Will China's bullying irk the Taiwanese into voting for the man ithates?

Nobody should know better than we do that the Taiwanese, swollen with a sense of self-importance by their heady prosperity, are a perverse nation. Last week, they unilaterally cut the weekly frequency of Philippine Airlines flights to Taipei from seven to only four.

When they refused to discuss this sudden and surprising move, our Civil Aeronautics Board last Tuesday struck back by cancelling all flights of Taiwan's China Airlines and EVA Air altogether. Now, the Taiwanese are blaming the Philippines for having damaged "international relations" between the two countries. My only reply to them: Go to hell!"

President Estrada, in contrast, is being diplomatic. I guess it's his job to be conciliatory, since he must keep in mind all that Taiwanese "investment" threatening to fly away. He directed Secretary Vicente Rivera of Transportation and Communications yesterday to negotiate with Taipei for the resumption of air services.

Tourism Secretary Gemma Cruz-Araneta did not help our bargaining position much, however, when she wailed that the dispute would result in our losing 200,000 Taiwanese visitors and tourists. Will our officials never learn to keep their mouths shut when we are in the process of negotiating? Whose side are they on, anyway?

All I can say is that PAL will never get a fair shake from the Taiwan government as long as the Nationalist Party (a.k.a. the Kuomintang) is in power there: China Airlines is owned by the Kuomintang, the party of the late Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (and to which outgoing President Lee Teng-hui belongs).

The KMT, which has ruled Taiwan for the past 55 years, and came over from the mainland with Chiang when he was chased out of there by the advancing Communist forces, is a gangster clique which owns and controls most of the major enterprises in Taiwan -- earning at least US$400 million a year from those operations.

Moreover, President Lee, 77, doesn't love us. His older brother was killed in the Philippines fighting in the Japanese Imperial Army -- which is what we naive Filipinos don't realize. In fact, Lee himself was born in Taiwan when that island was in its 28th year of occupation and control by the Japanese, who had converted those offshore islands of China into an almost completely Japanese "province." (Lee's father was a police inspector who served in Sanchi, north of Taipei).

For this reason, Lee had an entirely Japanese education, going for high school to the Taipei High Middle School in 1940, a prestigious institution where 90 percent of the students were Japanese and only 10 percent local boys.

In 1942, he went on to Japan to study agriculture economics at Kyoto University, and was inducted into Japan's Imperial Army in December 1943, rising to officer rank.

After Japan lost the war, Lee returned to Taipei and graduated from the national Taiwan University with honors in August 1949, marrying Tseng Wenhui, a girl from one of the prominent local families.

Having been brought up a proper "pro-Japanese", entirely at home in Nippongo, Mr. Lee launched himself into an "Americanization" phase, studying at Iowa State and Cornell University in the United States. Upon his return, he joined the Kuomintang party in 1970.

Again his "connections" paved the way to success. The "Gimo", Chiang Kai-shek, never attaining his dream of re-invading the mainland which he lost to the Communists in 1949, died in 1975, and was succeeded as President by his son (by his first wife), Mr. Chiang Ching-kuo, the man who was, surprisingly, the one who propelled Taiwan into the modern business world.

Lee Teng-hui rose swiftly in Ching-kuo's esteem. In 1978, Ching-kuo appointed him mayor of Taipei, in 1981, governor of the province of Taiwan, and finally his own Vice President.

When Chiang Ching-kuo himself died in January 1988, Lee succeeded him as President.

Lee is now on the verge of relinquishing power after 12 years (two terms) in office. After all, he is already insanely rich -- rumor has it that he is the "second richest man in Taiwan" (nobody can tell me who is the richest). His mansion in Taoyuan county, north of the capital, is a sumptuous estate, with a golf course and a huge swimming pool, and a complex of villas.

His Vice President, Lien Chan (almost Mr. Lee's clone, but more lacklustre), is engaged in a three-way fight to keep Taiwan in Kuomintang hands. With the crucial elections in that island of 22 million scheduled for tomorrow, Lien is barely hanging on to a quarter of the vote, since another former Kuomintang stalwart, ex-Taiwan Governor James C. Y. Soong, 57, is running as an independent and threatening to split the KMT constituency down the middle.

Lien, who comes from a wealthy family, has all the intellectual credentials (having taught political science, for instance, as a professor in the University of Chicago) but he is awkward in working crowds and comes across as aloof -- while the breakaway Soong is a swashbuckler, who has been undertaking a non-stop campaign, rain or shine, pressing the flesh. But he is described as "China-leaning". In fact, some of his detractors allege, unfairly perhaps, that Soong is virtually Beijing's candidate.

The Kuomintang, for its part, has turned its venom on Soong as a "traitor" to the party, tax auditing his supporters, harassing his backers, and tarring Soong himself with a series of financing scandals when he was in office. After all, the Kuomintang understands corruption and venality best of all. For half a century, the ruling KMT used a combination of hoodlum tactics and "black money" to keep itself in power.

The editorial-page editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal, Hugo Restall, in a recent piece (March 6) recounts how he visited Pingdong County in the south of the island "where three of the most important office-holders, all KMT, have been arrested, two for corruption and one for murder. Fed up with a reputation as a "mafia hometown," Restall said, voters in Pingdong "seem to be swinging against the party."

No wonder we can't make any headway in our dealings with the Kuomintang-controlled government in Taiwan. The KMT's leaders have for five decades lived cheek-by-jowl with underground gangster elements -- the former Shanghai "Green Gang" toughs who were Chiang Kai-shek's enforcers, and nowadays are known as the Bamboo Gang.

While Lee is being credited by the Western press as having supervised the transition in Taiwan from dictatorship to democracy, what kind of a "democracy" is that in which rampant vote-buying is the norm (okay, so we mustn't throw stones), and red envelopes are routinely passed around for "tea money", while bundles of cash distributed to party "pillars" for re-distribution at what are called "rat meetings"?

If the Nationalists (Kuomintang) were to lose tomorrow, the party's business networking would be devastated. Three of the top honchos of business, for example, sit in the KMT Central Standing Committee: C. F. Koo, leader of Koos Group; Wang Youtheng, head of the Rebar Group; and C.Y. Kao, chief of the President Group.

The "war drums" beating between Beijing and Taipei are interesting. Beijing is angrily insisting that Taiwan must quickly begin negotiations for a "return" to China. Which brings us to the third Presidential candidate -- the man Beijing hates: Chen Shui-bian who is running as the standard-bearer of the real Opposition, the Democratic Progressive Party.

In a last-ditch effort to direct the course of Taiwan's Presidential election, Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji declared Wednesday that the Chinese people were "willing to use all their blood" to prevent Taiwan from declaring itself "independent" -- in a pointed series of references to Chen Shui-bien who was once vocal in advocating independence for Taiwan.

Although Chen has tried to sound more moderate during the current campaign, asserting he wanted to "be a peacemaker, not a troublemaker," the mainland leadership is taking no chances. Mr. Zhu virtually threatened "war" if Chen, or any pro-independence government, is elected.

"No matter who comes into power in Taiwan," Zhu roared in the course of a 90-minute press conference, "Taiwan will never be allowed to be independent!" This echoed an earlier threat hurled by General Zhang Wannian, a vice chairman of the Communist Party's powerful Central Military Commission who asserted in a speech to military delegates at the just-concluded National People's Congress that "Taiwan independence means war."

Is this sabre-rattling for real? Will it work in cowing the Taiwanese into not electing the condemned Mr. Chen? Here's where the stubborn Taiwanese will have to prove their mettle -- meaning, that they're really endowed with intestinal fortitude, and are not just arrogant bullies when they're dealing with us friendly Filipinos.

Will Chinese shouts of anger bend the Taiwanese voters to Beijing's will? Chen is no pushover. A former Taipei mayor, the son of a farmer, he exudes an aura of earnestness and honesty. Chen's drawback is that he appears too deliberate and fails to spark. And yet he has lately been drawing huge crowds to his rallies. Last Sunday, in Kaohsiung, the biggest industrial city in southern Taiwan, no less than 300,000 admirers gathered to voice their support, one of the island's largest political gatherings ever.

Moreover, the national icon, Lee Yuan-tseh, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1986 and is hailed as "the conscience of Taiwan", has openly endorsed Chen.

The chief consultant of Gallup Taiwan, Tim Ting, recently said that the major endorsements of the past few days "give legitimacy to the idea that Chen can win."

Let's see. I'm not sure Chen can triumph, but in my opinion he may be the only man we can "do business with" in the future. If the Kuomintang manage to buy and cajole their way into retaining power -- then Manila-Taipei relations are sunk. That's what I think.

Why is Beijing so insistent that Taiwan must not fall into "unfriendly" hands? This is because they're counting on annexing Taiwan as their economic powerhouse of the future.

In the early 1990s, Taiwanese poured in more than US$6 billion in investments into China. By the end of 1999, 40 percent of Taiwanese overseas investment (which totals $36.1 billion) was going to the mainland, funnelled either through Hong Kong, the US, or other countries, to circumvent government restrictions. It is estimated that Taiwanese firms are now involved in 44,000 projects in China, worth an aggregate of $24 billion.

In 1986, when I interviewed him in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, China's late Chairman Deng Xiaoping inquired: "Why is Taiwan, unlike Hong Kong, refusing to accept my offer of One Country, Two Systems? I have promised to let them continue capitalism, even under our flag, for the next 50 years."

The answer is simple -- but one I didn't dare furnish Chairman Deng, no matter how jolly he seemed like some wrinkled, amiable Panda bear with a Schezwan accent. The Taiwanese, being offshore Chinese themselves, didn't trust the mainland Chinese. The way I look at it, they still don't.

And, besides, they've still got the United States Navy and US Air Force to protect them. I kid thee not. That Taiwanese lobby in Washington, DC, no matter how the mainland Chinese try to influence Bill Clinton and Al Gore, is still well-oiled.

As for us, we're neither here nor there. President Estrada, Alikabok and my other Palace sources tell me, is currently pissed off at the Americans. When Stanley Roth, the US Asst. Secretary of State, arrives from Washington, DC next Tuesday, will he get a cold shoulder from our President? Abangan.

What happens in the next few days between President Estrada and the American "missionaries" will have far-reaching results and repercussions.

In the meantime, Beijing waits with a welcoming smile. When you sup with a Dragon, though as the axiom goes, you've got to use a long spoon.