Re: Opposition To ECFA

Sirs,

Although the ECFA, or rather its' first iteration, was concluded on thursday, popular opposition to it - especially here in the south - has not given up and nor should it. Every effort must be made to strengthen the voice of this opposition and the annoyance and embarrassment it causes that presumptuous cabal of a government in Taipei.

However, the continued ideological basis to this popular opposition promoted by the Democratic Progressive Party is, if one accounts for the democratic dilution, the very same thing which so angers us about the government in Beijing: the poison of national socialism.

Although the DPP is quite right to point out that the ECFA will bring apparent benefits to the larger companies in Taiwan while subjecting smaller companies to the difficulties of competition from Chinese firms, such inequities cannot be extinguished by government action but only reversed - putting the boot into Taiwan's larger employers, and by extension, their employees. Any form of company welfare - whether it be for the semi-condutor industry or the mango farmers - is despicable and unjustifiable. Yet successive governments in Taipei have long extended their national socialist ambitions with the erection of insane and crippling empires of education, health, and retirement welfare drawn directly from the "how-to-stagnate-in-perpetual-servitude-like-a-goddamn-european" textbook.

Sirs, the problem with the ECFA is not that it is about trade and economic competition, the problem is that it is about applying more of the dirty school eraser of government compulsion to the white chalk of freedom and creativity we still have. Until there is a change in the basis of the opposition to ECFA from opposition to trade, to opposition to more and more government - both in Beijing and in Taipei - then the opposition movement will not be able to stop the ongoing betrayal of freedom on this island.

Yours freely,
Michael Fagan.

(Sent Friday 25th June 2010. Unpublished by the Taipei Times)

Edit: The above is a revised version of an earlier draft which I knocked up too hastily and in which the third paragraph was as follows:

The government in Beijing constantly spouts its nationalistic credentials with all its' nonsense about "one China" and "territorial integrity" whilst also dishing out corporate welfare like there's no tomorrow. Meanwhile the successive governments in Taipei have variously inflamed ethnic sentiments crossing the north-south divide whilst also erecting insane and crippling empires of education, health, and retirement welfare drawn directly from the "how-to-stagnate-in-perpetual-servitude-like-a-goddamn-european" textbook.