Being vague can help tremendously to avoid conflict. In East Asia, it is a real art form to find consensus through ambiguity where none was possible in the first place. Anyone who lives in the region for a while soon recognizes the advantages of deliberate ambiguity.
In such a context, absolute clarity is dangerous. It dissolves the requirements for dear peace: That both sides could interpret the situation in a way acceptable to them. This is exactly the case with the Taiwan issue. Beijing is trying to impose its definition of the One-China principle everywhere in the world, writes Christiane Kühl. And it states without a doubt that Taiwan belongs to the People’s Republic. When China’s foreign policy was still weak, it quietly tolerated a different interpretation around the world: That the status was not clear for the foreseeable future, and that “One-China” could theoretically also somehow be Taiwan. The clarity that China is now insisting on is, in turn, triggering a counter-reaction from the United States.
Today we are also launching a new, regular series on Taiwan: the “China Perspective“, written by Chinese from the People’s Republic. The world appears very differently depending on one’s socialization, as the example of “One-China” shows. Therefore, we would like to present more examples of how the Chinese see things. Personal exchange has shrunk severely in the past three years. This makes it all the more important to give room to authors from the other cultural sphere.
Mercedes-Benz needs battery cells – and lots of them. If all of the Group’s cars are to be powered electrically one day, then there cannot be any shortage of electricity storage units. This is supposed to happen as early as 2025. So the company is broadening its procurement base, but is by no means turning its back on Chinese partners, writes Christian Domke Seidel. On the contrary. Chinese suppliers such as CATL are still an integral part of the strategy. To be on the safe side, they are to produce in Europe, as CATL will soon be doing in Hungary.
The One-China principle is omnipresent in every official statement on Taiwan policy and is a standard part of diplomatic interaction with China. In the heated situation following the visit of Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, to Taipei, however, it has once again become clear that all parties involved – China, Taiwan and the United States – interpret the principle differently. The US and China accuse each other of undermining the status quo on the Taiwan Strait – and this includes the perception of the One-China principle.
The People’s Republic attaches great importance to keeping the formula in active use. “Pelosi’s attempt to hollow out the One-China principle is unacceptable and doomed to fail because the principle is based on historical and legal facts,” the state-run China Daily commented on Thursday. “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, and it will remain so.” Beijing also demands that all other countries adopt this definition.
China’s One-China principle is unequivocal. According to Beijing, it states that “there is but one China in the world, Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory, and the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China.” China understands adherence to the One-China principle as an “important political foundation for establishing diplomatic ties between other countries and China.” Because the People’s Republic considers Taiwan to be a Chinese province, Beijing believes it must also act and be treated internationally as a regional government.
In practice, however, Taiwan acts like a state, not a province – except that it lacks diplomatic recognition from large parts of the world. According to a Taiwanese Foreign Ministry news website, Taipei has for many years taken the position “that “One China” refers to historical, geographic, and cultural China – which currently consists of two political legal entities: the People’s Republic on the mainland and the Republic of China on Taiwan.”
At the beginning of the 1990s, Taipei and Beijing had agreed to stick to each other’s interpretation of the One-China principle – and to deal with concrete issues such as investment or transport links for the time being. Time and again, there were informal meetings between Beijing and the government of Ma Ying-jeou from the Kuomintang Party (KMT), which tends to be pro-China. Such a pragmatic approach to the One-China question is no longer conceivable. The thaw period ended when Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) became president in 2016. The DPP is fundamentally in favor of independence – even though Tsai emphasizes that she will not undermine the status quo.
Statements from Taipei are also surprisingly direct. The Foreign Ministry stated in mid-August the reaction of the Council for Mainland Affairs to China’s “Taiwan White Paper,” which was issued shortly before: The Council defined that “the Republic of China is a Sovereign State: Taiwan has never been part of the People’s Republic of China.” Furthermore that “the PRC’s claim of sovereignty over Taiwan was a flawed interpretation of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758, and this had been criticized and rejected by many democratic countries.” China’s white paper reiterated the claim to Taiwan.
Resolution 2758 is one of the key points in China’s argument. Because of it, the “Republic of China” in Taiwan lost its seat at the United Nations to the People’s Republic of China in 1971. The resolution recognizes that Beijing’s UN diplomats “were the only lawful representatives of China to the United Nations,” China’s ambassador Qin Gang recently wrote in a guest commentary for the Washington Post (China.Table reported). This is in line with the facts.
But that is all the resolution says, Bonnie Glaser and Jessica Drun noted in a new study for the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “There is a campaign underway by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to reinterpret UN Resolution 2758 as based on its “One-China” Principle and spread the fallacy that, through the resolution, UN member states came to a determination that Taiwan is a part of the PRC.” At the time, then-Prime Minister Zhou Enlai acknowledged that Resolution 2758 had not yet decided Taiwan’s status, Glaser and Drun said. “However, given that Beijing did not enjoy the same level of international influence then as it does today, it did not reject the resolution when it was passed.”
The situation now is quite different, with Beijing’s increased influence succeeding in blocking attempts to include Taiwan in UN work. “The PRC’s efforts to rewrite Taiwan’s status at the UN ramped up in the 1990s and early 2000s at the same time as the island’s democratization,” Drun and Glaser wrote. The authors accuse Beijing of making its Taiwan policy institutionalized normality at the United Nations – for example, through secret agreements with various UN bodies to exclude Taipei. These agreements of the UN organizations are still not publicly available. Among them is one made between the World Health Organization (WHO) and China in 2005.
The most important change is probably to interpret deliberately vague definitions unambiguously. “These developments have played out alongside marked shifts in the guidance of the UN Office of Legal Affairs on Taiwan, where it only 15 years ago cited an ambiguous and undefined “One-China” policy, but now reiterates the PRC position on Taiwan,” the study says, for example. Beijing has also used UN Resolution 2758, as well as bilateral agreements with other member states, “to falsely claim that its “One-China” Principle is a universally accepted norm.” Many states today vote jointly with China on Taiwan issues at the UN, it claimed.
The US is critical – and, according to Drun and Glaser, has repeatedly resisted Beijing’s efforts to redefine UN Resolution 2758. In 2007, Washington reiterated its position in a paper: “The status of Taiwan is not yet decided.”
In general, the US One-China policy acknowledges Beijing’s One-China principle but does not affirm it. Officially, the United States takes no position on Taiwan’s status. That is the consensus in Washington.
Drun and Glaser recommend that the United States emphasize the differences between its One-China policy and Beijing’s One-China principle more publicly. “US officials should make clear that the United States takes note of the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China – but does not accept the PRC’s sovereignty claims over Taiwan.” More and more people in Europe are calling for reform of the EU’s One-China policy – toward more open support for Taiwan, but without a departure from the status quo.
However, no one who maintains diplomatic relations with Beijing can officially abandon or ignore the One-China principle. India, for example, has not mentioned the principle in official Sino-Indian documents since 2008. When asked by a Xinhua reporter at a press conference held by Foreign Office spokesman Arindam Bagchi shortly after Pelosi’s visit about what India’s position was on the One-China Principle, Bagchi responded only, “India’s position on “relevant” policies is well known and consistent and does not need to be repeated.” China’s Ambassador to New Delhi Sun Weidon called on India to “publicly reaffirm the One-China Principle, as many other countries do.” India has not yet followed this request.
Battery market leader CATL is building a new factory in Debrecen, Hungary (China.Table reported). The project has an investment volume of the equivalent of €7.34 billion. Mercedes is the largest customer of this factory, but contrary to reports (for example, here or here) it is not deeper involved in the project. “We have the largest purchase volume, but are not involved financially or in any other way,” a spokeswoman for the group told Table.Media. Other media portrayed the process as if Mercedes itself was investing in the plant.
Mercedes is currently pursuing an “electric-only” strategy. Starting at the end of the decade, only EVs are to be built – at least “wherever market conditions permit,” as the company adds. From 2025, the plans call for every new vehicle architecture to be exclusively electric. Half of all new cars with a star are then to be EVs. To achieve this goal, Mercedes plans to invest around €40 billion between 2022 and 2030.
The partnership with Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL) is one component of these plans. Mercedes calculates that it will require 200-gigawatt hours of battery capacity to power a sufficient number of vehicles purely electrically. In the future, the company wants to sell fewer, but more expensive cars. However, the Covid pandemic has exposed weaknesses in the supply chains. That is why Mercedes plans to position itself as broadly as possible in the supply of batteries, i.e. recruit as many suppliers as possible.
Mercedes needs eight cell factories worldwide to produce or buy sufficient battery capacity. Four factories in Europe, four in the USA, and China. In the USA, Mercedes is cooperating with Envision AESC. There, a battery cell factory will be built near the company’s plant. In China, the partners are CATL and Farasis. Mercedes even holds three percent of the shares in Farasis, which are said to have cost around €400 million. Originally, Farasis wanted to produce battery cells for Mercedes in Germany. But the project ultimately fell through in 2021.
In Europe, Mercedes has a stake in the Automotive Cells Company (ACC) based in France – along with the Stellantis Group (Peugeot, Citroën, Fiat, Chrysler, Jeep) and the French energy company Total Energies. The goals are quite ambitious, as the company spokeswoman explains: “We have taken a stake in ACC together with Stellantis and Total Energies to build a European battery champion. Here we want to contribute our own expertise and thus accelerate ACC’s development.” This diversification is part of the “local-for-local” strategy. If production or the supply chain fails in one part of the world, factories in other countries are not entirely left high and dry. At the same time, greenhouse gases can be saved during transport.
In Europe, CATL is to ensure this supply of the demanded cells. Fueled by Hungary’s economic policy. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán wants to make his country the second most important location for e-mobility – after Germany. For this, he lured Samsung SDI, among others, to Göd, a small town north of Budapest, where batteries are manufactured ever since. The company has already had to pay more than a dozen fines because of poor working conditions, noise, and pollution, as NZZ reports. South Korean companies SK One (in Ivancsa) and Ecpro BM (in Debrecen) will also soon manufacture batteries and required components in Hungary. In addition, there is the CATL plant announced by Mercedes.
Investments in e-mobility in Hungary have totaled €8 billion in recent years. The CATL plant alone will almost double this sum. Where the workforce will come from is unclear. In an interview with Table.Media, Mercedes refers to the sustainable production of the battery cells but actually only means carbon neutrality. The company spokeswoman decidedly excludes the social and economic aspects.
This poses problems for Hungary. Because there are simply not enough skilled workers in the country to meet the growing demand. Of the estimated 5,000 employees at Samsung SDI, just one hundred are said to come from Hungary, as Balogh Csaba, mayor of Göd, told NZZ. The rest of the workforce will come from Asia. How this might look at CATL is still completely open at the moment.
Safe harbor – literally: Fishing boats in the harbor of the city of Yangjiang in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong were brought to safety from Typhoon Ma-on. The typhoon reached the coast near Maoming on Thursday morning. It had earlier lashed Hong Kong with rain and wind gusts. Ma-on is the ninth typhoon this year.
Being vague can help tremendously to avoid conflict. In East Asia, it is a real art form to find consensus through ambiguity where none was possible in the first place. Anyone who lives in the region for a while soon recognizes the advantages of deliberate ambiguity.
In such a context, absolute clarity is dangerous. It dissolves the requirements for dear peace: That both sides could interpret the situation in a way acceptable to them. This is exactly the case with the Taiwan issue. Beijing is trying to impose its definition of the One-China principle everywhere in the world, writes Christiane Kühl. And it states without a doubt that Taiwan belongs to the People’s Republic. When China’s foreign policy was still weak, it quietly tolerated a different interpretation around the world: That the status was not clear for the foreseeable future, and that “One-China” could theoretically also somehow be Taiwan. The clarity that China is now insisting on is, in turn, triggering a counter-reaction from the United States.
Today we are also launching a new, regular series on Taiwan: the “China Perspective“, written by Chinese from the People’s Republic. The world appears very differently depending on one’s socialization, as the example of “One-China” shows. Therefore, we would like to present more examples of how the Chinese see things. Personal exchange has shrunk severely in the past three years. This makes it all the more important to give room to authors from the other cultural sphere.
Mercedes-Benz needs battery cells – and lots of them. If all of the Group’s cars are to be powered electrically one day, then there cannot be any shortage of electricity storage units. This is supposed to happen as early as 2025. So the company is broadening its procurement base, but is by no means turning its back on Chinese partners, writes Christian Domke Seidel. On the contrary. Chinese suppliers such as CATL are still an integral part of the strategy. To be on the safe side, they are to produce in Europe, as CATL will soon be doing in Hungary.
The One-China principle is omnipresent in every official statement on Taiwan policy and is a standard part of diplomatic interaction with China. In the heated situation following the visit of Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, to Taipei, however, it has once again become clear that all parties involved – China, Taiwan and the United States – interpret the principle differently. The US and China accuse each other of undermining the status quo on the Taiwan Strait – and this includes the perception of the One-China principle.
The People’s Republic attaches great importance to keeping the formula in active use. “Pelosi’s attempt to hollow out the One-China principle is unacceptable and doomed to fail because the principle is based on historical and legal facts,” the state-run China Daily commented on Thursday. “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, and it will remain so.” Beijing also demands that all other countries adopt this definition.
China’s One-China principle is unequivocal. According to Beijing, it states that “there is but one China in the world, Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory, and the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China.” China understands adherence to the One-China principle as an “important political foundation for establishing diplomatic ties between other countries and China.” Because the People’s Republic considers Taiwan to be a Chinese province, Beijing believes it must also act and be treated internationally as a regional government.
In practice, however, Taiwan acts like a state, not a province – except that it lacks diplomatic recognition from large parts of the world. According to a Taiwanese Foreign Ministry news website, Taipei has for many years taken the position “that “One China” refers to historical, geographic, and cultural China – which currently consists of two political legal entities: the People’s Republic on the mainland and the Republic of China on Taiwan.”
At the beginning of the 1990s, Taipei and Beijing had agreed to stick to each other’s interpretation of the One-China principle – and to deal with concrete issues such as investment or transport links for the time being. Time and again, there were informal meetings between Beijing and the government of Ma Ying-jeou from the Kuomintang Party (KMT), which tends to be pro-China. Such a pragmatic approach to the One-China question is no longer conceivable. The thaw period ended when Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) became president in 2016. The DPP is fundamentally in favor of independence – even though Tsai emphasizes that she will not undermine the status quo.
Statements from Taipei are also surprisingly direct. The Foreign Ministry stated in mid-August the reaction of the Council for Mainland Affairs to China’s “Taiwan White Paper,” which was issued shortly before: The Council defined that “the Republic of China is a Sovereign State: Taiwan has never been part of the People’s Republic of China.” Furthermore that “the PRC’s claim of sovereignty over Taiwan was a flawed interpretation of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758, and this had been criticized and rejected by many democratic countries.” China’s white paper reiterated the claim to Taiwan.
Resolution 2758 is one of the key points in China’s argument. Because of it, the “Republic of China” in Taiwan lost its seat at the United Nations to the People’s Republic of China in 1971. The resolution recognizes that Beijing’s UN diplomats “were the only lawful representatives of China to the United Nations,” China’s ambassador Qin Gang recently wrote in a guest commentary for the Washington Post (China.Table reported). This is in line with the facts.
But that is all the resolution says, Bonnie Glaser and Jessica Drun noted in a new study for the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “There is a campaign underway by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to reinterpret UN Resolution 2758 as based on its “One-China” Principle and spread the fallacy that, through the resolution, UN member states came to a determination that Taiwan is a part of the PRC.” At the time, then-Prime Minister Zhou Enlai acknowledged that Resolution 2758 had not yet decided Taiwan’s status, Glaser and Drun said. “However, given that Beijing did not enjoy the same level of international influence then as it does today, it did not reject the resolution when it was passed.”
The situation now is quite different, with Beijing’s increased influence succeeding in blocking attempts to include Taiwan in UN work. “The PRC’s efforts to rewrite Taiwan’s status at the UN ramped up in the 1990s and early 2000s at the same time as the island’s democratization,” Drun and Glaser wrote. The authors accuse Beijing of making its Taiwan policy institutionalized normality at the United Nations – for example, through secret agreements with various UN bodies to exclude Taipei. These agreements of the UN organizations are still not publicly available. Among them is one made between the World Health Organization (WHO) and China in 2005.
The most important change is probably to interpret deliberately vague definitions unambiguously. “These developments have played out alongside marked shifts in the guidance of the UN Office of Legal Affairs on Taiwan, where it only 15 years ago cited an ambiguous and undefined “One-China” policy, but now reiterates the PRC position on Taiwan,” the study says, for example. Beijing has also used UN Resolution 2758, as well as bilateral agreements with other member states, “to falsely claim that its “One-China” Principle is a universally accepted norm.” Many states today vote jointly with China on Taiwan issues at the UN, it claimed.
The US is critical – and, according to Drun and Glaser, has repeatedly resisted Beijing’s efforts to redefine UN Resolution 2758. In 2007, Washington reiterated its position in a paper: “The status of Taiwan is not yet decided.”
In general, the US One-China policy acknowledges Beijing’s One-China principle but does not affirm it. Officially, the United States takes no position on Taiwan’s status. That is the consensus in Washington.
Drun and Glaser recommend that the United States emphasize the differences between its One-China policy and Beijing’s One-China principle more publicly. “US officials should make clear that the United States takes note of the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China – but does not accept the PRC’s sovereignty claims over Taiwan.” More and more people in Europe are calling for reform of the EU’s One-China policy – toward more open support for Taiwan, but without a departure from the status quo.
However, no one who maintains diplomatic relations with Beijing can officially abandon or ignore the One-China principle. India, for example, has not mentioned the principle in official Sino-Indian documents since 2008. When asked by a Xinhua reporter at a press conference held by Foreign Office spokesman Arindam Bagchi shortly after Pelosi’s visit about what India’s position was on the One-China Principle, Bagchi responded only, “India’s position on “relevant” policies is well known and consistent and does not need to be repeated.” China’s Ambassador to New Delhi Sun Weidon called on India to “publicly reaffirm the One-China Principle, as many other countries do.” India has not yet followed this request.
Battery market leader CATL is building a new factory in Debrecen, Hungary (China.Table reported). The project has an investment volume of the equivalent of €7.34 billion. Mercedes is the largest customer of this factory, but contrary to reports (for example, here or here) it is not deeper involved in the project. “We have the largest purchase volume, but are not involved financially or in any other way,” a spokeswoman for the group told Table.Media. Other media portrayed the process as if Mercedes itself was investing in the plant.
Mercedes is currently pursuing an “electric-only” strategy. Starting at the end of the decade, only EVs are to be built – at least “wherever market conditions permit,” as the company adds. From 2025, the plans call for every new vehicle architecture to be exclusively electric. Half of all new cars with a star are then to be EVs. To achieve this goal, Mercedes plans to invest around €40 billion between 2022 and 2030.
The partnership with Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL) is one component of these plans. Mercedes calculates that it will require 200-gigawatt hours of battery capacity to power a sufficient number of vehicles purely electrically. In the future, the company wants to sell fewer, but more expensive cars. However, the Covid pandemic has exposed weaknesses in the supply chains. That is why Mercedes plans to position itself as broadly as possible in the supply of batteries, i.e. recruit as many suppliers as possible.
Mercedes needs eight cell factories worldwide to produce or buy sufficient battery capacity. Four factories in Europe, four in the USA, and China. In the USA, Mercedes is cooperating with Envision AESC. There, a battery cell factory will be built near the company’s plant. In China, the partners are CATL and Farasis. Mercedes even holds three percent of the shares in Farasis, which are said to have cost around €400 million. Originally, Farasis wanted to produce battery cells for Mercedes in Germany. But the project ultimately fell through in 2021.
In Europe, Mercedes has a stake in the Automotive Cells Company (ACC) based in France – along with the Stellantis Group (Peugeot, Citroën, Fiat, Chrysler, Jeep) and the French energy company Total Energies. The goals are quite ambitious, as the company spokeswoman explains: “We have taken a stake in ACC together with Stellantis and Total Energies to build a European battery champion. Here we want to contribute our own expertise and thus accelerate ACC’s development.” This diversification is part of the “local-for-local” strategy. If production or the supply chain fails in one part of the world, factories in other countries are not entirely left high and dry. At the same time, greenhouse gases can be saved during transport.
In Europe, CATL is to ensure this supply of the demanded cells. Fueled by Hungary’s economic policy. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán wants to make his country the second most important location for e-mobility – after Germany. For this, he lured Samsung SDI, among others, to Göd, a small town north of Budapest, where batteries are manufactured ever since. The company has already had to pay more than a dozen fines because of poor working conditions, noise, and pollution, as NZZ reports. South Korean companies SK One (in Ivancsa) and Ecpro BM (in Debrecen) will also soon manufacture batteries and required components in Hungary. In addition, there is the CATL plant announced by Mercedes.
Investments in e-mobility in Hungary have totaled €8 billion in recent years. The CATL plant alone will almost double this sum. Where the workforce will come from is unclear. In an interview with Table.Media, Mercedes refers to the sustainable production of the battery cells but actually only means carbon neutrality. The company spokeswoman decidedly excludes the social and economic aspects.
This poses problems for Hungary. Because there are simply not enough skilled workers in the country to meet the growing demand. Of the estimated 5,000 employees at Samsung SDI, just one hundred are said to come from Hungary, as Balogh Csaba, mayor of Göd, told NZZ. The rest of the workforce will come from Asia. How this might look at CATL is still completely open at the moment.
Safe harbor – literally: Fishing boats in the harbor of the city of Yangjiang in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong were brought to safety from Typhoon Ma-on. The typhoon reached the coast near Maoming on Thursday morning. It had earlier lashed Hong Kong with rain and wind gusts. Ma-on is the ninth typhoon this year.
