U.S. State Department says, "How high?"
President Chen Shui-bian showed up to give a speech in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, despite a ban on ranking Taiwanese officials from visiting the capital:
State Department guidelines implemented in 1979 ban Taiwan’s president and other senior officials from visiting Washington, as part of Washington’s "one China" policy. A 1994 law passed by Congress overrode those restrictions, but no administration has implemented the law’s provisions to allow Taiwan’s president
and other high-ranking officials to visit Washington.
Except, President Chen didn’t really SHOW UP show up. Instead, he delivered his speech via teleconference to the National Press Club. He was in Taipei the whole time.
In Taipei. Didn’t set foot in America.
None of this pleased the State Department:
One prominent State Department official responsible for Taiwan policy…[charged] that Chen was "using teleconference technology to circumvent the ban on Taiwanese presidents coming to Washington," a Taipei Times source said.
Good Lord. This isn’t Osama bin Laden sending instructions to a gang of Jihadis in a New Jersey mosque somewhere. We’re talking about the popularly-elected head of a LIBERAL DEMOCRACY, giving a SPEECH to members of the press.
And the State Department objects to that.
The View from Taiwan had the best line on this, bar none:
What is the State Department going to do when the first 3-D tech comes out?
Dear Captain Picard:It has come to our attention that Chen Shui-bian has been appearing on the holodeck….
It’s often claimed that China will grow more open as it interacts more with democracies. But the troubling response to Chen’s speech in this case highlights the possibility that the reverse may happen. Perhaps in the end, it will be us whose values are corrupted by authoritarian China, instead.