两岸关系：认识你的顾客.docVIP

Know your customer 认识你的顾客 That China is trying to bribe Taiwan, not browbeat it, is good news. But Taiwanese caution is still warranted 中国对台湾采取的是利诱而不是威逼的方法了，这是个好消息。但是台湾人民依然需要保持警惕。 THE Economic Co-operation Framework Agreement, or ECFA, reached this week between Taiwan and China was hailed by both sides as one of the most important landmarks on the road to lasting peace since 1949. That was when the Communists routed the Nationalist Kuomintang, the KMT, leaving it with Taiwan as a last redoubt. The ECFA is indeed a welcome development, though it guarantees neither peace nor China抯 ultimate goal, the 搑eunification?of Taiwan with the mainland. It should be taken for what it is: a trade deal that should help Taiwan both economically and politically. 中国大陆和台湾于这周达成了《两岸经济架构合作协议》（以下简称《协议》），双方都赞颂之为：1949年以来通向持久和平道路最重要的里程碑。当时中国共产党把国民党驱逐到了台湾，于是台湾成了国民党最后的庇护所。尽管《协议》不能保证和平，抑或是中国大陆的最终目标——两岸重新统一，但它确实是一个令人欣喜的发展。它本身应该被解读为：一个在经济和政治方面都有利于台湾的贸易协定。 Fear that it brings Chinese sovereignty closer has made the ECFA bitterly divisive in Taiwan itself. Its critics point out that China has never ruled out the use of force to bring about unification, nor stopped adding to its battery of coastal missiles menacing the island. They regard the ECFA as war by another means; a Trojan horse that Taiwan should have shunned. 《协议》在台湾内部引起了强烈的分歧，因为有人担心它会助长中国大陆对台湾的统治。批评家指出，中国从未放弃用武力实现大一统，也没有停止过威慑台湾的沿海导弹组的增加。他们认为《协议》只是另一种形式的战争；是一个台湾应该回避的特洛伊木马。 These critics are right about China’s intentions—to win support in Taiwan. But there are still at least three good reasons why Taiwan (and the West) should welcome the deal. 就中国大陆的意图——获得台湾内部的支持来说，这些批评是对的。但是至少有三个好理由，让台湾（和西方国家）应该欢迎这个协议。 First, it is, as befits a sop to public opinion, a good one for Taiwan’s export-oriented economy (see article). It not only opens up the Chinese market further; it also reduces the risk that Taiwan, the world’s 17th-biggest exporter, will be left isolated, by the “noodle-bowl” of bilateral trade agreements, in which its regional competi