Category: Relations -Sino-Taiwanese

Phantom Menaces

The China Post (Taiwan's pro-Communist newspaper of record) frets that the greatest menace to peace in Asia is . . . Japan.  Beware a second Pearl Harbor, the editors darkly warn.

LOL.  The chances of PACIFIST Japan pulling Pearl Harbor II anytime during our lifetimes ranks somewhere between an attack by trident-wielding Mer-people and a Zombie Apocalypse.

In other words, not bloody likely.

Mer-Man from He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe.

 Quiet, you.

UPDATE:  China now matches the number of attack submarines (63) that Japan had when it struck at Pearl Harbor.  Funny coincidence, that.  (Modern Japan has only 16.)

Some other facts the Chinese ultranationalist editors of the Post may be aware of:

  • China has nuclear weapons.  Japan has none.
  • China has over a thousand missiles targetted onto Taiwan.  Japan has none.
  • China has offensive weaponry.  Japan is constitutionally prevented from possessing same.
  • China maintains the largest number of territorial disputes (somewhere between 19 and 26) in all of Asia.
  • China has recently laid expansionist claim to the entire South China Sea.  Japan has not.
  • China's military has enjoyed double digit budgetary increases for several years now.  While on the other hand, high Japanese vehicle costs mean that Japan's military expenditure in real terms is roughly on par with South Korea or Taiwan.

And finally, China routinely ranks among the 10 worst countries in the entire world when it comes to press freedom.  Maintaining strict media censorship, the government indoctrinates the population with ultranationalist propaganda, just as Imperial Japan once did.  

(Far more difficult to imagine the Japanese being similarly brainwashed since Japan has the world's 11th freest press.)

So 2,500 Japanese marched in downtown Tokyo in defiance of Chinese bullying over the Senkaku Islands.  Big deal.  With a population of 128 million, that's a 0.002% turnout. 

Reckon more people showed up for the latest "Tentacle Pride" rally . . .

UPDATE (Oct 26/2010):  A profile of those Japanese "wildmen" Taiwan's China Post is so afear'd of.

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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 Noonien Singh (played by Ricardo Montalban). From Star Trek: The Original Series.

(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.

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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.)

Taiwan's former KMT chairman Lien Chan shakes hands with Chinese Communist dictator, Hu Jintao

(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 who protested against Chen Yunlin (Communist China's negotiator) beaten by KMT-controlled Taiwanese police

(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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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?

There is No Soviet Domination of Eastern Europe

Likewise, there's No Finlandization of Taiwan.  And there never will be under a Ma administration!

And finally, just so's we're clear on this, there are No Dissidents in China.  Never had 'em, never will.

That is all.

Chinese Securitate Get REALLY Tough on Google

Heh.

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:

Sockpuppet dog wearing a mustache

When the Hokklo Taiwanese came from China 400 years ago they didn't learn the Aboriginal languages!!!  Why??? 

Sockpuppet dog wearing a mustache

When the Hokklo Taiwanese came from China 400 years ago they didn't learn the Aboriginal languages!!!  Why??? 

Sockpuppet dog wearing a mustache

It's the way of the future . . . the future . . . the way of the FU-ture . . .

Sockpuppet dog that's taken off his mustache and holds it under his arm

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!

Sockpuppet dog wearing a curly mustache

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?

Sockpuppet dog that's taken off his mustache and holds it under his arm

Ethnically-cleanse all 23 million of them?  As punishment for not learning a language 400 years ago?

Hmmm . . .  That's tough, but fair . . .

Sockpuppet dog wearing Groucho glasses, nose, and eyebrows

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!

Sockpuppet dog with sunglasses and banjo

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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Q: Why Did Taiwan’s Premier Take a Vacation With a Mobster Convicted Of Double Murder?

A:  Because O.J. wasn't available that weekend.

Yeah, yeah — the story's a few months old: 

Amid allegations over his relationship with a convicted double murderer and former Nantou County gang boss, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday said he would resign if the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) could provide any evidence of irregularities in their relationship.

[…]

The DPP has continued to question the premier’s links to Chiang since local media on Wednesday reported Wu and his wife were caught on camera vacationing in Bali with Chiang and Lee Chao-ching.

KMT Premier Wu Den-yih. He is graying with short hair, and wears a suit and tie.

(There he is, clean as a whistle.  Taiwan's KMT Premier, Wu Den-yih.  When he's not taking vacations in Bali with his double-murdering, Chinese mafia pals.  Image from Daylife.com.)

And in more recent (and somewhat related news), World Uygher Congress president Rebiya Kadeer has received a second invite to visit Taiwan.  Saturday's Taipei Times has the story, and recaps how Chinese Nationalist Party sycophants in Taiwan prevented her visit last year in order to curry favor with their Communist Party overlords.  (And note that "sycophant" is employed here in both the modern and ancient meanings of the word.) 

The government [in 2009], however, denied Kadeer entry to Taiwan on the grounds that her visit would harm the national interest.

At the time, Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said Kadeer, president of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), should not be allowed into the country since she had “close relations to a terrorist group.”

So my question is:  If Kadeer's entry in 2009 was deemed harmful to Taiwan's national interest because she had "close relations to a terrorist group" *, shouldn't Taiwan's second highest political office-holder be similarly blacklisted from the halls of government for his PROVEN close relations with a double murdering gangster?

"The new administration will push for clean politics and set strict standards for the integrity and efficiency of officials."

— Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou's Inaugural address.  May 21, 2008

Epic fail on those "strict standards for integrity" there, Hoss.

*  Unsubstantiated charges made by the Butchers of Beijing and repeated uncritically by the Toadies of Taipei.

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Toadies of Taipei Suppress Chinese Dissidents for Butchers of Beijing

The ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) of Taiwan has made it abundantly clear that foreign activists devoted to the cause of human rights in China are NOT WELCOME in the island nation.  First, there was the sorry case of the Dalai Lama last month, who was originally told not to visit, and finally slapped with a government-issued gag order when he was grudgingly permitted to enter the country.  Then to top things off, only a few weeks later the KMT placed the head of the World Uigher Congress, Rebiya Kadeer, also on their rapidly-growing blacklist.

Contrast that with the KMT's treatment of PRC zoo animals with annexation-oriented propagandistic names.  Why, those are hailed and welcomed by the current Taiwanese government with open arms.  Because THEY'RE not political !

Tiananmen Square demonstrators, can you take the hint?  In Ma Ying-jeou's Taiwan, Orwell's dictum now applies.  Four legs good, two legs bad.

On September 25th, Taiwan's Chinese Nationalist Party attempted to rationalize their blacklist in this way:

KMT spokesman Lee Chien-jung (李建榮) said US President Barack Obama had recently decided not to meet the Dalai Lama during his trip to the US to protect the country’s national interests. Japan had also prevented visits by former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) for the same reason.

“The decision made by the government today [to bar Rebiya Kadeer] is based on national and public interests,” he said.

Gee, only three days before Confucius' birthday, and the KMT demonstrates that it has a firm handle on the ethics of eight-year olds:

"Chinaaa hit me in the hallway!  But he was too BIG for me to hit back, so that's why I hit little Rebiya instead!"

Perhaps though, they were merely following the Confucian Silver Rule.  For who among us is unfamiliar with the Great Sage's moral imperative:

"Do unto others, as the Chinese Communist Party would do unto you."

Or something like that.  The Analects tend to lose a little in the Chinese Nationalist translation.

UPDATE:  LOL.  Taiwan's Mainland Affair Council (MAC) announces, "Taiwan can help accelerate democratic development in China."

Left unexplained is how this is to happen when the KMT MUZZLES Chinese democracy advocates.  But I'm sure somebody smart can explain it to me.