Taiwan, China, and other things. Recovered from the defunct TypePad platform.
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.
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?
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!)
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 militarists direct a fleet of 10 fishing trawlers to intentionally violate Indonesia's Exclusive Economic Zone, then train gunboat weapons on the Indonesian Coast Guard ship that attempts to detain one of them.
The Klingons don't take prisoners, Mr. Saavik.
UPDATE: Related analysis by Gordon Chang here.
UPDATE #2: Heh. Daniel Drezner describes events such as these as part of China's shrewd "Pissing Off As Many Countries As Possible" grand strategy.
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Rebiya Kadeer forbidden to enter Taiwan for three years by Ma Ying-jeou's cronies in Immigration. The story in today's Taipei Times. Although curiously, the Times quaintly persists in referring to the party in question as the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
But then, as dissident Yu Jie might have said to the Chinese Stasi during his recent interrogation, it's easy to mistake one axe-gang for another.
Surprise, surprise: Chinese Sino-Imperialists arm Iranian Islamofascists with lots and lots of shiny new Dalian riot control trucks. ("Tiananmen Square" brand billy clubs cost extra, apparently.)
(Image from Popular Science.)
She's a beaut, ain't she? I'll bet Chiu Yi is kickin' himself he didn't have one of THESE babies during the KMT election riots of '04.
Cheer up, Chiu. You've still got 2012 to look forward to. Why, in a few years time, you'll be out there crackin' heads with the rest of 'em!
And moving not so far off topic I see that Iran has joined China in their jihad against Google. (Good news indeed, for China's new Google substitute.)
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UPDATE: Wow. The Chinese Communist Party's fiendishly clever Plan B: Operation Create Google Substitute.
Which come to think of it, strongly resembles their campaign over at Topix:
When the Hokklo Taiwanese came from China 400 years ago they didn't learn the Aboriginal languages!!! Why???
When the Hokklo Taiwanese came from China 400 years ago they didn't learn the Aboriginal languages!!! Why???
It's the way of the future . . . the future . . . the way of the FU-ture . . .
Whoops, sorry. **Phew** Well, that's a good question I asked. I mean, you — YOU asked! …Uh, three times. Anyhoo. Anyhoo, I'll tell you why. They didn't learn the aboriginal languages because they're nothing but a bunch of no-good racists!
No-good racists, you say? I did not know that, my clean-shaven friend.
Shouldn't Beijing then discipline those wayward, spoiled children? As they say in the Han race-nation, blood is thicker than water. So why, oh why, don't the Chinese invade and mass deport all of those Taiwanese racists back to China?
Ethnically-cleanse all 23 million of them? As punishment for not learning a language 400 years ago?
Hmmm . . . That's tough, but fair . . .
I second the motion! A capital idea! And then, once the People's Liberation Army promptly leaves (as we can surely trust them to do) then we can set up a Naruwan aboriginal Republic under UN auspices!
Hee-hee! With my amazing Moktar Stealth Haze, no one can tell they're all just me! Do da do da do . . . Just a wild and crazy anarchist – like that V for Vendetta guy! (Images from Patterico.com)
Bravo, Topix.com, for a site that's so bad it's actually kind of awesome.
UPDATE 2: Unrelated, but fun nonetheless. Feng shui: Is there anything it CAN'T do?
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Be a shame if anything happened to its accreditation…
Three months [after awarding an honorary degree to the Dalai Lama], the University of Calgary [in Canada] was dropped from the Chinese Ministry of Education’s accreditation list of universities for Chinese students desiring to study abroad, the Calgary Herald newspaper reported on Thursday.
The Hotline for Overseas Studies Service Center in Beijing had the following advice for Chinese students: “If you don’t already go to that school, it is better not to go because you will face risks.”
[…]
About 600 students from China and Hong Kong are enrolled at the University of Calgary. [About 2.5 % of the student body — The Foreigner]. On average, tuition for foreign students is three times higher than for local students.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with Taiwan. Except for the fact that the Chinese Nationalist Party government has previously stated it wishes to "flood" Taiwanese universities with students from China –rendering Taiwanese higher education prone to similar political domination. Not over the Dalai Lama — the Communist Party collaborationists within the KMT will make sure THAT one never steps foot in Taiwan again. More likely over curricula or the presence of China sceptics within the halls of academe.
Set a course for the Borg tractor beam, Number One.
Full speed ahead.
Been meaning to link to this brief (but eye-opening) note on management's decision to light up the Empire State Building to celebrate the founding of Communist Party rule in modern China.
One wonders whether the board of Taiwan's Taipei 101 skyscraper will be willing to sell themselves quite so cheaply.