Taiwan’s decision to abolish the National Unification Council (NUC) and National Unification Guidelines (NUG) has set China into a full rage spin control, with China declaring to any and all who will listen that Chen’s move is a provocation which will lead to destabilizing tensions between the two countries. It’s a terrific act, but a single paragraph in the Taiwan News put the whole thing into perspective:
In fact, Beijing was once critical of the NUG and NUC, pointing to them as major obstacles to China’s unification with Taiwan, and as efforts by Taiwan to push for its memberships in international organizations as an independent political entity, Chang said.
That’s hilarious! You see how this works? China said that ESTABLISHING the council in 1990 was a provocation. And abolishing it in 2006? Well, that was a provocation, too! My, my, those Taiwanese certainly ARE troublemakers. Why are they always picking on poor, peaceful little China like that?
Exactly WHERE is the mainstream media on this, that’s what I want to know. Journalists usually love to juxtapose politicians’ current stands with old quotes that they’ve managed to dig up. Reporters relish watching a pol squirm as he tries to weasel out of what he’s said before. A quick LexisNexis search here, and they’d be in business. Are they simply too lazy to do one, or are transparently flimsy pretexts somehow deserving of a special pass?
(Double thank-you’s to Michael Turton for first spotting the quote, and then for fixing the story link.)
UPDATE (Mar 4/06): In criticizing the press, I neglected to mention the Taiwanese government. They’ve known that Chen was thinking about getting rid of the NUC for the last month now, so why didn’t they have musty old copies of The New York Times ready on hand to show foreign governments? They could have pre-empted China’s "provocation" guff early on, or else presented those old quotes immediately afterwards in order to make Beijing look foolish.
God, that would have been beautiful.