NO PUSHBACK: Beijing has demonstrated that it can censor speech in the rest of the world without incurring any real cost to itself, Michael Mazza said in an opinion piece

Taipei Times
Date: Aug 02, 2018
By: Nadia Tsao and William Hetherington  /  Staff reporter in WASHINGTON, with staff writer

Democratic nations must stand up to China in defense of democracy, as Beijing demands international companies adhere to its “one China” principle, Michael Mazza, a visiting fellow in foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) think tank, said in an opinion piece published on Tuesday.

China’s demand that foreign companies outside of China follow Beijing’s political policy on Taiwan is an attack on democracy that should not be tolerated, he said in the piece, published on the Nikkei Asian Review’s Web site, titled “China’s airline censorship over Taiwan must not fly.”

Failing to counter these attacks would bring the war on democracy to the front door of the US, Japan and other like-minded nations, Mazza said.

Beijing’s pressure on Taiwan has been the result of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) refusing to discuss the cross-strait relationship in terms acceptable to Beijing — by refusing to refer to both sides of the Taiwan Strait as “one China” — and demanding that international companies to refer to Taiwan in Beijing-specified terms is one of a number of ways in which China has been trying to isolate Taiwan and push it out of the international sphere, he said.    [FULL  STORY]