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1.媒體來源:
天下雜誌 「獨立評論@天下」特派員

2.完整新聞標題/內文:

【英國特派員】林孟潔：服貿協議的草率令人震驚──剛與馬總統會面的倫敦政經學院教
授Christopher Hughes談話記要

三月二十號禮拜四，倫敦時間上午十一點半，倫敦政治經濟學院國際關係系館




以下為Christopher Hughes教授的談話記要：



















但中國並不是這樣的地方，你能夠數出多少真正具有原創性和創新的產品／技術是完全源
自中國？中國擅長的地方，是吸引外資，以及量產(非原創性)商品，研究發展部門












誰知道台灣的下一個世代會變得怎麼樣？

更好或更壞，這就交給年輕世代來處理和面對。

這秩序繽紛的世界／就留給你整理。

（作者為台大歷史系／政治系四年級 英國倫敦政經學院訪問學生；英文逐字稿部分由台
大外文系四年級／現為德國杜賓根大學訪問學生林欣蓓整理）

－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－

★　英文原文內容逐字稿

I couldn’t recall the detail of the conference I attended in Taiwan last
year, but I remember that there was this big discussion about ECFA. I was
quite skeptical about ECFA. Was it necessary? Why do you even need ECFA,
really? Even if you look at KMT, the impact on GDP is relatively small, much
smaller than predictions. And there are a lot of political arguments made
about it. There are a lot political than economic I think, both sides, for
and against. For the Ma administration, they had to show some progress on the
cross-strait relations to get some support from Beijing. The arguments they
made were that we have to compete with South Korea. This is not really an
argument. If you’re competing with South Korea, it’s hopefully
high-technology. Now that is already covered by WTO.

The big problem for Taiwan is not economic. I’m not an economist, but I
speak in an economic sense. I’m not from Taiwan, you know…you know more
about Taiwan. The problem is domestic, the structure of Taiwanese industry,
the business practices, and financial sectors. The fact that it’s very easy
for Taiwanese businesses is to use cheap labor and land in China. It means
that there’s no incentive to upgrade Taiwanese industry, so the more
businesses in China, the less incentive to actually restructure Taiwan’s own
domestic industry. And so essentially, Taiwan is losing its technology now,
very little, in terms of new developments in products. And you have a lot of
advantages in the language and so on. It’s much easier for Taiwanese
businesses to work in China, much easier than South Korea.

So the argument they hold, you know, that the South Korea got this trade
agreement with China. If we don’t have one we’d be frozen up. I don’t
think these arguments really stand up, they’re more political. That was one
of the big arguments Ma’s administration made over ECFA constantly. And
during the election in 2008, it was a big part of Ma’s campaign that South
Korea signed FTA with China, and have much easier access to China’s market
and we’ll be frozen up from south east Asia. I don’t think it’s really
economical thought, it’s much more political. It diverts the real attention
away from the real problems, which is Taiwan itself. Domestics, manufacture,
R&D. Also the financial sectors were still not properly reformed.

I think if you look at those issues, Taiwan has had a lot of advantages.
Still, with china, the economy. Going back to… it wasn’t KMT who started,
it was DPP. They speak open a lot to Chinese mainland economy. That was very
easy. I mean it couldn’t go wrong, even I could run a business like that, I
guess. So In some ways, it was good for Taiwan’s economy, but it was a bit
too easy. It made Taiwan’s economy become very dependent on China. Not
enough effort was put into the global aspect, with the EU, with the US. And
all its attention is China, China, China. And that led to dependency,
distortion, in economy.

So now the trade services agreement. You have to ask what is the need for
this, who is going to really benefit from this? So who are the winners and
losers? But it also deliberates political issues… what are the political
implications for Taiwan. We’re all looking at Hong Kong, of course. And you
can see there, what happens when you become dependent on Chinese economy. And
it’s used for political leverage. To press freedom, to control the media,
the academic freedom… all of these things are reflected by this huge
economical leverage.

Q: Might Taiwan be the next Hong Kong after the Service Agreement is passed?

I would imagine that’s why those students are upset or worried. And I think
there are a lot of good reasons for that, and it’s up to the government of
Taiwan to ensure that it’s done properly with the safe guards. And I don’t
think there’s any trust in Ma’s administration. I mean, what’s their
intention? What does Ma really want? Group of advisors were around him.

The Agreement hasn’t passed (when I was in Taiwan), but it was being
discussed last year. I go every year to Taiwan to do some research, to China
as well, to see both sides.

You can’t separate economic influence from political influence because china
’s policy is clearly to use economic influence for its political purposes. It
’s China’s official policy to use economic influence to achieve
unification. That’s an open public policy, there’s no secret about that. So
there’s no separation. The question there is: how does Taiwan deal with
that? Do you pretend, “oh there’s a separation, that these are purely
pragmatic economic matters, we can separate it from politics.” You can’t
state that. That’s not how they see it in Beijing at all. For them,
economics and politics are the same thing. It goes back a long way for the
Chinese communist party.

Q: Is the connection with other nations apart from China possible?

I think it’s possible, and it’s worth a try, but Ma’s administration hasn’
t even tried it. Their policy all along… if you look at Ma’s policy, which
really goes back to 2005, 胡連會, where they had the agreement. That’s
really where this situation comes from. Ma’s policy in 2008, where he ran
for the presidency, purely focused on the cross-strait relations. There was
not really any foreign policy. There was only one page, you know, something…
 we’ll do something with America… but it was really nothing. If we can just
get cross-strait relation right, that economic integration, would solve all
out. And that’s what they thought it, and voted it… to give it a try. The
idea was that if we have these good economic relations, we would build up
trust with Beijing, then we will somehow gradually get more international
space, but it was never explained how it worked or why would Beijing want to
do this. It was really built on trust from the 胡連會.

Well, you know a lot of people believe that, and it may have worked in a
short term to release some pressure on Taiwan. But it’s not a long-term
strategy. It lacks a foreign policy, it lacks defence policy… there’s no
real, I mean, where is the diplomacy? I mean, if you’re in London, what does
the Taiwan office (台灣代表處) do? They have meetings where they talk about
the Qing dynasty. Very interesting, they never mentioned Taiwan.

We all know the limits. The UK is not going to recognize Taiwan as a state, I
wish we would, but we are not going to because China will stop that. But there
’s a lot of grey area where in the past Taiwan was able to achieve quite a
lot international space, not diplomatic recognition but joining international
organizations. And often it did require some courageous diplomacy, but it
requires calling Beijing’s bluff. And Beijing would always threaten to go to
wars, but Taiwan didn’t back down at that time.

As cross-strait relations improved, there were also some more international
space. That was 李登輝’s strategy, back to 1990s. And 陳水扁, but they would
never trust him whatever he did. He did try that strategy, but they didn’t
trust him. But with Ma, when he came in 2008, he had a good opportunity
because whatever he did, he could have done a lot more, because the deep fear
of Beijing was that DPP comes back to power. He could have pushed forward
more in international space. He could have… he didn’t try. There was no
foreign policy. I think he lost the opportunity for Taiwan. He could have
come back to something like李登輝’s strategy. For the DPP, it is very
difficult because the Beijing government just won’t trust them because their
party committed to the independence of Taiwan. That may change the future,
and we don’t know what will happen in 2016. If Ma and KMT are working for
Taiwan’s interest, they’d been thinking in long-term, they’ll try to have
cross party consensus, domestic consensus, which should really focus on Taiwan
’s interests, but I don’t see that at all. I see a policy that only based
on one thing, which is keep DPP out, whatever that takes.

And another thing that worries me is that lots of people in KMT are really
Chinese nationalists. And their hearts are really toward China’s unification
and China. And they’re quite high up in KMT, and Ma could be one of them. So
that rouses another issue: what is their intention? Is he just incompetent?
That’s why he didn’t use his opportunity, or his intention is really to get
some sort of agreement with 習近平? Getting Nobel Prize for unification? The
conference I attended didn’t reflect the public opinions in Taiwan. People
from previous generation are still with this mindset. How influential are
they? I know there’re younger people who don’t like that… And the personal
links with China, and how much time they spent there, whom they talked to…
 there’s a network as well. That is very China focused. That’s the product
of China’s policy since 1979.

What does Taiwan do to balance that? Under 李登輝and 陳水扁, they tried to
build democracy and constitutional reform, changing education system. This is
a good strategy, to solid the Taiwanese democratic system and its identity.
What does Ma do? Changing your textbooks’ facts, so you’re all Chinese!
Constitutional reform? Where’s the strategy? Apart from saying: “Let’s be
nice to China, they’ll be nice to us.” That’s not a strategy. He’s trying
to deal with the pragmatic issues, economic issues… but we leave the
political issues to the future. If you’re going to do that, you need a
balancing strategy. To release a much better foreign policy, domestic policy,
political policy, cultural policy, education policy, and defence policy. All
of those issues are a mess in Taiwan. Defence policy doesn’t exist. You’re
trying to develop volunteer services but it’s not working.

Trade is not the most important thing to national security. You need a well
function political system. Democratization in Taiwan is not finished in the
past 30 years. The constitution is a mess. The elections are free elections,
but they are not fair elections because of the party financing. While KMT has
sufficient wealth, DPP has very little. The last round of the political
reform in the sea boundary was very unsatisfactory. It’s almost impossible
for the DPP to win the elections. There are lots of problems still.  Any
democratic system needs reform constantly. Taiwan has pretty serious problems
with the democratic system. Just to have votes and elections is not really
democracy, is it? It’s a very uneven play in Taiwan, if you look at the
party financing. Ultimately there’s the issue with the constitution because
it’s a constitution written for China, not for Taiwan. Obviously it’s hard
to change that, but it’s possible to find ways, like additional articles.
Every time there’s a change, like finance or presidential elections, China
threatens with attack but they didn’t.

As for the social situation, I don’t think it’s a strong society if
everyone has to work very hard all the time, to pass the exams, to try to be
productive and efficient but not allowed to do anything political at all.
This is not a strong society. It may look strong on the surface but it’s
very weak underneath. And Taiwan has a lot of strength building up its
society, this was the consensus until recently. And it’s a shame if your
generation feels that it’s making it weaker. I wouldn’t make judgment
myself, but you’re from Taiwan, you should judge. I was just saying you have
to be careful to make that judgment. I guess you could compare Taiwan with
the US, the people there are more lazy, and more wasteful. And they spend
even more time on politics, but they have very efficient economy, very
productive.

Taiwan is at a different stage of development. One of the big problem still
experience 1980s and 1990s. The economic growth very fast, just like in China
now, people felt richer and richer every week. No economy can carry on like
that for more than a period of time. Taiwan has passed that stage. What
Taiwan is focused on is the service sector, like tourism, art and culture.
And creative industry, which means also technology, and creating environment
in which brilliant young scientist can really have the freedom to innovate
and to make mistakes and do stupid things as well as things that are
successful. That’s what Americans do. And we try to do it here, but in China
it’s not like that.

How many inventions come from China? The one thing China is good at is
getting foreign investment and producing large quantity of goods, quite high
quality. Research and development is not good. It’s getting better but it’s
still nothing like the US and Japan or Europe. Anyone who is a great
scientist would immediately leave China and go somewhere else. First of all,
he can’t breathe. Media freedom, democracy all go together. Scientists are
human beings, too. They don’t always stay in the laboratory in the evening.
They might want to go to a play, some music, go for a walk and get some fresh
air. Children can grow up in a healthy environment. Beijing’s not like that.
No matter how much money China invests in R&D, there’s no result. Now Taiwan
is one of the best places to live in Asia. Any foreigner, businessmen,
diplomats, wants to live in Taiwan because of the safe environment. You don’
t have this communist party looking at you. Multi-nationalists prefer to live
in Taiwan for their R&B, and that’s what Taiwan needs to build.

DPP has not been in power since 2008, and it’s not normal, so they still
need to do a lot of work. The normal courses are distorted by the China
factor. The tide is not on Taiwan’s side. If one party is in power for a
long time, we can live with it. It’s not really healthy, but we can live
with it, you know, some of the other parties will come back in. In Taiwan,
with this China factor constantly distorting, one party is out for a long
time. It develops different kinds of problems, so that makes a difference. So
this is hard for Taiwanese democracy to function properly. The Chinese effect
distorts everything. It requires very creative thinking to change the
situation. Not going too far, but… not just giving in, and having no
strategy at all. It’s very unclear what Ma’s strategy is, where his heart
is, or what his intentions are, if he has any.

Perhaps you should be telling me what’s going on in Taiwan. You’re from
Taiwan. You know much about it than I do. And it’s about your generation.
What’s going to happen in your generation?



3.新聞連結:
http://opinion.cw.com.tw/blog/profile/187/article/1138





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