Tag: Taiwan

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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Give Chinese Ultranationalists An Inch, And They’ll Take An Isle

Japan prevents Taiwanese fishing boat under R.O.C. coast guard protection from laying claim to Japan's Senkaku Islands.

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 Future’s So Bright They Gotta Wear…

Aw, you know.  And just when I thought I'd done the whole "Ayatollah Ma Ying-jeou" thing to death, the ruling KMT party graciously provides more material:

Supreme Leader of Taiwan: Ma Ying-jeou. Supreme Leader of Iran: Ayatollah Khamenei. Both wear sunglasses. Caption: Chinese Ultranationalist government of Taiwan seeks closer relations with Iranian Islamofascists.

Great fun at the China Post's comments section there.  With anti-Semitic Chinese knuckledraggers who are apparently still unaware that Israel left Gaza a few YEARS ago.  And a buffoon who insists the issue is a sacred matter of R.O.C. sovereignty — after voicing in a previous thread his approval for Peking to determine Taiwan's immigration policies.

UPDATE:  Has anyone in Taiwan had the gumption to ask the urbane, American-educated Ma what his position is on the stoning of adulteresses?  Or is that something they didn't cover at Harvard Law School?

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Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou Vows To Clamp Down On Corruption

Perhaps one of these days he'll demonstrate all that sincerity of his by having a good talking to that premier he appointed.  You know, the guy who vacations with double-murdering Chinese mafiosos.

Chinese Communists Would Conquer Taiwan In Three Days

According to the most recent computer wargame simulations conducted by the island nation's Ministry of National Defense.

The ruling Chinese Nationalist Party of Taiwan was said to be horrified by the revelation, and vowed to rectify the country's precarious situation by blocking all weapons procurement bills at least 60 times over the course of the next two years.

Taiwan’s Communist Party Blacklists Uighur Splittist

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.

Bye Bye Johnny

While living in Taiwan, I was a big fan of Johnny Neihu in the Taipei Times.  Breezy, well-written stuff.  So I was very saddened to read last week that his weekly column has come to an end.

I'm sort of scratching my head over his final piece for the Times, though.  I know he's saying something beneath the surface, but it's all a bit impenetrable to me.  Whatever it is, my condolences on the death of your mother, Johnny.

Bye bye.

(Direct YouTube link here)