Taiwan and Post-Communist Europe: Shopping for Allies (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Taiwan and Post-Communist Europe: Shopping for Allies Vincent Kelly Pollard (bio) Czeslaw Tubilewicz . Taiwan and Post-Communist Europe: Shopping for Allies. Routledge Contemporary Asia Series. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. xiv, 242 pp. Hardcover $170.00, ISBN 978-0-415-42252-9; E-book £90.00 ISBN 978-0-203-94697-8. By 1979 the number of countries extending full diplomatic recognition to Taiwan had fallen to twenty-two. After the televised events of spring 1989 in China, the downward trend leveled off. And by 1 May 2007, Taiwan enjoyed diplomatic recognition from twenty-five governments. Conflicting inferences emerge from those developments. For example, the tiny fraction of almost two hundred independent states recognizing Taiwan was not much more favorable in 2007. On the other hand, Taiwan began actively resisting the global trend toward increased diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic of China, reversing the downward slide. Through a variety of institutions and contractual instruments, Taiwan has trade and cultural agreements—unofficial but effective—with at least 150 countries. Czeslaw Tubilewicz's Taiwan and Post-Communist Europe: Shopping for Allies summarizes an important part of this story. Tubilewicz does not define foreign policy, preferring to focus on "diplomacy" and especially "economic diplomacy" (pp. 14–20). But his notion of foreign policy consists of "explicit or inferred public and private executive preferences for anticipating, shaping, controlling, managing or responding to an anticipated future state of affairs beyond a country's national borders."1 To set the stage for Tubilewicz's argument, one also should consider that, while self-governing Taiwan's sovereignty is divisible, it would have greater transnational and global leeway if it were receiving full diplomatic recognition from a larger number of powerful partners, regardless of whether or not they currently trade with Taipei—instead of having its sovereignty routinely challenged by China. Tubilewicz discerns five models of Taiwanese relations with post-Communist European countries: Hungarian ("substantive"), Latvian ("consular"), Czech ("ideological"), Russian ("geostrategic"), and Macedonian ("diplomatic") (pp. 177–179). The political, historical, and diplomatic variation here is obvious. More important, Taiwan's diplomatic objectives generally trumped economic ones in all five models for interacting with state and society in post-Communist Europe. Despite setbacks on other issues, Taiwan successfully established "substantive" trade links with Belarus and the Ukraine. Although a temporary consular agreement with Latvia ended in 1994, "Belarus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Russia, and Slovakia agreed to exchange representative offices with Taiwan, all of which performed consular functions. Of these states, all except Latvia and Belarus established de facto consulates in Taiwan" (p. 176). Despite some temporary [End Page 305] illusions, initiating and sustaining full diplomatic relations was probably always beyond reach in post-Communist Europe. And while post-Communist European statutes that were as supportive of Taiwan as the 1979 U.S. Taiwan Relations Act probably were never seriously attainable, devoting attention to creating institutions for substantive economic and cultural relations generated quasi-official, para-diplomatic space for Taiwan. Aside from trade fairs, this also included cultural exchanges and scholarships for students to earn academic degrees in Taiwanese universities. On 27 January 1999, Macedonia and Taiwan recognized one another. Civil war in Macedonia led to well-founded fears that the PRC would veto a UN proposal for peacekeeping troops. Those considerations resulted in Skopje's derecognition of Taipei on 18 June 2001. On the surface, Macedonia's about-face suggests total failure on the part of Taiwan's economic diplomacy in post-Communist Europe. Tubilewicz provides a more nuanced counter-interpretation to this setback and others experienced by Taipei. Aside from avoidable errors by Taiwanese diplomats, he argues that severe imbalances of power limited potential inroads by Taiwan. Yet during the administration of President Lee Teng-hui (1988–2000) and well into the second term of his successor Chen Shui-bian (2000–2008), Taiwan was surprisingly successful in initiating substantive engagement at the level of unofficial trade and cultural agreements, as well as in arousing interest and sympathy among individuals and organizations in post-Communist civil society. The role of Taiwanese businesspersons conducting diplomatic communication where Ministry of Foreign Affairs personnel might be shunned is noted by Tubilewicz.2 Since...