Britney Spears' music made infinitely more palatable — when played by a German oompah band.
Happy Oktoberfest.
Month: September 2010
Pack Hunters
"You are an excellent tactician Captain. You let your second in command attack, while you sit and watch for weakness."
-Khan Noonien Singh, ST:TOS
Perhaps that's the only explanation I have for China's relatively mild reaction to the recent incident off the coast of Japan's Senkaku Islands. I mean, think about it: Japan arrests a P.R.C. fishing boat captain for violating Japanese waters, and what does Beijing do?
It blusters, dresses down the Japanese ambassador a few times, cancels a few underwater resource meetings, and sends a SINGLE fishery escort vessel. (For good measure, it also leaves open the possibility that it "may not be able" to control anti-Japanese mob action.)
A relatively measured response, given that it's Communist China we're talking about.
Shortly thereafter though, Taiwan does a curious thing. Remember, absolutely none of its mariners are cooling their heels in Japanese detention. Yet despite this, President Ma Ying-jeou reacts far more militantly than the P.R.C., making the "independent" decision to dispatch not one, but twelve — 12! — coast guard ships to the Japanese islands.
Like the man said, the second-in-command plays the heavy.
While the boss sits back, watching for weakness.
(Khan image from Zaphodsheads.spaces.live.com)
UPDATE: The Chinese might be breaking their pledge not to drill in a disputed undersea gas field. This, we don't know for sure, yet.
i-1
Madman Ma Orders 12 Armed Taiwanese Ships To Violate Japanese Waters
Story at the Taipei Times. The press in Taiwan is still mum though, on how much the irredentist president's gunboat diplomacy has cost the nation — not only in precious taxpayer NT dollars, but in squandered international credibility as well.
One need not speculate what world reaction would have been had Ma instead dispatched 12 Taiwanese coast guard vessels into CHINESE waters. So that a "civilian" fishing boat could attempt to raise the Republic of China flag on P.R.C. soil. Because the answer is clear: the world would have regarded it as an outrageously dangerous provocation.
A very REAL provocation, quite unlike any of the phony "provocations" the previous Chen administration was accused of.
UPDATE: Citing irrelevant history, Beijing's mouthpiece newspaper in Taiwan urges Japan to quietly give in to the divinely-ordained territorial encroachments of the KMT-Chinese Communist Party alliance.
Saw THAT comin'…
UPDATE #2: Japan's ambassador to China has reportedly informed the Chinese government that Beijing should "take the necessary measures to avoid a worsening of the situation."
Good for him. I'm rooting for scrappy little Japan the way I used to for Taiwan. (Before the KMT surrendered body-and-soul to the Chinese Communist Empire, that is.)
(Hu Jintao & his "very special" KMT friend. Image from Life Magazine.)
UPDATE #3: Coming soon: A Tiananmen Square near you. Courtesy of Supreme Leader Ma Ying-jeou and the KMT Party. Uppity Taiwanese, beware.
(Taiwanese victim of the Chinese Nationalist Party police-riot of 2008. Image from the Taipei Times)
UPDATE #4: Perhaps I was too hasty in dismissing the relevance of the history the China Post presented. Because the Beijing - Taipei axis certainly seems busy manufacturing "incidents" and pretexts for war in 2010 the very same way Imperial Japan did in the 1930s…
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Give Chinese Ultranationalists An Inch, And They’ll Take An Isle
There's Taiwan's revanchist president, Ma Ying-jeou, still trying to stir the pot. Not for him, the blessings of peace. Or a once-a-year attempt to join the U.N.
Instead, a once-a-year provocation of Japan (almost like clockwork) over a few specks in the ocean is more his style.
Funny though, how we never hear of Taiwanese fishing boats trying to lay claim to islands owned by the P.R.C. No, just Japan. That, despite the Chinese Nationalist Party's insistence that ALL of China belongs to the R.O.C…
Why is that, I wonder?
The Great Firewall Of…Sri Lanka?
Chinese IT specialists dispatched to Sri Lanka to help construct web censorship systems.
An old story, from Feb 2010. Which I hadn't heard of until now. Axis of authoritarianism indeed.
More On Sha Zhukang, China’s Top Diplomat
From 2007, in the archives of The Onion:
These special envoys, they've never seen anything like me. I'm a bona fide, high-ranking ambassador- and lady-killer. Give me just one meeting with the Brazilian Commission on Women's Rights, and I promise institutional sexism won't be the only thing they'll be moaning about all night.
More Senkaku Fallout
1) China finds the excuse it needed to avoid signing a gas field treaty with Japan.
2) What's your's is mine: Beijing orders a Japanese coast guard ship to stop surveying — in Japan's own Exclusive Economic Zone.
3) War & rumors of war: Chinese dispatch quasi-military ship to the Senkaku islands. At the same time a Hong Kong group will charter a Taiwanese fishing vessel to also make a trip to the Japanese-owned islands. Convenient timing.
[That last story also mentions that Captain Ramboat's grandmother passed away in China during his incarceration for violating Japanese waters. Which is sure to calm the passions of Chinese jingoists.]
4) Taiwanese KMT legislator fans the flames: "“Without government support on both sides of the Strait, efforts by civilian associations of [Taiwan, China and Hong Kong] alone will not be enough and will be to no avail [for Taiwan to help seize the Senkaku Islands from Japan]."
Er, just what are the odds that that "civilian association" [Hong Kong's "Action Committee for Defending the Diaoyu Islands"] is actually a Chinese Communist Party front group? Leading everybody down the garden path to war?
Chinese Ultranationalists Continue To Destabilize Region
Not content with Captain Ramboat's recent attempt to occupy Japanese territory, revanchists from Hong Kong plan a second expedition to the Senkaku Islands. And in collusion with at least some elements of Taiwan's Chinese Nationalist government:
Taipei County Councilor King Chieh-shou (金介壽) said planning for the protest will be discussed this morning in Jhonghe City [emphasis added] at a forum on the territorial rights of the Diaoyutai Islands. Details regarding boat rental and activities of protest will be fleshed out at the meeting.
UPDATE: Fascinating how newspaper accounts continue to maintain the fiction that Captain Ramboat "collided" with two Japanese vessels, after informing us that bow met stern.
(Oh no officer, I didn't assault that man. His face just collided with my fist!)
Gan Bei!
China's UN diplomat in drunken rant against Americans
China's top-ranking UN diplomat embarked on a drunken rant against the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, telling his boss he'd "never liked" him, and adding for good measure that he didn't like Americans either.
Give the man a break. The poor, sloshed Chinese ambassador was only doing his job in accurately conveying the opinions of his Zhongnanhai masters. (One wonders though, whether he might might still face a reprimand – for his failure to harangue Vietnamese, Koreans, Indians and all the other non-Han untermenschen.)
The outburst by Sha Zukang at a retreat for top UN officials in the Austrian ski resort of Alpbach left senior UN officials cringing in embarrassment as others tried to convince him to put down the microphone, according to Washington-based Foreign Policy magazine.
I know who's not getting invited to the next big office karaoke party…
UPDATE: Foreign Policy magazine, with more on this. Where it is said that once, during the Cultural Revolution, Sha Zukang was forced to live for DAYS on nothing but food and water.
UPDATE (Sep 10/10): Heh. Chinese truth serum.
UPDATE (Sep 11/10): 'Nother heh. China's least inscrutable diplomat. The British writer apparently has worked with Sha Zukang in the past, and maintains that Sha was fully capable of this kind of performance while stone-cold sober.
Chinese Militarist Troublemakers Provoke Japan
Apparently, Taiwan's Chinese ultranationalist "Supreme Leader" isn't the only one who believes that Japan's Senkaku islands belong to China:
A tense maritime incident Tuesday in which two Japanese patrol vessels and a Chinese fishing boat collided near a disputed island chain triggered a diplomatic spat between the Asian giants.
[…]
The Chinese boat's bow then hit the Yonakuni's stern and also collided with another Japanese patrol boat, the Mizuki, some 40 minutes later, Kyodo reported citing the coast guard.
All the more reason for America to participate in joint exercises with ally Japan to exert sovereignty over the islands. Because contrary to the assertions made by Taiwan's China Post, Peking's Pekinese Ma Ying-jeou in Taipei simply cannot be counted on if Beijing makes a land-grab.