Taiwan's President Lee Teng-Hui stood at attention, Ruxton saw it appropriate to snap a smart salute to the Kuomintang leader. Lee politely clapped him and smiled back. "You know Australia's got billions of dollars of trade here and we can't even have a High Commissioner - you follow me?"

Bruce Ruxton may have a point but unfortunately for him, Lee and Taiwan's best diplomatic efforts, Canberra doesn't follow him and neither does most of the world, except a 30-strong handful of Latin and Pacific banana republics.

Ruxton, a special guest of Taiwan's veteran's group and enjoying their hospitality at Taipei's Holiday Inn, was about as high-ranking an Australian official that Taiwan got at this year's Double Tenth last Tuesday.

Every October 10, Taiwan goes through the sad little ritual of inviting the world's movers and shakers to Taipei and watching the polite non-acceptances roll in.

This year the world was spooked by China sending armed missiles overhead during July and August and stayed away in even greater numbers.

That's despite Taiwan making possibly making its greatest diplomatic stride since being expelled from the United Nations in favour of China in 1971, when Lee won a visa to visit the US in June.

"You could have argued that his visit opened the door for the rest of us," said an Australian diplomat.

"But the depth of the Chinese reaction probably did more to scare capitals off than encourage us." Taiwanese officials admit they did not anticipate the vigour of the mainland reaction to Lee's US visit and from Beijing's view, the missiles had the desired effect, and not just in a Taipei stockmarket down 30 per cent for the year.

Not alone among Western nations, Australia has been ratcheting up the level and numbers of quasi-official contact with Taipei, even contemplating that Lee or his Prime Minister include Australia in an upcoming "vacation" as he did last year in South-East Asia.

No longer. The Chinese response has forced governments to re-iterate their "One China" policy, despite Taiwan doing everything it possibly can to make itself more than difficult to ignore.

Taiwan can and is laying claim to being the only true democracy in 5,000 years of Chinese history. In March, electors will vote in the first democratic presidential poll, preceded by a legislative vote.

Seeking a solid 50 per cent-plus mandate, Lee is favoured to win over four rivals, who will likely splinter the opposition vote.

Hated by Beijing for real or imagined independence moves, Taiwan-born Lee is currently running at around 40 per cent support, his rating riding higher every time Beijing tries to demonise him.

That's despite deep local dissatisfaction at the depth of corruption in Taiwan society after46 years of uninterrupted KMT rule on the 21 million-strong island.

Diplomats say this while reunification is, more than ever, the big foreign policy issue for Taiwan, the presidential election will likely be decided on domestic issues.

Taiwan has been hit by a spate of credit union collapses and bank runs, implying lax KMT management and worse, hands in the till. Some 50 government officials have been fined or sacked this year for dereliction of duty.

Even Prime Minister Lien Chan, Lee's running mate and anointed successor, has been tainted being the owner of a building which housed a dubious karaoke parlour that ignored safety regulations.

Crucially, the Taiwan military is also scandal-plagued with a much higher-than-usual level of deaths and suicide occuring during the national service every Taiwanese must do. Charges of excessive discipline from senior officers have been laid by grieving families.

More than most nations, Taiwan depends on its military.

Hopelessly outnumbered, it relies on superior technology from suppliers who must incur the diplomatic wrath of Beijing, such as France and the US.

Booming Taiwan already spends more than 20 per cent of its generous budget on defence and last week Defence Minister Chiang Chung-Ling announced a dramatic increase for the coming year to "counter the mainland build-up". It's leading to the Chinese arms race no-one in the region wants, led by an army of KMT stalwarts who still refer to the opponents as "communist bandits", not unlike the ancient mainland generals urging Beijing's uncertain President Jiang Zemin into affirmative action to retrieve Taiwan before it's too late.

The respected London-based think-tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, calls the stand-off "East Asia's Strategic Time-Bomb". "The future of China-Taiwan relations is potentially the single greatest threat to peace and stability in East Asia," adding that "war cannot be ruled out" in the Taiwan Straits.

Taipei-based diplomats scoff at that scenario, saying that though some people were spooked by the Chinese missile tests "Taiwanese are used to the rhetoric". "There's not people jumping off buildings here," says an Australian diplomat.

Still, the tension is palpable enough to prompt economic analysts to factor war into their forecasts.

With Corporate Taiwan having $US20 billion ($27 billion) invested across the strait, Baring Securities saw it appropriate to recently publish a paper comparing the relative military merits of the two sides.

Hardly the stuff stockbroking researchers usually examine in determining investment strategy, it concludes that China would likely win a war but the economic and diplomatic cost of doing so would be fatal to both sides.